La Fête de la Musique

This Saturday and Sunday it's wall-to-wall music in France. It's La Fête de la Musique! This annual event (sometimes called 'World Music Day' in other countries) just gets bigger, and the events in our village were no exception. Although the official date is June 21 each year, many cities and towns are holding the event over the weekend - a much better idea than having the event on a Monday.

The original idea for this annual feast of music is attributed to the American musician Joel Cohen in the mid seventies. However, I believe much of the credit for making the event so popular must go to French politician Jack Lang, who as Minister of Culture in 1982 made a number of proposals to create and widen the appeal of the event. From then, the event has become a national day of music enjoyed by millions.

The basic principal is that music - all categories, should be enjoyed in as many public places as possible throughout France. One strict rule is that no matter how famous the artists who are performing, the event has to be free of any charges for people who attend. This weekend throughout France there will be more than 15,000 concerts, most taking place in the streets or on the main Place of a town or village.

In our village we have many events, catering for all tastes in music, scheduled to start on Saturday night on the village Place with Les Princess - a quite lively pop group. Unusually however we had some rain and the event was moved to the Salle de Fete next to the Place. No worries.

The opening group was followed by Groupe de Jazz, local jazz musicians playing a wide range of jazz music from Blues to Trad. The singer of the group is one of our friends, Ray Everitt*, someone we have known for many years. To quote the title of one of David's favourite photographic books, Ray is "World Famous Around Here!"**

So we listened to Ray and the musicians as they poured out some beautiful soulful jazz plus some lively New Orleans tunes. Wonderful.

Then 'comme habitude', a break for a drink and refreshment, with freshly cooked grillade, frites, crêpes, gâteaux - and local wine of course.

Back to the music and it was time for a local pop group, Elastic Blues, followed by music from the DJ - dancing 'til the early hours.

Sunday, the music continues.  But a change of tempo. Martine, our best friend in the village, was performing with her choral group 'Des Amis en Musique', the event being held in our church. There was a variety of songs, in French or course, but a couple in English - Broadway musical songs, and as always, the ambience and the sounds created in the church is beautiful. Their session was followed by violin and piano recital and finally a session of medieval songs.

Then back to the Place for more pop music. I'm sorry but we didn't last the night. As I said at the beginning, it was a long, and beautiful weekend, but time for feet up.

*Ray, born in Wembley in North London, is the son-in-law of the famous French chanteur, the late Boby Lapointe. Over the past quarter century Ray and his wife Martine (Ticha) have made their home in the Languedoc, in southern France. Here he has made a name for himself as a singer, jazz musician, local personality and all-round eccentric.

Ray - whose extravagant moustachios and generally dishevelled appearance have earned him the description "a cross between Asterix the Gaul and an unmade bed" - is a former bricklayer, merchant seaman, stuntman (in Cliff Richard and Roger Moore films), Twickenham rugby player and Borstal boy. "I've had a colourful career," he admits cheerfully, "and I'm not ashamed of any of it, including my tearaway youth."

He earned great praise several years ago when he made a 1,300 km ride on horseback, from here to Berne in Switzerland. The object - to raise money for Autism. A special website was created for this journey here:
www.black-et-ray.com. It's worth a read.

** "World Famous Around Here" is the title of a book of photographs taken by a local photographer from David's home town, Castleford, and is a wonderful collection of photographs recording real life in the town during the 1950s.