France's Fête de la musique celebrates its 40th anniversary

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to party until late in the evening today for France's annual music festival, la Fete de la Musique, created in 1982 by then French culture minister Jack Lang.  Since then, the event that has become international and is now present in more than 120 countries on five continents.

After two years of cancellations because of Covid, the Fête de la musique is back in France with over 180,000 concerts organised on 21 June, the day of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere.

In Paris, among the many initiatives, French public station Radio France will have a sound truck with a DJ, Young Pulse, driving through the streets.

The float is due leave the Statue of Liberty in Paris in the early afternoon, as a nod to "Make music day", the international version of the Fête,  which is due to start in New York, also from the Statue of Liberty later today.

First edition in 1982

In the days leading up to the first edition in 1982, Jack Lang, the initiator of the event, had "the jitters" of his life.

"We told people to go out and take music to the streets, but we were afraid they would stay at home. But it worked," explains Lang who was appointed culture minister by President François Mitterrand after the Socialists came to power in 1981.

In the winter of that year, Lang, architect-scenographer Christian Dupavillon and Maurice Fleuret, director of music and dance, pitched the idea of an annual music festival.

"The first year,1982, was not a great success, but people played the game and by 1983 it was really on," says Lang, now director of the  Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris.

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Tribute to Steve Maia Caniço

Lang is the guest of honour Tuesday of a musical tour between the neighbouring cities of Villeurbanne and Lyon (centre-east), before returning to Paris in the evening. 

He dedicated this 40th edition to Steve Maia Caniço, who died in 2019 during a controversial police operation during the Fête de la Musique in Nantes, western France.

"I would like to pay tribute to Steve Maia Caniço, who drowned in the Loire River on 21 June, 2019 following a police operation", he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

The Fête de la Musique has been exported to more than a hundred countries around the world. Like in Canberra, Australia, where the cold weather is arriving in this part of the southern hemisphere: mulled wine and pancakes are planned to accompany the event.