Fête de la musique: younger and more vibrant than ever!

The Fête de la Musique (Make Music Day), was created in 1982 by the French ministry of culture to “encourage the 5 million music players in France to play an instrument in the streets”. Younger and more vibrant than ever, the event is now celebrated every year on 21 June all over the world. 

A feminine and inclusive party in Paris!

For 2023, the ministry of culture chose to offer a special programme at the Palais-Royal in Paris. Throughout the day and the evening, “professional and non-professional players will play in a festive atmosphere on a stage specially arranged in the gardens of the Palais-Royal”.

As the website dedicated to the Fête de la Musique explains, “many styles of music are represented in a feminine and inclusive programme[1], covering classical, rap, French and world music”. More precisely, at 19:10, professional artists will play in a programme “open to all styles and instruments”: ProQuartet (a European chamber music band), followed by rap artist Eesah Yasuke, one of the “next icons of French rap”, then Mentissa, a singer of Belgian origin who will “spread her taste for French music”.

In addition to this “official” event, many free concerts are organised in all other arrondissements, you just have to walk for a bit to find them! And the same goes for all cities in Île-de-France.

[1] Concerts are broadcasted in “signsong”, i.e. sign language, a process designed to make art event accessible to a deaf audience that can use the signs. It’s a “complex performance translating music pieces already existing, and all interactions in connection with it, live”. 

All over the country and in the medias

In fact, the Fête de la musique is taking place all over France... in a thousand and one ways, both regional and mixed. In the Sud-Est region, from Isère to Drôme, Alpes-Maritimes to Vaucluse, the 2023 edition combines different types of music and origins: in Drôme, sing the Ecuadorian Andes, in Avignon, it’s English choirs, in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, many artists from the four corners of the globe are performing, including a collective straight from New Orleans.

In the south-west of France, artists and cultural institutions are getting into the spirit: symphony concerts in Bordeaux, “musicalities without borders” in Charente-Maritime, the Fête de la Musique travelling around the Landes region, a “poetic programme” in Toulouse with “soft voices and oriental musicalities”, and choirs in Montpellier sharing four musical universes: pop, jazz, French chanson and classical music.

Similarly, in Lille, Marseille, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Rennes and all the other French cities, large and small, there will be plenty of entertainment in theatres, squares, streets and bars...

But as the Ministry of Culture also writes, “even if there’s nothing like travelling” to attend the concerts on the day of the Fête de la musique, the event is also being broadcast and supported by many media, who are even organising concerts and special broadcasts to honour the date of 21 June: television (France 2, France 3 and TV5 Monde in particular), radio (RFI, France Inter) and the web (Konbini).

All around the world, singing

At first a purely French creation, the Fête de la Musique has managed to peak the interest of Europe, and the world. According to the dedicated website, 120 countries and 5 continents “turning this key event in a festive party for music-lovers and players from everywhere”. The website offers a few key dates to this musical event with international scope:

• 1985: at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, then the first European Capital of Culture, French President François Mitterrand inaugurates the first Fête de la musique outside France, soon followed by French-speaking countries (Belgium) and then other European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary;
• 1995: it was Germany’s turn to get in on the act. Munich was the first German city to host the event, soon followed by Berlin. 1995 was also the year that Italy followed suit, with over 700 cities now taking part;
• 2007: the Fête de la musique conquered the world when it arrived in the United States, in New York, with Make Music New York. Today, the sounds and melodies can be heard in over 100 cities across North America;
• 2008: Quebec City celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of the city with its first Fête de la musique;
• 2010: it’s Africa’s turn, with South Africa taking part in the Fête de la Musique, first in the city of Port Elizabeth, then in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban;
• 2012: the Fête de la musique, renamed Make Music Day, arrives in the United Kingdom, in London, but only takes on a truly national dimension in 2017, with almost 150 musical performances across the country;
• 2018: on the other side of the world, Australia joins France with a national celebration of Fête de la musique. By 2019, “it’s been so successful that 150 events are being organised all over the country”.

In addition to these symbolic dates and locations, the Fête de la musique is also being celebrated in other countries, including Colombia, Peru, China and Kenya.