Fete de la Musique!

Since arriving in Geneva there have been a few music festivals around town. The biggest so far, and the one I spent the most time at, was the Fête de la Musique which occurred a couple of weekends ago. It's a three day long city-wide festival and it was a lot of fun. There are concerts all over the place as well as tours of libraries, churches and other music-related places. And everything is free!

On the second day of the festival I saw a bit of a Bossa Nova band play while I ate my delicious chicken, rice and plantains from the Cote d'Ivoire buvette in Parc Bastions. This park is quite close to where I'm living. It's huge and lovely. There were many stages throughout the park for the fete.

After eating and watching the band I headed to the Grütli to see "Shine A Light" at the CAC Voltaire. It's the Martin Scorcese directed documentary/concert film about the Rolling Stones. It was shot in 2006 and I can't say that I've paid much attention to the Rolling Stones beyond their early works and the uber-cheesy "Emotional Rescue." However, this documentary totally charged me up! And now I can sort of understand how Mick Jagger (and to a degree even Ronnie Wood) is able to still hook up with young models. Of course, Mick's much cuter in the archival footage that Scorcese interspersed throughout the film, but he's still pretty sexy. I think that I've always thought of the Rolling Stones as being pretty cheesy over the last couple of decades, but now having seen this movie I think that they are just a bunch of guys doing what they love and just givin' 'er without any self-consciousness or second thought to the fact that they're now 60s is completely irrelevant. Mick dances like a maniac, Keith Richards is a nut and Charlie Watts is totally endearing. I enjoyed the film quite a bit more than I had anticipated even with the weird guest spots by Christine Aguilera and Jack White.

At one point I thought they were playing "Bitch," but it was a different song. Oh well, here's a video 'cos I love this song a ton and after hearing it decided to order the remastered Sticky Fingers from Amazon:

On Sunday, the last day of the festival, I went on a tour of the Cathedral Saint Pierre to see la grande orgue, a gigantic pipe organ that is located on a balcony overlooking the cathedral. It was very cool, although there were a few too many people and everyone was rubbernecking so there wasn't much to actually see except the gigantic, medium, small and teeny-tiny sized pipes. The fun thing was listening to the organ fill the empty space of the cathedral. Pretty cool.

My main objective for Sunday was to see one of the metal bands playing at the festival.

There are all type of music at the Fête and seeing a metal band amongst the Genevoise seemed like it would be entertaining and potentially hilarious. First I stopped at a buvette for a Schubling sausage, some frites and a beer.

After I ate I found the stage and waited amongst the long-haired teenaged boys in all black. The crowd was fairly funny. There were a lot of metalheads, but also people with small children, a man smoking wearing business casual cloths and smoking a cigar, middle-aged ladies and a few "urban" looking kids. The band itself were okay. All the guys had either long hair or shaved heads and they totally went for it shredding and pounding their instruments. The singer was a girl and it was a little Evanescense for my taste, but it was amusing.

After that I planned to head home, but then I noticed a taiko group was playing. Taiko in Switzerland! Cultures coming together through music! Okay! I killed time by eating some plantains and drinking more beer.

I had an almost conversation with a lady sitting next to me on a bench. She was Francophone and I am not, but we managed to share a little laugh and I was able to say "d'accord" and mean it! I did some wandering, made a small donation to the Geneve AIDS Society and walked to and from the giant ferris wheel by the Natural History Museum.

The taiko group was fun. I sat on a bench with a Japanese lady who was absolutely loving it. Also great were all the little kids huddled together at the front of the stage going wild and covering their ears during the drumming. I left before they finished because it was really crowded and it was getting pretty cold and windy.

Fête de la Musique was a lot of fun, but it made me think about Vancouver and how something like this would never be held there. First of all, it was not contained. You can walk freely from site to site without having to show a wristband or adhere to an "in-an-outs" policy. Second, it was free and it was huge. Vancouver has the Folk Fest, but it's not free. Not many things in Vancouver are free. Third, in Geneva drinking in public is legal and people don't act like total morons because of it. It's part of life here and for the most part I didn't see anyone acting totally wasted and causing trouble. That's not to say that doesn't happen here, but at an event as large as the Fete it was nice to not be surrounded by drunken lunatics who are trying to drink as much as they can before the bar closes. The other nice thing was that there was a police presence, but it was not in your face like most things are in Vancouver (and other North American cities). They were certainly there, but they weren't patrolling the parks or following people around giving the evil eye. It was kind of nice.

Thing that I appreciated the most was the variety of music and events. It was great to be able to walk from stage to stage and see different groups and types of music. I saw a brass band that played top 40 hits! Of course, not everything was up my alley but it was cool to stumble upon things like a group from one of the local schools singing and playing "I Love Rock'n'Roll" by Joan Jett. With not only electric guitar but also xylophones!!! At the end of the song the littlest kid dove off the stage into the arms of his classmates. AWESOME!