Geoff Dyer’s book on jazz But Beautiful predicted the future of jazz would come from places like North Africa and this is a perfect example. Southern Morocco has become a hothouse of cultural fusion, partly due the number of foreign musicians playing and working with Moroccans at the huge Gnawa and Timitar festivals. This is one of the best attempts and came about after top Brazilian jazz pianist Benjamin Taubkin was asked to appear at the Timitar Festival in Agadir and became fascinated by the local music.

This year’s edition of the Gnawa Festival in the medina of the beautiful coastal town of Essaouira featured two spectacular fusions – between Bessekou Kouyate with Hamid El Kasri on the closing Sunday night, and on Saturday night – in the early hours of Sunday morning, in fact, on the main stage at Moulay Hassan – bassist, band leader and Miles Davis alumni Marcus Miller with Mustapha Bakbou, forging a dense, deeply rhythmic fusion to match the pounding Atlantic ocean on one side, and the long, curving bay on the other (with its own late-night beach stage in the distance).

You are or maybe wish you were at Glastonbury this weekend. Not me. I last went six years ago and it’s just too big for me. And you need about four different passes to get backstage should you have a good or a bad reason to get there. Too bureaucratic. However, I was, as ever, more than glad to be at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, which is more human in scale, sociable and, at times, transcendent. This year was the 20^th edition. I have gone as many times as I possibly could.

Whether fingerprint or labyrinth, the swirly logo for Marrakech Biennale 5 feels apt. The festival has left its mark upon the city. It questions Moroccan notions of identity. And, going by the tagline, “Where are we now?” it reflects the ease with which you can get lost in this rich and bewildering land.

Fly into Morocco on Royal Air Maroc, and as in-flight entertainment on the overhead screens you’re treated to Charlie Chaplin shorts from the 1910s, still sharp as a tack, the little guy goosing authority, the law, the rich, the powerful. The Little Tramp must remain a figure with resonance in Morocco: the base of operations for legendary band Nass El Ghiwane was the back room of a tailor’s shop in Casablanca dominated by a poster of Chaplin.

“The boy looked at Johnny – he was surrounded by white and blue tiles, in the medina.” Patti Smith was improvising on her classic album Horses in her first, compelling, gig in Morocco. Smith has a history of Moroccan connections: she knew the Tangier-based writer Paul Bowles and plugged into that pre-punk Beat generation, but there were some raised eyebrows as to what exactly she was doing at a “sacred” music festival.

Wandering through the winding alleyways of the Medina, there was Bjork dressed in a dazzling blue dress and hat and listening to a Gnawa group with its dull, thudding bass and metal castanets. She was here to perform at the Fes Festival of Sacred Music, although the presence of Bjork suggests at times the notion of sacred may be a bit blurred. She has anyway said that her favourite singer is the wonderful Sufi singer Abida Parveen, and spent several days exploring the city.

Aridity and comedy are not words you expect to read, or write, in the same sentence. Yet they capture some of the many attractions of Radu Mihaileanu’s new film The Source. The director came to considerable public attention two years ago with his Russian-themed burlesque The Concert. This time he has journeyed to the Arab world, and the results are considerably deeper, and more emotionally engaging.

It’s pretty damn cold inside the Arctic Circle, but Eric Bana’s former CIA agent Erik Heller doesn’t notice. Striding out of his wilderness cabin into metres-deep snow, he’s fine in a business suit. Demanding a catering-sized suspension of disbelief, Hanna is - as ludicrous thrillers go - pretty special.

Strange portents – the weather is always dry and baking hot this time of year in Fes. This time it was like winter, with lashing rain and thunder for the first few days of the Fes Festival. But then things are strange in general here; events are moving fast throughout the Maghreb. The first day I was there saw a demonstration of thousands in Rabat, and a smaller one in Fes. By the last day a new constitution had been posted online, with the King renouncing some of his powers. The energy in the city seems slightly giddy with expectation and a certain optimism.