Fête de la Musique

Yesterday was June 21st also known as the Summer Solstice. This therefore was the 24th Fête de la Musique here in France.

The longest day of the year so musicians are out in the streets, in restaurants and bars, in clubs... all over... playing for free and legally all over France. People roam the streets listening to music and dancing with complete strangers.

Public transport runs all night (normally it closes at 00:30) and with an unlimited ticket for 2.50 € (as many trips as you want on whatever transport (bus, métro, RER, ...) all throughout the system).

It usually is a wonderful night for us and we wait for it all year.

Last year was our first Fête de la Musique in Asnières so we (Desney, Alexandra and I) went to the Asnières City Hall (Mairie) to see what they had to offer and ended up listening to some pretty mediocre local pop-rack bands in the rain. Danced a bit and sang a bit and had a pretty good time.

The year before Jessica and I went out in Paris and spent some time dancing salsa in front of the Brasilian embassy for a while, roamed a bit in the Marais and ended up at Place de la République completely by accident and Simply Red was in concert. I stared in shock and sang the rest of the evening and Jessica was amazed I knew all the words to this group she'd never heard before. It was an excellent evening and we'll probably never forget it.

This year was, unfortunately, forgettable. It was the first time Alexandra came out with us. The girls took forever to get ready and we didn't leave the house until about 19:30. Jessica, Alexandra and I took the car to Porte des Lilas to take a quicker métro to Bastille where we would walk to République. We got to Bastille after 20:30 and had a junk food dinner (Qwick --- long waits in long queues for disgusting pseudo-McDo food). We finally hit the streets after 21:00 and Bastille looked like it was preparing for a huge concert.

We strolled towards République and checked out a young group playing a mixture of jazz, funk, reggae amongst others. They were actually quite good and the ambiance was great. They went from one style to the next, song by song, to see what would happen. A reasonably large group with horns (trumpet and trombone) and woodwinds (flute and sax) as well as the standard electric guitar, electric bass and drums.

A lot of the other groups or musicians were not worth mentioning and there was one singer on a platform stage in front of a café that looked like a stereotypical hooker gone uptown. She had a pseudo-Marilyn Monroe sound to her voice which was most annoying.

As we were walking towards République we eventually realised that everyone was walking towards us and no one was walking in the same direction as us. That meant everyone was leaving République and heading for Bastille rather than the contrary. When we finally got to République we realised why... it was practically dead. There were the odd groups playing in front of the bars but that was the same as we found on the side streets on the way up. Well...

We jumped back on the métro and went back to Bastille which we found was now in full boom with a rock concert going on the stage. The group wasn't bad but Jessica definitely did not want to listen to rock and desperately wanted to find some soul, R&B, rap or regga around somewhere.

As it was already 22:30 we started walking back towards République, again, but this time up a different street. We found an interesting setup with a group of DJs and two phonographs and a group of rappers. The music was a lot of fun and the crowd was amazing. We were dancing in the street for quite some time and everyone was really getting in to it. But the DJs were extremely, extremely annoying in that they never played more than 30 seconds of any given tune. They would talk about what they were going to play, play 30 seconds of it, stop, talk about what they just played, talk about what they were going to play, play 30 seconds of it and start all over again. It got to the point where I couldn't stand it and we strolled on down...

Next we found a trio of ragga hopefuls who were rapping to a DJ who couldn't get his sound system to work...

We hit a bar and got some drinks (it was very hot --- maybe 28) and played some pinball and finally made it to République where we took the métro back to the car. We found the car next to a large reggae concert at Porte des Lilas, got in and got home at about 00:45.

It was fun, enjoyable and a bit of an adventure for Alexandra but it did not live up to our previous Fêtes de la Musique. It also is probably going to be Jessica's last Fête with her Papa as a large number of her friends went out on their own this year and she will most likely be allowed out with her friends next year...