Every year on June 21, it’s the same story. Street concerts or in bars encourage partying during this night which generally falls on the day of the summer solstice.
If it was Jack Lang, then Minister of Culture, who launched the first edition of the Fête de la Musique in France in 1982, we have to go back to 1976 to know the true history of the Fête de la Musique.
What is the origin of the music festival?
Joël Cohen, American musician, then worked for the music channel France Musique. To celebrate the winter solstice and the summer solstice, it offers a special musical program broadcast throughout the night and which it will baptize the “Saturnalia of Music”. The first edition takes place on June 21, 1976.
A few years later, on June 10, 1981, the “Fête de la Musique et de la Jeunesse” was organized to celebrate the election of François Mitterrand. A free concert at Place de la République in Paris brought together around 100,000 people.
Jack Lang and Maurice Fleuret – former director of music and dance for the ministry – are inspired by this festive event and Joël Cohen’s “Saturnalia of Music” to create the Fête de la Musique, the title of which was initially “Make music !” in order to encourage amateurs to perform in France. And it works ! On June 21, 1982, the day of the first official music festival, musicians invaded bars, parks and streets to the delight of citizens.
Covered in more than 110 countries around the world, the music festival is today celebrated in more than 350 cities and 120 countries.
Why does the music festival take place on June 21?
Midsummer Day, June 21 is the shortest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. A symbolic day which marks the beginning of the beautiful days and a tempo which incites to party until dawn.
Music accessible to all
This year, the date of the music festival also corresponds to the lifting of health restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic. Throughout France, concerts are organized.
During the evening and part of the night, amateur musicians will play alongside professional musicians, offering access to diverse music from all origins.
This is “a revolution in the field of music, which tends to bring together all music – without hierarchy of genre or origin – in a common search for what Maurice Fleuret called ‘a sound liberation, an intoxication, a vertigo which are more authentic, more intimate, more eloquent than art ‘”, tell it official site of the music festival.
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