Fete de la musique - on the the longest day in the year

Fete de la musique : Annual music festival in France and all over the world

Christian Dupavillon has this narration for the event Fete de la musique:

One morning in January 1982, the Director of Music at the Ministry of Culture, Maurice Fleuret, sent me a memo saying that the French owned more than four million musical instruments. Three quarters of these instruments lay deteriorating in cupboards, attics and cellars before departing this life in dustbins and on rubbish tips. I couldn't help but lament their fate.

Afterwards, the memo turned out to be not so sad - indeed, it spawned a great idea. Why couldn't, one day a year, those cellos, guitars, trombones, kettledrums, triangles and big bass drums wake up, be restored, produce sounds, find someone to play them and enchant anyone who cared to listen? Why, on that day, couldn't performers, professionals and amateurs alike, play completely freely indoors and out, everywhere, in public squares, under porches and on covered walkways, areas of school playgrounds and hospital gardens, at entrances to music academies or under cafe awnings just for the sheer pleasure of playing? All that was missing from this mammoth concert was a name, a date and a Prince Charming to awaken Sleeping Beauty.

The first such festival took place on 21 June 1982. It was given the homonym "Faites de la musique", "Make music". The day of the summer solstice, the longest day in the year, was chosen, almost coinciding and thus competing with Saint Jean Day.

To avoid annoying those people who, for one reason or another, loathe music and during nocturnal hours equate it to "disturbing the peace at night", the festival was held from 8.30 p.m. to 9 p.m. The diversity of the performances and large number of "venues" were to make it a totally new experience. Music-lovers swarmed around monuments and thronged streets and squares.

The following year, the time restrictions were dropped. Today, after twenty-three successful years, the festival is firmly established. Orchestras, brass bands, jazz, rock, pop, techno, ethnic, rap and funk music groups, gospel singers, school and church choirs, music-hall performers, musicians from different French regions and indeed from all over the world celebrate music every 21 June.

What is the fête de la musique?
It's the day - it's now a firm fixture - when musicians, whether they're amateurs or professionals, can play wherever they want at any time, day or night. They might choose a station concourse, a school playground, the inside of a cathedral or church, a café, the steps of a town hall, historic building or prefecture, a passage-way, a prison and so on. Amateurs, often nervous when they have to sing or play an instrument in public, have the chance to play freely without feeling self-conscious.

While some professionals criticize it for being a gimmick and others complain that it has been taken over by sponsors and media organizations, the fête de la musique gives anyone who wants to the chance to play or listen to absolutely every type of music. A virtually trouble-free festival of over 15 hundred concerts in a single night!

A world-wide festival
The fête de la musique is becoming increasingly international. Because it's fun, because music alone knows no language or cultural barriers and is free from politics, because of the huge variety of "events" and participants, and because everyone has music of some kind within them even if they don't admit it, this festival could become the world's Number 1 music festival. In 2000 the fête de la musique took place in over a hundred countries, including the 15 countries of the European Union, Poland, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Cambodia, Vietnam, Congo, Cameroon, Togo, Chile, Nicaragua, and Japan.
That first festival was to set a trend. Such festivals are a brilliant way of focusing attention on an art or indeed a human tragedy. France now has the Journées du patrimoine [Heritage Days] on the last weekend in September, the Printemps des poètes, the Fête du cinéma, Lire en fête [book festival] in October, the week-long Fête de la science in October, launched in 1991, the Techno Parade on the second Saturday in September, and World AIDS Day, first held in 1988. The day will come when all these events will be marked in almanacs just like our saints' days still are.