The story
Testour Malouf Festival in Testour
The Festival International du Malouf de Testour, founded in 1967, is widely described as Tunisia's oldest traditional-music festival. Held each July in the northwestern town of Testour, itself founded by Andalusian Muslim refugees, it is devoted entirely to malouf, Tunisia's Arab-Andalusian classical music tradition, combining a competitive training program for young musicians with evening concerts by Tunisian and Maghrebi artists.
When Muslims were expelled from Spain in the early seventeenth century, one wave of refugees resettled a town in the Mejerda valley of northern Tunisia that came to be called Testour, building an urban and architectural identity that still visibly echoes Andalusia today, most famously in a mosque whose clock face has long been described as running in reverse.