Where can I see traditional live music in Morocco?

Morocco’s music traditions are regional, and where you go shapes what you hear. My single favourite is Gnaoua music in Essaouira — hypnotic, trance-inducing sound built on the deep three-string guembri bass, iron qraqeb castanets and call-and-response chant, descended from sub-Saharan spiritual brotherhoods. You can hear it year-round in little venues and at riad dinners, but the Gnaoua World Music Festival each June turns the whole walled town into a stage with hundreds of thousands of people. It is free, raw and joyful.

In Fes you find the more refined classical traditions: Andalusian orchestral music brought by Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain, and Sufi devotional chanting. The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music (late spring/early summer) is one of the great cultural events on earth — evening concerts in the courtyard of the Bab al-Makina with artists from across the Islamic and Mediterranean world. Outside festival season, ask your riad; many host Sufi or Andalusian evenings in candle-lit courtyards.

For Berber (Amazigh) music, head to the High Atlas and the south. In villages around the Ait Bougmez valley, the Toubkal foothills and the Dades and Todra gorges, weddings and moussem festivals feature ahwach — large circles of villagers drumming, clapping and chanting in unison, often the whole community at once. On a homestay or a guided Atlas trek you may stumble into one; it is the most authentic thing you can witness. The southern oasis towns also have rhythmic Saharan styles tied to the dunes.

And then there is Marrakech’s Jemaa el-Fnaa at night, a UNESCO-recognised living tradition: circles of Gnaoua musicians, Berber drummers, oud players and storytellers form spontaneously after sunset. Toss a few dirhams in the hat, stand in the ring and let it wash over you. It is chaotic and commercial in parts, but utterly alive — there is nowhere else in the world quite like it.