Music on the global stage
The Fête de la Musique is a massive street music festival for both professional and amateur musicians held every year on 21 June. The first edition of the festival was held in 1982 and was established by the then French cultural minister Jack Lang, who strongly believed in promoting the work of theatre, dance and street performers. Lang intended for the annual event to be a free celebration of music of all genres in the streets of Paris, allowing people to make music (‘faites de la musique’) and for others to enjoy the music at no cost.
Since the early 80s, the Fête de la Musique has grown into a massive global event which has been celebrated in around 700 cities worldwide. In fact, in English it is referred to as Worldwide Music Day or as Make Music Day. Every year, streets all over the world are brought to life by musicians of all ages, styles and levels of experience.
For the first time ever, the festival was held in Valletta last Tuesday, all along Strait Street, making the capital one of the several hundred cities to have participated. It was organised by the Strada Stretta Concept, under the auspices of the Valletta 2018 Foundation, in collaboration with the French Embassy in Malta.
The performers in this first edition came from a diversity of art traditions.
The design of the first VallettaStrait Street edition of this annual world music festival was based on the horizontal model initiated in Paris. Jazz, classical, acoustic, and folk musicians lined themselves along Strait Street near the many establishments. The variety offered ranged from international to local musical styles. The mezzo-soprano Claire Ghigo, who is classically trained and who mainly performs on theatre stages, was a participant alongside a group of għannejja, representatives of a grassroots rural musical tradition who regularly perform in their local haunt.
Maltese, British, Macedonian, and Russian musicians participated. Aside from the għannejja and Ghigo, who was accompanied by accordionist Yuri Charyguine, these were; the acoustic duo Xarulù, pianists Emel Hasanoglu and Tom Armitage, who was accompanied by Jess Rymer, singer and guitarist Emilija Slavkovska and the duo Deni Cija and Anthony Saliba. Some of these have performed on Strait Street as part of the Strada Stretta Concept’s artistic programme, whilst others were given their first opportunity to do so. The French Embassy in Malta has also supported other events within the programme, all of which have established cultural links between Malta and France. The Embassy’s work with the local art community and also with the Department of History of Art, University of Malta has led to continuous cross-cultural exchange.
The Strada Stretta Concept, which is the brainchild of artistic director Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, has worked on using the street as a site for art and creativity. Its raison d’être is very closely linked with that of the Fête de la Musique. Over the past year, the team, headed by Schembri Bonaci and manager Melanie Farrugia, has been organising a number of regular street performances; theatre music, poetry readings, and others. Last year, the M.A. Fine Arts students in the Department of History of Art used Strait Street as a site for one of their course projects. These students, as well as the first ever group of B.A. Fine Arts students, will be exhibiting works on Strait Street later on this year.
The Strada Stretta Concept is a project which explores the potential of urban streets as cultural spaces. In the modern age, the city street developed as the definitive site for political and cultural experimentation and change. As David Harvey argues, cities are communal spaces which are shaped and determined by the exercising of ‘a collective power’. The more that cities are individualised, the more we relinquish our collective human right to exploit public open spaces as sites of political and creative expression and to define a nation’s identity. Valletta’s streets are becoming increasingly active which shows that urban culture is burgeoning within the capital after a number of relatively quiet years.
Space is essential to social transformation. Henri Lefebvre, who, like Harvey, is also a staunch critic of the capitalist privatisation of public space, writes that social change cannot effectively take place if space itself is not transformed. Although Lefebvre says this in reference to revolutionary political upheaval, it is also true for less radical developments. Valletta is one example which proves that spatial transformations affect social life, and vice versa.
Despite it only being a onenight event, the Fête de la Musique is an urban festival which reclaims the city as a space belonging to the public. It’s development into an international event has made it one of global importance, establishing a national and transnational cultural network. This aspect is, I believe, the primary quality of the festival as it underlines the universal necessity of artistic diversity.