Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones journeyed to Morocco in 1969. Rock guitar god Jimi Hendrix also visited the North African country in 1969.

"They all hang out with the Gnawa musicians and learned some stuff,” says musician Hassan Hakmoun, who, at the time of the Stones' visit, was a 4-year-old performing alongside snake charmers and fire-breathers on Marrakech streets.

In the 1990s, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin "went to Morocco and did an album with Moroccan musicians," says Hakmoun, who by then had taken up residence in New York City.

When Hakmoun performs the music of the Gnawa people, during the Florida International Festival in July in Daytona Beach, he believes listeners may be as enchanted as those rock stars were by the music of his native Morocco — even though no one likely will understand a single word of the Arabic-African dialect Hakmoun will be singing.

"I met a doctor in Chicago — he said, 'Every time I perform a surgery, I use your music,'" Hassan says by phone from his home in Bay Ridge, N.Y." You meet people and they say, 'We feel like we were in church Sunday morning.’ Everybody has a different feeling regarding this music.

"The reason is it's a very pure, beautiful kind of spiritual love within the music. People feel that. Music is an international language. Feeling it is better than just understanding what the lyrics are all about."

Hakmoun won't be the only foreign- born performer during the Florida International Festival, which will feature more than 55 performances by more than 200 artists and groups. The festival, which once again will feature the London Symphony Orchestra, runs July 13 to 28 at venues throughout Volusia and Flagler counties. Besides the LSO, here's a glimpse at what will make the FIF truly "international."