The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music started 10 years ago in Fez, Morocco, after the Persian Gulf War as a way to repair cultural bomb craters among Muslims, Christians and Jews. Typically, the festival is held once a year in a medieval palace in the city of Fez. But this year, organizers took Fes (an alternate spelling of Fez) on tour in America, and the first stop was the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The fact that the group was playing across the street from the buildings where this country’s leaders make decisions that affect world peace was not lost on organizers.

“We wanted to make a statement,” said Zeyba Rahman, artistic director and producer of the North American tour.

Rahman sat in the audience Wednesday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, where the Fes Festival created an interfaith experience rich in traditions that don’t get paired so peacefully these days, at least not in the news.

The show began with invocations by Yacoub Hussein, the son of a Palestinian Sufi sheikh, and Gabriel Meyer, an Argentine-born Israeli, standing side by side in musical prayer. Next, Algerian singer Francoise Atlan used her rich, smooth voice to present music from the Andalusian Jewish

tradition. She was accompanied by Jamey Haddad, a Lebanese-American percussionist, and Farid El Foulahi, a Moroccan oud player. They were followed by the earthy sounds of Hadra des Femmes de Taroudant, a southern Moroccan women’s group that performs traditional music and dance.

The second half of the concert rocked with the Anointed Jackson Sisters, a gospel family group from North Carolina, backed by a steaming R&B band. By the end of the night, the entire international retinue was onstage for a multicultural finale based on American Indian verse. In that last musical explosion, it was easy to see why the United Nations honored the Fes Festival in 2001 as “unsung heroes of dialogue” reaching across the divide.

While some components of Fes were less successful than others – Haddad’s synthesized solo performance and the poorly mixed sound system (controlled by the tour technician rather than MCA’s capable director) during the high-volume gospel segment – the festival effectively functioned as part revival, part reminder. The revival sounded like this: “God is in the building,” as the Jacksons declared in song. “Reach out and touch the Lord!” The reminder looked like this: Five hundred Mainers watching 20 musicians onstage symbolically saying, If we Christians, Muslims and Jews can hold this type of prayer meeting in the spirit of love, why can’t our leaders get along? It was, if fleetingly, a moment of hope.

A final anecdote. Richard Chang, a writer for The Orange County Register in California, wrote earlier this month that the Fes tour “will take these musicians to locales where world music isn’t exactly celebrated.” On his list? Orono, Maine. Wrong, Mr. Chang, in both spirit and accuracy. Orono was on its feet, clapping, jumping and giving witness to a soulfulness that goes beyond political as well as state lines.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 or aanstead@bangor

dailynews.net.