Paris Music Festival

A couple of weeks ago, Paris' annual music festival (or Fête de la Musique) took place. In an ideal Internet, I would have written about this sooner, but laziness is a factor that needs to be taken in an account when considering my capacity to blog with immediacy. But despite procrastination, I do think this is a great event worth mentioning.

The Music Festival takes place every June on the first day of summer, to celebrate the new season in song. The whole point is for everyone and anyone to enjoy music and, by consequence, it is for the masses. One of my colleagues, who is a professional pianist by night, spoke with much distaste of the event, saying: "It's not my thing to hang out with all those rednecks who think they know something about music". He does have a point in the sense that this is not the time to take music seriously. Since that's my case, I am effectively able to have a blast every year roaming the streets of the French capital, vibrating to the beat of songs played by all sorts of people.

This year's musical adventure took me to the picturesque hill of Montmartre in the north of the city, which is one of Paris' most famous artist neighborhoods. Montmartre corresponds, I think, to the idea foreigners have of Paris: paved streets, little buildings, cute cafés, artists painting in the middle of the street and some animation or street theater on every corner. In fact, it is a very popular tourist spot, and so the local businesses take full advantage of that to pull on all kinds of Parisian stereotypes and please the foreign mind. Montmartre is actually a very special neighborhood, with its own style and mood, which doesn't resemble the rest of the city much. I usually avoid this place for several reasons, the first being that it's on the other side of town from where I live, so just getting there isn't easy and also, in between the all the tourists and con artists trying to rip you off, it's not my favorite neighborhood. But every now and then, it makes a good location for a night out, and the evening of the music festival was such an occasion.

In fact, when my friends and I got there, things were just setting up, so we didn't see that many great shows. In front of the steps of the infamous Sacré-Coeur basilica, one singer would hand over the mike to a member of the audience every other song, which I thought was a good idea, because the music festival is really about sharing music, and the idea is that anyone can take a part in it. The atmosphere was laid-back and of course subject to the amount of talent the one-night-musicians could actually show. Eventually, it did start feeling like Karaoke, and so we left.

Later in the evening, we ended up in the area of St. Michel and Cité, adjacent neighborhoods in the center of Paris  and one of the major hubs of the music festival. I'm always quite torn about exploring this part of town on Music Festival night, because it is overwhelming with the great amount of people there, and depending on the year, you'll either find a really great mood there, or just nothing interesting at all. At first, my shortcomings seemed to be confirmed, and in between the heavy crowd, hunger and trying to find other people we were supposed to meet up with, everyone was having a hard time enjoying themselves. But, after all meeting up and being fed and watered, we settled on the docks of the river Seine and things starting looking up.
One of my friends, Jerome, is quite proficient in all percussion type instruments, and the docks of the Seine are usually a good place to find groups of hand-drummers at the Music Festival. So, he carried a Djembe drum around with him throughout the evening and eventually made some new friends beating the rhythm on the quays in front of the Notre-Dame cathedral, as we all gathered around. As the evening progressed and night fell, things got very animated in our location with song battles from one dock to the other, and people taking turns jumping from a bridge into the river, turning the evening into an odd underwear fashion show.

So that was the Paris music festival. It may not have much class or elegance, nor is it really about good and talented music performances, but it's more about having a great time with strangers for one night, to send off the summer in popular festivity and song. Not to be taken seriously. I'm leaving Paris in a little over a week and so I'm enjoying my last nights out in the city, which if always full of new places and opportunities to have a good time. It's becoming a habit of mine to not sleep much at night, because I have to get up early for work, and so, I'm looking forward to the beginning of my summer vacation, with much impatience.