By HANNAH NORMAN
RABAT, Morocco – Sitting behind the ticket booth at the French Institute, 23-year-old Ilyas Drissi holds all the power. An open metal box contains the stubs of the 900 sold tickets, the quota for Saturday night’s pre-sales of Jazz au Chellah—a five-day music festival of jazz-Moroccan fusion located in Rabat’s Chellah Ruins.
“I’m sorry, we’re all sold out,” Drissi told a French couple who approached the table. “You’ll have to buy your tickets at the door.”
Currently on its nineteenth edition, the festival has become wildly popular, so much so that tickets steadily sold out for every night.
