The Fête de la Musique, also known in English as Music Day, Make Music Day or World Music Day, is an annual music celebration that takes place on 21 June.
On Music Day the citizens of a city or country are allowed and urged to play music outside in their neighborhoods or in public spaces and parks. Free concerts are also organized, where musicians play for fun and not for payment.
The first all-day musical celebration on the day of the summer solstice was originated by Jack Lang, Minister of Culture of France, as well as by Maurice Fleuret; it was celebrated in Paris in 1982. Music Day later became celebrated in 120 countries around the world.
In October 1981, Maurice Fleuret became Director of Music and Dance at the Ministry of Culture at Jack Lang’s request. He applied his reflections to the musical practice and its evolution: “the music everywhere and the concert nowhere”.
When he discovered, in a 1982 study on the cultural habits of the French, that five million people, one young person out of two, played a musical instrument, he began to dream of a way to bring people out on the streets. It first took place in 1982 in Paris as the Fête de la Musique.
Music Day soon became an exportable concept and in 1985 it traveled beyond France with the same aim and parameters, in Athens, on the occasion of the first edition of the Cultural Capital of Europe.
Ever since, the festival has become an international phenomenon, celebrated on the same day in more than 700 cities in 120 countries, including China, India, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Canada, the United States, the UK, and Japan.
Tr by Wikipedia
Photography courtesy of Ziarul Unirea
