by Stephen Olsson

The journey of my new film began in San Francisco in the Spring of 2002, when a friend brought an inspiring Moroccan Sufi teacher, Dr. Ahmed Sidi Kostas, to my film studio.  After a wonderful, rich conversation, Ahmed invited me to come visit him during the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, taking place a month later.  I remember the warmth in his voice: “So come, brother, come, with or without your camera.”

This was truly an offer I couldn’t refuse, and a week later, free plane tickets, hotel and ground transportation vouchers ‘miraculously’ arrived.  Two weeks after that, I was on my way with two crew members to North Africa, packing credit cards and small digital video cameras.  The documentary journey that would become SOUND OF THE SOUL unfolded from there – fueled in large part by what Dr. Kostas called the “baraka” (Arabic for grace) of a divinely human story that seemingly “wanted to be told.”

The setting was truly magical: a walled city, labyrinthine streets full of people from all over Africa and around the world.  We learned that Fez was founded as a religious sanctuary in the 9th century A.D. by a Sufi saint, fleeing persecution in Baghdad.  Since contentious differences of religion lie at the heart of over half the world’s major armed conflicts today, it felt right to me to be filming in an enlightened, Islamic center of acceptance and tolerance.

For ten days, beginning every afternoon until the following dawn, rhythms and lyrics of different cultures poured forth from the most fantastic medieval locations throughout the city.  Afghan, Russian, Portuguese, Jewish, among others – each creating an almost trance-like “opening of the heart.”  After sunrise, we unexpectedly discovered an amazing gathering of scholars, musicians, scientists, U.N. & World Bank leaders, and spiritual teachers from all continents, deeply listening and talking with each other in an international symposium called “The Soul of Globalization.”  We witnessed real dialogues about global poverty, war, debt, religious strife, and more. The film portrays breakthroughs in empathy, compassion and respect – driven by the fact that art is one of the few pathways we have as human beings to really understand that ‘we are all connected’.

Finally, my vision for SOUND OF THE SOUL is multi-faceted: to entertain, inspire and pull people “into the tent” for a unique conversation which will help heal wounds, address misunderstandings, and lay forth a new groundwork for inter-faith acceptance and world peace.   My dream is that this film will act as a catalyst to promote the power of music to “open the heart” for dialogues between people and leaders of different religions around the world.