Fête de la Musique

Wednesday, June 21, is the Fête de la Musique in all of France. This is not a concert or a series of performances. Rather, the Fête de la Musique works something like this:

1. The Minstry of Culture declares one day a year to encourage music performance and enjoyment.
2. On that day, anyone who makes any kind of music is supposed to go find a place on the street to perform.
3. Everyone else promenades through town to check out all the performers on the streets.
4. Enterprising capitalists sell beer and food to anyone who wants to buy.
5. Everyone has a good time

These are the rules all over France and it seems that the fête is celebrated well in almost every town and village. The fun is that some of the acts are good....but some are really horrible. It's like strolling through the Gong Show.

In Strasbourg, the city takes it seriously and this attracts more than just the amateurs. The opening picture (sorry about the quality) is a group we call the Peruvian Pan Flute Dudes. Over the past 8 years I have seen these guys set up on street corners in Madrid, Barcelona, London, and Florence. I'm beginning to think there is a little Andean industry going on that clones a copy of this group for every major city in Europe. But they are kind of interesting. You haven't lived until you've heard ABBA performed on the pan flute.

The city of Strasbourg sets up stages in the main plazas and offers a schedule of more "professional" performers to spice things up.

But of course, the highlight is walking around on a hot night with a cold beer while munching on a dönner kebab. If you've never had one, a dönner kebab (or sometimes kebap) is kind of like a greek gyro but its a bit bigger and made with meat that comes from places you don't care to know. These restaurants are EVERYWHERE in Strasbourg. But, just like the beer salesmen, traveling kebabers set up their portable spits to make quick money off of the crowd.For the record, it was quite a crowd. Even during the Christmas markets there were never this many people over so wide and area.