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For Ramadan, vegetarian and halal food will be on sale 20:30 – 21:00

In a special and unique collaboration Sain Zahoor welcomes Morocco’s Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians of Jajouka for an inspiring concert commissioned especially for the Festival of World Cultures. An exceptional and rare opportunity to see two of the world’s greatest Sufi musicians.

Sain Zahoor is a Sufi devotional singer, a spiritual mystic, and for those of the faith ‘King of the Street Singers’.  Born in a rural village in the Ojara district of Pakistan, where for decades he performed exclusively at local dargahs and melas, he performed his debut concert at the All Pakistan Music Conference in 1989, where he transported an audience of 2,000 to heights of emotion deemed almost dangerously intense.  Since then fans of the Sufiana kalams (devotional poetry) claim that seeing and hearing Sain Zahoor in full flow is the closest anyone alive will get to being in the presence of the Sufi mystics of yore.

Now aged sixty, Zahoor is an internationally recognised folk singer and a BBC World Music Award recipient. A dervish in appearance and spirit, Zahoor belongs to the ancient tradition of the roving minstrel. Singing the kalam of the Sufi saints and other folk poetry, Zahoor preserves the ancient tradition of singing with the one string ektara (lute) accompanied by harmonium, tabla, chimta and dholak. As a world-renowned singer, Sain Zahoor finds his inspiration in spiritual dreams and his intense rendition of Sufi poetry has earned him devoted fans in every corner of the globe.

Bachir Attar is heir to the ancient Sufi lineage of Morocco’s Master Musicians of Jajouka – the founding family of this sacred village perched high above the blue Djebala foothills of the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco.  Resting place of Saint Sidi Ahmed Sheikh; who came from the East in 800 AD to spread the word of Islam, the musicians possess baraka, the blessing of Allah and are known to have the power to heal and the endurance to play some of the most intense and complex music known.

As founding members of the village of Jajouka, the Attar family maintains one of the oldest and most unique surviving musical traditions on the planet, its secrets passed down through generations from father to son for over 1,300 years.  Born in Jajouka in 1964 Attar is the leader of The Master Musicians of Jajouka and son of Hadj Abdesalam Attar, who led the group at the time of their groundbreaking album produced by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.