What I am not surprised by is that at this year's Mawazine festival held annually in Rabat, Morocco to promote peace and tolerance Cat Stephens/Yusuf Islam was gracious and delightful and Kayne West was not.
Does that surprise you?
If you want to read a bit more about Yusuf's take on the festival and his music in general follow this link.
Kayne's less than stellar review can be found here.
Yusuf donated his proceeds from the concert to the orphan children of Morocco and tried to relate to the theme of the festival throughout his performance and his interviews. Kayne, on the other hand, took his money, refused to talk to press, and then split in a hurry. It seemed strange to see him on the bill at a festival like this, but he did draw a massive crowd and someone has to pay for the festival I guess.
Max and I actually drove up north to see Yusuf perform and it was a wonderful show. The open air theater doesn't have any seating so everyone stands and lounges about on Moroccan carpets strewn across the ground. We stood next to a group of Moroccan teenagers who, despite not being alive while Yusuf wrote any of his old music as Cat Stephens and growing up in another country, knew most of the words to his old songs. It was awesome. In truth, neither of us were alive when he wrote those songs either - but we had some rockin' moms who taught us well.
Here is a video of Yusuf performing one of his most popular songs. People were literally chanting for it. As Max pointed out in his way "he definitely rubbed some funk on this version of Peace Train".
What the heck - here's another video from the night.
hhhmmmm... after watching that video I think I could see myself in the crowd if I looked hard enough. We were pretty close!
Does that surprise you?
If you want to read a bit more about Yusuf's take on the festival and his music in general follow this link.
Kayne's less than stellar review can be found here.
Yusuf donated his proceeds from the concert to the orphan children of Morocco and tried to relate to the theme of the festival throughout his performance and his interviews. Kayne, on the other hand, took his money, refused to talk to press, and then split in a hurry. It seemed strange to see him on the bill at a festival like this, but he did draw a massive crowd and someone has to pay for the festival I guess.
Max and I actually drove up north to see Yusuf perform and it was a wonderful show. The open air theater doesn't have any seating so everyone stands and lounges about on Moroccan carpets strewn across the ground. We stood next to a group of Moroccan teenagers who, despite not being alive while Yusuf wrote any of his old music as Cat Stephens and growing up in another country, knew most of the words to his old songs. It was awesome. In truth, neither of us were alive when he wrote those songs either - but we had some rockin' moms who taught us well.
Here is a video of Yusuf performing one of his most popular songs. People were literally chanting for it. As Max pointed out in his way "he definitely rubbed some funk on this version of Peace Train".
What the heck - here's another video from the night.
hhhmmmm... after watching that video I think I could see myself in the crowd if I looked hard enough. We were pretty close!
Holy Holy Holy :)
ReplyDelete