The first time I spent the summer in Paris, a friend told me to keep my calendar free on the evening of June 21, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
I assumed there was some kind of small-scale block party worth attending in central Paris. But no, he said: June 21 is the night of Fête de la Musique (“Festival of Music”) and one of the loveliest citywide celebrations in Paris, a city that does not skimp when it throws a party. (For the July 14 Bastille Day celebrations, it rolls out the full military strength of France — fighter jets trailing the colors of the French flag, armored tanks, soldiers, and the president of the country — right down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, while everyone cheers decorously and waves little flags.)
So on June 21, I ventured out into the night. There, I discovered that Fête de la Musique was a great celebration not just of music, but of a community’s potential for organizing its collective resources into something from which everyone could benefit — the public, the musicians, the business, the city, and the country as a whole.
And though it started in France, it isn’t just a French celebration anymore. About three and a half decades after the event started in the early ’80s, more than 120 countries now hold their own Fêtes on June 21. Outside of France, it’s commonly known as World Music Day or Make Music Day. And though the celebration seems to embody an idealism that feels almost outdated in 2019, participating is a good way to be convinced that art is for everyone, and that it’s vital to a humanist vision of the world.
Fête de la Musique was conceived as a free, public event
There are two conflicting stories about Fête de la Musique’s origin.
One story — the more official one — is that French Minister of Culture Jack Lang decided in 1981 to start the yearly event at the behest of his director of music and dance, Maurice Fleuret. Studies of the French public at the time showed that one of every two children in France and roughly 5 million people total (almost a tenth of the population) played a musical instrument. Lang and the Ministry of Culture reasoned that such an event would bring together not just professional but also amateur musicians, moving concerts and performances out of venues and onto the street.
The first Fête de la Musique was held on June 21, 1982. The date isn’t just significant for being the summer solstice. It’s also close to the Feast of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, or St. John the Baptist, a day that was historically marked by a major celebration in France (and is still a national holiday in Quebec), and which itself was partly chosen by the church to coincide with summer solstice celebrations. So the inclination to celebrate around this date has existed for centuries; Fête de la Musique extends that impulse, albeit in a more secular way.
There’s another story, though. Some sources claim that the idea for the festival actually came from the American musician Joel Cohen, a composer and performer who specializes in early American music. In the 1970s, while working at the French National Radio as a producer for musical radio programs, Cohen came up with the idea of having a day-long, open-air music festival. His original idea was to hold a “Saturnales de la Musique” twice a year, on the summer solstice and the winter solstice (June 21 and December 21). Given the temperamental weather, though, it makes sense that by the time the idea reached the ears of the Ministry of Culture (as the story goes), it was decided the festival would take place only in the summer.
According to people who remember the first edition of the event, nobody expected much: The festival was announced late, a handful of posters were stuck up around Paris, and Lang later remembered that it was the “greatest stage fright of his life.” But thousands of musicians and listeners showed up in Paris and all over the country. Fête de la Musique was born.
The European Parliament declares a theme for each year, and 1985 was the Year of Music — making it the perfect time for the festival to start spreading beyond France’s borders and morphing into a more global event, World Music Day. Soon many other countries were participating, with a “charter of the partners of the European Music Festival” signed in Budapest in 1997 by Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Barcelona, Istanbul, Liverpool, Luxembourg, Rome, Naples, Prague, and other cities.
The festival eventually became so popular that in 1998, it got its own postage stamp in France.
Nearing its fourth decade, Fête de la Musique is a celebration all over the globe
More than 35 years after its founding, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, which loosely oversees the overarching Fête de la Musique/World Music Day, estimates that Fête de la Musique celebration spans 120 countries, often with multiple cities participating. In recent years, those cities have ranged from Beijing to New York City.
The overriding ethos, though, is what makes the day interesting. Music festivals — think Coachella and Glastonbury — are a traditional part of summer in many areas of the world. But most of those festivals are highly organized and expensive to attend, playgrounds for the young and well-heeled rather than the community.
But on June 21, the idea is different, and perhaps more democratic. The rules are simple: Bands register their performance, agree to abide by local laws and law enforcement, and plan to play live music (which seems to include DJ sets). Bands are also responsible for finding their own venues, which might mean cutting a deal with a restaurant or acquiring access or permits through the local police, and bringing their own speakers and musical equipment. Towns put out calls for participation.
The only rule — besides not breaking any laws — is that all the concerts must be free to the public. And that, honestly, is what makes Fête de la Musique so terrific. It’s not because of the music itself; if you’re wandering around a participating town, you’re just as likely to hear a middling cover band as anything else. But who cares? You’re in the summer air, on the longest day of the year, and you’re inevitably surrounded by a bunch of other people who are enjoying themselves. And it just becomes more fun when you realize there are people all over the world experiencing the same thing.
The festival only made its way to North America about a decade ago, when volunteers in New York City helped migrate the celebrations across the Atlantic. In 2016, 38 cities in North America organized free concerts across the continent — 3,238 concerts in 1,078 locations, ranging from Columbia, South Carolina, and Issaquah, Washington, to Portland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit. For the past few years, celebrations in New York City have included a night of French-language hip-hop, soul, and pop on SummerStage in Central Park. There have been World Music Day celebrations from Pittsburgh to Hyderabad. In Uganda, the celebrations have included publicly performed poetry and a “perfume concert.” And in keeping with the festival’s ethos, every performance is always free.
In its native Paris, Fête de la Musique is a bit of humanity in a crazy world
In Paris, where it all started — and where the sun stays up till 10 pm on the summer solstice, with twilight until almost 11 — the celebration feels especially fierce now. The police presence, in the wake of high-profile terrorism, protests, and high-stakes elections over the past few years, is heightened.
And despite its ideals, Fête de la Musique is no utopia. A number of French concerts were canceled in 2016 amid heightened terror concerns. In recent years, security was heightened in several locations, police were harassed in some areas, and in 2017, a man in Paris died after leaping into the Seine.
But the spirit of Fête de la Musique, which is still one of the biggest country-wide public festivals in the country, isn’t rowdy or destructive. It’s something special even if it’s hard to put into words. The sun hangs low for most of the evening. You can watch the smiles form on the face of strangers and tourists who weren’t expecting to encounter live music on every corner, as they slowly figure out what’s happening. You dance, a little, even if you’re not the dancing type.
A few years ago, during our first Fête de la Musique, my husband and I rounded a corner and found ourselves the only white people in a crowd on a square in front of a fountain, singing along to a French rapper. We rounded another corner and found ourselves in a sea of middle-aged audience members singing what seemed to be French folk standards, complete with lyric books, in front of a church behind Les Halles.
2017 marked the 35th edition of Fête de la Musique, and we were in Paris for it again. We walked toward the Île de la Cité, where a cover band of middle-aged guys was warming up with guitar licks that sounded suspiciously like Lynyrd Skynyrd. In front of the Notre Dame cathedral, a DJ was setting up shop in front of a crowd of excited, sun-kissed travelers. On the other side of the Seine, next to the historic Shakespeare & Company bookshop, a band fronted by two women played the Beatles’ “Come Together” and Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.” At a restaurant a block away, a five-man band played ballads in Spanish to a crowd of rapt drinkers outside a piano bar.
We wandered past an English pub called the Long Hop, where an Irishman named Paddy Sherlock and his band of Frenchmen — he introduced them all — played sexy jazz standards and crooned at the women in the crowd while patrons drank Heineken, and we loved it so much that we joined them. After an hour of listening (and chatting with a crowd of Americans and Brits behind us who were in town on a business trip), we got up and walked slowly toward our Montparnasse flat, passing bands of college-age young people singing “Creep” and “Hotel California” with thick French accents outside brasseries. We meandered past cafes on a boulevard where DJs spun sets and people danced on the sidewalk.
And at the end of our route, we walked past a musical group we’d seen two years earlier: a jam band of students on the northwest side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. They’d dragged their couches onto the sidewalk, along with beer and a few small speakers and an assortment of instruments. A young man clutching a saxophone led them in 10-minute jams — we heard them long before we saw them — as groups of friends gathered around and we and other older passersby stood just outside their ring, enjoying the meandering melody in the warm late-night air.
Lasting peace won’t come from a worldwide musical celebration. But it’s nice to be reminded that it’s possible. Just for a little while.