Tabarka Jazz Festival: reshaping the town’s tourism?

On the opening weekend, Tabarka’s hotels are mostly full, the town’s streets teeming with automobiles and foot-traffic, side-walks and back-streets crammed with parked cars and scooters. At a clean, non-descript one-star hotel in the center of town, the rooms are full. Around 9am, the dining room is buzzing and there’s not an empty table; newly-weds sit intently across from one another and young children squirm in their chairs. At the reception desk, hotel staff indicate that the hotel’s clientele are essentially Tunisians and Algerians. European and other visitors generally stay at the 4 and 5 star hotels along the winding road of the Tourist Area.

Beth Hart, Oum, Sabry Mosbah, Benares and Dee Dee Bridgewater among others take the stage at Tabarka’s basilica, a third-century water tank that was taken over and transformed by the White Fathers. A bumpy start on the opening night provoked some to lash out on social media against the festival coordinators. Some 60 ticket-holders waited outside the yellow doors of the basilica as Beth Hart took the stage; at some point a number of people without tickets joined the crowd outside, leading security to hold the line. When the singer learned that ticket-holders were prevented from entering, she encouraged the audience to sing out in response: « Hey you! Motherfucker! Give me my money back! ». But the tension proved to be fleeting and following nights appeared to proceed as planned, drawing a more or less full house for each artist.

Challenges of funding the festival

Today’s Tabarka Jazz Festival has weathered many highs and lows over the past four decades. If tracing its evolution over the years is confused by the number of times it has changed hands and funding sources, it continues to represent an important event for the town. Seasoned festival-goers recall the event’s earlier days with a mixture of nostalgia and bitterness. While some editions in the 70’s and the 80’s drew the likes of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gellespie, Al Di Meola and Césaria Evora, the last two decades have been tainted by periods of corrupt management and canceled editions. Then, last year, the festival was thrown together in two weeks-time, and the event, which lasted three days (September 1-3), was called the « zero » festival, in anticipation this year’s « come back » edition.

Back in 1973, event promotor Lotfi Belhassine launched an international music festival which thrived for several years before it was taken over by the municipality. In 1995, the Ministry of Tourism was charged with managing funding for the event, which was relaunched as a jazz festival. Sensitive to general confusion and suspicions about the festival’s funding (associated primarily with Tabarka’s former mayor Jilani Daboussi, implicated in affairs of corruption), current spokesman Belgacem Ouchtati is eager to distinguish this year’s version from past editions, and confirms that the Jazz Festival of today falls under the category of a tourist activity.

As per Law n˚109 of 25 December 1995, a special fund for tourism development is designated to « finance actions aiming to improve the commercialization of the Tunisian product and all other actions with the goal of developping competition in the tourism sector… ». Resources for the fund are drawn from a 1% tax on the sales revenue of tourist establishments, including the Office of Tourism (ONTT), the Federation of Hotel Establishments (FTH), the Federation of Travel Agencies (FTAV), the Federation of Tourist Restaurants (FTRT), and the Commission of Tourist Activities headed by Ouchtati for Tunisia’s north-east governorates (Jendouba, Beja, El Kef and Siliana). « It’s our money—not government money, not a State budget: it’s the money of [tourism] professionals … Let us animate the region to attract people », he insists. For Ouchtati, who owns a scuba diving business on the harbor, the festival fits into a greater strategy to develop regional tourism.

It’s a whole policy that people don’t understand … Tourism is not only the hotel; it’s the hotel and everything that surrounds it, plus the entire region which must benefit.Belgacem Ouchtati

“A skewed vision of tourism”

The large saxophone at the edge of town marks the turn-off for the Tabarka’s Tourist Area. The road follows the coast line and is bordered by expansive hotel properties, several of which are noticeably overgrown and cluttered with plastic bottles, the buildings empty and weathered by sun and wind. On summer weekends, the beaches below are a mosaic of umbrellas, improvised shade structures, and bathing suit-clad bodies. Gathered under the shade of a rented parasol, a group of six young festival-goers is given away by the green tote bags that sponsors hand out before evening concerts. « We left the car in Tunis », says Oussama, before elaborating « We chose to do local tourism ». Getting to Tabarka on Saturday was « chaotic », since none of the notoriously speedy collective taxis were available, and the air-conditioned buses were full. In the beginning, the friends had envisioned camping on the beach. They contacted a youth center just outside of Tabarka, and discovered that they would be left to their own devices, since the site didn’t provide amenities or security. « You’d have to take the risk, you’d have to contact the police. It’s not at all organized », Oussama tells us. A stroke of luck, they got in touch with a local who was willing to rent her house for less than the cost of Airbnb options or a hotel room in town. « It’s a bit far », Oussama admits, but adds with a smile: « It’s an opportunity to use public transport ». For 300 millimes, they can hop on the bus that heads downtown.

About a mile or so up the beach, at the east-most end of the Tourist Area, the well-irrigated grounds of La Cigale shock the brown landscape. « We have a skewed vision of tourism », says Mariem, contemplating the contrast between the Tourist Area’s elegant hotels, and the downtown harbor with its run-down buildings and litter-strewn water. « It’s expensive to maintain, » she says, referring to the golf course up the road, « and it’s neither agricultural nor artistic ». Oussama agrees: « When you’re a hotel, you have carte blanche to do what you want ». Ostensibly, the jazz festival’s 6 nights of musical performances draw an important influx of visitors to Tabarka. Hotel employees, street vendors, and shopkeepers confirm that the weekend of July 21-23 marks a high point in the season so far, though expectations for August are mixed. At a restaurant on the habor, Kamel, a server here for 22 years, reports that the past few summers have been slow in general, remembering that he is used to serving fifteen tables at a time where customers—including European diplomats who came regularly—spend 400-500 dinars a pop. Now he finds himself with 2 to 3 tables with bills for around 200 dinars. A majority of the clients are Algerians passing through town on their way to other coastal destinations like Hammamet.

In the spacious lobby of a 4-star hotel close by, hotel director Anis smiles, remembering past festivals in Tabarka, where he grew up. This year, he says, returning to the present, the hotel is mostly full for the festival’s opening weekend. « Would you be here right now if it weren’t for the festival? » he asks, making his point that Tabarka needs to keep these kinds of events going to draw visitors. The season so far is okay, but, he concedes, not enough to make it through the rest of the year.