June 23, 2002
La fête de la musique
La fête de la musique
What are they talking about when they talk about French Culture? If all it amounts to is cheap tickets to a bunch of crappy Operas, then we don't need that in the US of A, now do we? Indeed, this is not what is meant.
Consider, for example, June 21. The date of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, marks a major nationwide festival which clearly links back to pre-Christian pagan celebrations of the machinations of the natural world. In France, it happens to be the festival of music. It takes place in every city and town in France, and presumably also in people's homes and so on; and it exists entirely in communal, exterior public spaces.
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| 25,000 people, Baaba Mal at Hotel de Ville, 21 Juin. |
Here for example is the headline of the night: superstar British DJ Talvin Singh and Senegali world-music-megastar Baaba Mal. Here at Hotel de Ville--the site of constant, beautiful juxtapositions of French history and contemporaneity (they show the World Cup there on a huge screen to big crowds, but on a random no-match day as I passed, there were showing an old Tom & Jerry cartoon: the one where the avatars of Tom and Jerry appear as Musketeers and battle with rapiers. 40 feet tall, in front of the Hotel de Ville!! Hilarious.)--here at HdV, there were something like 25,000 people of all ages, mainly youngish. Essentially, it was Lollapalooza at the Lincoln Memorial.
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| 25 people, Metallica cover band somewhere 21 Juin. |
But the Fête de la Musique is more than music events in strange places.
Of course it's gratuit to attend. The government pays. The last great free concert I attended was at Columbia, and my suspicion is that there was an economic model somewhere in the background including variables linked to alumni-giving rates. There is, I suppose, the Central Park Great Lawn series in New York, the summer stage stuff, and so on.
But on the same night, Lenny Kravitz was at Republique, playing to 45,000 people. Jazz, rock, world, classical, opera, you name it was on in some part of town. The ten-page insert in Le Monde had only enough room to devote 4 words to the Lenny Kravitz event. There was a lot going on.
And there was this wacko French Metallica cover band around the corner from our house, "...and nothing else matters!". Across Sebastopol into the Marais, we cruised through streets of inverted clubs--their sound systems and DJs turned outwards and the streets turned into dancefloors. 500 kids pumping their fists to breakbeat; next corner, an ultra-cheese 80s Madonna-remix set; next street, a huge throbbing big-bicep, ripped t-shirt ocean of french kissing gay men at Open; two blocks till a group of 20 people bugging out to some french dudes slashing out "Louie Louie...oh oh".
Outside our window, the crowd at the Afro-Cuban restaurant peaked around 2am, as the drummers hit their peak intensity.
Posted by amol at June 23, 2002 01:56 PM