The fifty-ninth edition of the Sidi Mansour festival started on Thursday August 7 and continues for a week, until August 13.
This festival which celebrates its sixty years of existence next summer, takes place in Sidi Mansour, a locality of the Grand Sfax which is near Sakiet Eddaier and Markez Maaloul.
The popular origin and black memory of this festival make its singularity. Indeed, it was around the Zaouia of Sidi Mansour Ghlem, a holy character of the fifteenth century, that this tradition was born.
In time, people came from campaigns to the sea to escape the rigors of the season of Aoussou and sacrifice the cult of the saint. Between Zarda family and ritual processions, the festival was born in 1966 and consolidated over the years.
Nowadays, the whole city is celebrating on this occasion and remembers both its black memory linked to Sidi Mansour as well as its maritime memory when the shore arrived almost to the cafes of the city center.
For the past few days, the character of Boussaadia surrounded by traditional musicians has been crisscrossing the streets of the city and will continue to do so until the end of the festival. This character is inseparable from the festival and traditions of the black community which in Sfax, gives its human and cultural anchoring to this summer event.
This year, from the opening of the festival on August 7, the Hadhra of Abdesslem Trabelsi gave the tempo and offered to the public all the colors of the Stambali, a musical style which brought together the general public of Sidi Mansour.
