Master of Arabic Percussion
State-certified music professor specializing in traditional music
Born in Fez (MOROCCO) in 1967, Ali Alaoui studied at the Arab-Andalusian Music Conservatory in his hometown and has practiced the art of percussion since childhood in a musical environment inherited from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Andalusia, and Africa.
At 19, he joined the Moroccan Radio and Television Orchestra of Fez and was later promoted to soloist in the Moroccan National Orchestra, with which he performed worldwide alongside greats of Arabic music such as Abdel Wahab Doukali, Abdelhadi Bel Khayat, Saïd Chraibi, Lotfi Bouchenak, and others. This career earned him recognition from his peers as a musician, but also as an arranger and artistic advisor for numerous studio recordings.
Artistic Development
After leaving the Moroccan National Orchestra to settle in France, Ali Alaoui embarked on a new artistic career marked by numerous collaborations with jazz musicians (Abdu Salim, Jean-Marc Padovani, Leon Parker, David el Malek, Tom Johnson), classical music (National Orchestra of the Capitol, Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, Toulouse Chamber Orchestra), medieval music (Viellistic Orchestra, Tre Fontane Ensemble), and world music (Cheb Khaled, Juan Carmona, Shankar Gosh, Vicente Pradal), among others. He quickly realized that sharing his culture is above all about transmission and decided to pursue his own projects with professional musicians passionate about Arabic music and with the musicians he trains in his workshops.
In 2002, he founded the ensemble “Torat,” bringing together his best percussion students with a jazz quintet blending Eastern and Latin influences. This ensemble performed at the Fez Sacred Music Festival in 2004 and at several French institutes in Morocco.
In 2004, he founded the Moultaqa Salam ensemble, in which he showcases Morocco’s musical diversity while also promoting cultural integration with France and Spain. Their first double album, “Chemins croisés en Méditerranée,” was recorded in 2009. The group performed for the first time in Morocco in 2006 at the Fez Sacred Music Festival, marking the beginning of a successful career that included notable appearances on Moroccan television on the national channel 2M Monde and hundreds of concerts, including the Royce Hall Theater in Los Angeles, the Arab World Institute in Paris, the Mawazine Festival in Rabat, the Fez Sacred Music Festival, the United Nations Palace in Geneva, the Théâtre National du Capitole, the Théâtre National de Rabat, the Andaloussiat Festival in Casablanca, the Barcelona Auditorium, and the UNESCO Auditorium in Paris.
In 2007, they founded “Darboukada,” a traveling oriental percussion ensemble that performed at the Jazz sur son 31 Festival and the Zenith in Toulouse. In 2010, he developed this project for the Mawazine Festival in Rabat and created the “Pulsation du Monde” ensemble, featuring the darboukada accompanied by a Brazilian batucada section, a Caribbean steel drum ensemble, a brass ensemble, and an African, Oriental, and hip-hop dance troupe.
In 2008, he presented a creation at the Toulouse Jazz sur son 31 Festival, which was the subject of a residency, a concert, and a documentary broadcast during the “Peoples and Music in Cinema” festival in Toulouse. He invited four solo percussionists to perform a rhythmic repertoire of his own composition: Karim Ziad on drums, Keyvan Chemirani on Iranian zarb, Debashish Brahmachari on Indian tablas, and Miguel Gomez on congas.
Today, Ali Alaoui continues to promote his culture by regularly linking his teaching career with his artistic career and is constantly creating new projects. They are largely carried out with the Moultaqa Salam orchestra carried by the voice of Izdihar (Ingrid Panquin), a gospel singer who, by joining his percussion workshops in 2002, gradually trained in Arabic singing, a discipline that she now teaches alongside him.