Report from Essaouira, Morocco festival:

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More information on the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco
http://www.fezfestival.org

Afropop Worldwide's Sean Barlow hit the road to Dearborn, Michigan to report on the Arab International Festival

Dearborn Michigan is home to the Ford Motor Company and the largest Arab-American community in the U.S. I arrived there on the weekend in mid-June when Ford was celebrating its 100th anniversary. The perky blondes at the rent-a-car agency told me Fords were sold out for the weekend. No matter. I was here for the Arab International Festival.

Turning from the freeway on to Warren Road in Dearborn, you know immediately you are in an Arab world. Over half the storefronts have signs in Arabic--bakeries, grocery stores, accounting services, travel agencies, jewelry stores, etc. Behind Warren Road, you find middle class brick homes with neatly kept yards. Many of the women wear head scarves, but not all. Families are out strolling with baby carriages. And the summer Festival ambience seems to be animating the town.

My hosts in Dearborn, Ish Ahmed and Steve Heath of ACCESS, the Arab Community Center here, take me out for a delicious Arab meal at a local restaurant and Ish quickly fills me in on the music scene. There are about 100 professional musicians in Dearborn who make their living mostly from weddings and playing the four or five clubs specializing in Arab music. They back up about 40 professional singers. And singing stars from the Middle East come to Dearborn to perform, often using local musicians for their backing band. We'll see both locals and Middle East based artists, mainly from Lebanon, at the Festival this weekend.

Doris Farhat, a singer from Lebanon, caught the spirit Saturday night when she prodded the audience to shout out where they're from and then she would sing a line featuring the name of the country to enthusiastic applause--Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Sudan. People here are every shade of white, brown, copper, and black. It felt like a homecoming. The house band was led by a violin player who often started out a song with a free rhythm improvisation. Other instruments included handheld percussion they call "tabla", played standing up unlike what one normally thinks of as Indian tablas. Bass and drum kit beef up the rhythm section. Keyboards play a major role in fill out the sound with Middle Eastern strings etc. A guest ney, or flute player, sat in one session too.

How do they party in Dearborn? One really noticeable thing is no alchohol. There was No alchohol for sale. You could get all the Pepsi your heart desires. Turkish coffee to fire you up. You could smoke "shish" or flavored tobacco from tall water pipes on Warren Road restaurants but no booze. Hundreds of thousands of people attend this free festival and I did not see any fights or pushing or shoving the entire time. Very peaceful. The story I heard is that many of the guys working Festival security used to be gang members in Dearborn. But they retired from the gang life and now work security. And overall, Dearborn itself has a very low crime rate.

Partying Dearborn style, also means dancing depki which I was told originally came out of Turkey. Mostly guys join hands and hop, spin and bop in a semi-circle. The guy leading twirls what look like worry beads and shows off more free form moves. The basic beat of the music from song to song is pretty consistent and easy to catch. Depki is a joyous communal thing.

Some local artists who stood out were Bassam Saleh and Suliman Suliman. Bassam Saleh is one of the few local musicians who had a CD and cassette on the market. Several musicians told me they don't release their music because it just gets pirated. Also outstanding was Nadine Delikam, the flute player who sat in with the house band. He makes instruments and does a lot in the Dearborn and Detroit school system to educate students about Middle Eastern music.

Very popular with the youth was rapper AJ who grew up in Youngstown Ohio but would come to Dearborn in the summers to catch the music scene. AJ performed his hit with "Yemen" that infused the mizmar horn, used in wedding parties in Yemen, and rapping in English and Arabic. He said he's getting a lot more interest in his work since 9-11 because he thinks he's seen as not just a novelty act but as a way for Americans to understand what Arab-Americans are thinking and feeling.

The Arab International Festival was a joint effort by ACCESS, the largest human services agency for the Arab community in America as well as a major presenter of Arab music, the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce, and the Lebanese-American Heritage Club. ACCESS is building the first museum focusing on the Arab-American experience which will open in Dearborn in the fall of 2004. Afropop Worldwide looks forward to collaborating with ACCESS in further introducing our national radio and global on-line audience to Arab Music and culture.

For more information on ACCESS, visit:
www.accesscommunity.org Text and photographs by Sean Barlow