Although probably very few of us out here in the culture vacuum known as ’merica know who Moroccan pop star Abdelaziz Stati is (I know I didn't), this last Sunday in a stadium show in Rabat, the capitol city of Morocco, 11 of the 70,000 attendees were killed in a stampede while they were leaving the show at the end of the 8th annual Mawazine festival. Forty others were injured.
The Mawazine festival is backed by King Mohammad and is aimed at promoting tolerance and publicizing Rabat as a worldly and open city, though some extremists in the country feel that pop music "encourages immoral behavior." This year, the festival drew a million people and featured an amazing 1,700 performers, including Kylie Minogue, Cheb Khaled, Warda Al-Jazairia, Ali Campbell (formerly of UB40), Johnny Clegg of White Zulu, and Stevie Wonder.
