For most people in Europe, 21 June is simply the longest day of the year. In France, it is also the biggest party of the year: the Fête de la Musique.
In case you don't know, it's a street festival of free live music held across the country every year on that date, with concerts of every musical genre popping up everywhere: on streets and public squares, in parks, courtyards, riverbanks, and on rooftops.
The most important feature: anyone can perform, and it's free. That was the founding principle. When the event was launched in 1982 under François Mitterrand’s left-wing government, the idea was to show that music belongs to everyone.
“We are not organising anything. Everyone is free to express, through their musical instrument, their joy at summer's return,” culture minister Jack Lang said at the time.
It worked. People responded to the call, and today around 18,000 concerts take place across the country each year, involving five million artists and attracting around ten million people. Around half of French people attend regularly.
There's no national funding for it, as financing falls to organisers themselves, and the vast majority of musicians perform for free. While main events are usually organised by municipalities, cultural institutions, local associations, music venues, or bars, anyone can organise a concert: a brass band in a courtyard, a kid with a guitar on the doorstep, a DJ set from a balcony, anything really.
Yet over the years, the Fête de la Musique has also become more professionalised in some places, with large concerts that increasingly resemble music festivals. And in large cities like Paris, the event comes with usual complaints from residents about noise, litter, crowds and public nuisance (and since last year, about the influx of TikTok tourists).
Yet the event remains very popular, mostly because “music doesn't exclude,” Charitini Karakostaki, a sociologist and political science lecturer at the University of Athens, told The European Correspondent. “Everyone is welcome, anyone can take part, with whatever music they choose, in whatever form they like. It carries a strong intercultural dimension.”
In her research, Karakostaki describes the Fête de la Musique as the first example of what she calls a “new celebration”: a public festivity that is open to everyone, not tied to a nation, religion or specific community, and free from commercial interests.
“They are organised around universal dimensions of human experience: music, love, art or culture,” she said. Other examples include Pride marches, technoparades and all-night art events like Nuit Blanche.
In theory, this inclusivity should make the Fête de la Musique easy to export. Attempts were made in the 1990s, and today it is celebrated in many cities worldwide. But outside France, it is usually confined to just a few locations and often organised by French cultural institutes. The spontaneous, grassroots spirit is largely absent.
So why hasn't it been turned into a truly European event yet? After all, Europe has no major public celebration that is shared across the continent. Except maybe Eurovision, “but it's not a popular celebration in the full sense of the term,” Karakostaki said. “It is first and foremost a media event.”
The Fête de la Musique, by contrast, takes place in public space, invites ordinary people to take part, and revolves around a cultural practice already shared across the continent. “It has genuine European potential,“ she argued.
But that requires political will. In France, there was a political authority (and especially a committed culture minister) willing to throw its weight behind a slightly mad idea and sell it to the public.
That was crucial. Because for a public celebration to exist, Karakostaki explained, what matters most is who's doing the inviting. “Only when they truly believe in it can a party come to life.”
But are there, right now, European leaders bold enough to call 450 million Europeans into the streets to make music? That might be the hardest part.