Music Day 2020

To celebrate the Musice Day in spite of #Covid19 the ambassador of France in Cyprus, Mrs Isabelle Dumont, has crafted a small surprise for us. Joy and Europe with 10 instruments 

History of Music Day

In 1982 Jack Lang, then Minister of Culture, imagined a large popular event which would allow all musicians to express themselves and make themselves known. Thus, the first Fête de la Musique was launched on June 21, 1982, the symbolic day of the summer solstice, the longest of the year in the northern hemisphere.

The Festival will be free, open to all music «without hierarchy of genres and practices» and to all French people.

The preparation took place in haste. The main actors of social, political and musical life in France were informed about the event. A few posters were printed and placarded. They had no idea, at the Ministry of Culture, whether this appeal would be followed. The result surpassed all expectations. Thousands of initiatives are taking place throughout France. Musicians settle everywhere in the streets, squares, kiosks, courtyards, gardens, train stations, squares, etc., and thousands of people wander the street until late at night, in a good-natured atmosphere.

La Fête de la Musique began its international expansion in 1985 during the European Year of Music.  

In less than ten years, the Music Day expanded in eighty-five countries on five continents.

An international success, a social phenomenon, a postage stamp was dedicated to him in 1998. In 2017, more than 120 countries around the world took part in the Fête de la Musique. The Fête de la Musique is also the bearer of new musical trends: revival of traditional music, explosion of world music, development of choirs, appearance of rap, techno, urban music, etc.

It enters prisons, shares the lives of patients and hospital staff, brings schools closer to music, establishes links and exchanges between the city and its peripheries, irrigates rural communes, values the work of an individual, a group, an association or an entire community.

In Cyprus

The French Institute of Cyprus, initiator of this event in Cyprus, has not missed the opportunity to celebrate this tradition for over thirty years by offering varied and free street concerts and shows in Nicosia but also in Limassol and Pafos, inviting many French and local artists.

Among them the Guyanese artist, Chris Combette, La compagnie du Bout des doigts and its show Le Temps des Saisons, a parade of 6 artists on stilts, dressed in colorful costumes and playing on Vivaldi's Four Seasons music, the Peter Alexander band and the cypriot band M. Doumani, in partnership with Aglantzia's Municipality, the Les Charentaises de Luxe Cie and its an ambulatory brass band Les Evadés, or the Percussion Ensemble of the Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra, the jazz quartet Aléas mixing oriental and African sounds, the Cypro-greco band The Zilla Project et and so many others...