UNIVERSITE D’ARTOIS
1 The Origin
The annual French Musical Festival was proposed by French Cultural
Minister Jack Lang in 1982. Since then, the French enjoy themselves
to the most from the afternoon of June the 21st to the next early
morning every year.
During that period, people of all ages come to the streets and show
their best, singing, listening to the music, watching, playing;
everyone will not leave until he is exhausted.
2 Several Survey Numbers
The year of 2000, that was, during the last week of the 19th Musical
Festival, the Ministry of Culture in France made a survey on the
degree of participation and the evaluation given by the young people.
The surveyed people were young people at the age of 15, 97% of whom
have heard of the Musical Festival and held a positive opinion towards
it.
The second point drawn from the survey results was that the Frenchmen
are active in joining in the Musical Festival and there was a strong
tendency of increase every year since 1982. In 2000 there were 79%
Frenchmen who took part in the Festival directly. Among them 68%
were audience, 11% of them, that was, five million people came to
be amateur performer and singer of the Festival. But in the year
1991 the numbers were 38% and 5% respectively. Among these fifteen-year-old
amateur performers and singers, 32% of them have learned music in
their spare time.
The Music Festival has a special attraction to the young people
who would like to go out at night and take part in artistic activities.
Between the age of 15 and 17, 23% of them join in the performance,
78% do so as spectators. At the age of 65, 8% of them take part
in the Festival at least for one time, the rate of which equals
to that of the age between 25 and 34. From these numbers we can
say that the Festival mainly belongs to the young people.
The survey indicated that from the social range and region of the
participants, the number of those coming from the rural areas is
a bit higher than those from the urban areas(13% to 12%), the farmers
and craftsmen including businessmen are more active than the White
Collar class in participating while the latter has a higher rate
of joining in the cultural activities.
3 Characteristics of the French Musical Festival
3.1 Openness of the Musical Festival
The Festival is a kind of public cultural activity that is open
to all social strata.
3.2 Free Room for Musical Display: Chorus, concert, groups gathered
at random perform at their own will, audience can either participate
at their own will or stroll while playing, listening and singing,
or go to the schools to watch the children’s performance, or visit
the concert of their admirable idols. According to the statistics
of 2000, 60% of the people listen in different places without referring
to the schedule of the Musical Festival. These two characteristics
have fully demonstrated that the French people are closely and freely
linked to music and culture, which is the embodiment of the rich
variation of French society and culture. There are all kinds of
music forms in all previous musical festivals like all sorts of
songs, among which the amateur singers account for 33%, traditional
and music from all over the world 27%, classical music 24%, rock
ones 20%, Jazz 12%, and operas, le rap, le punk, la techno….
3.3 A Festival Belonging to All the Young People
In 2000 there were 800,000 people who took part in the performing
and singing activities at the Musical Festival, and over ten million
people (about 28% Frenchmen) listened to the music in the concert
hall or on the streets, most of whom were young people. 35% of them
between the age 15 and 19, and 41% between 20 and 24 went out to
the street to listen to the music.
4 The Relationship between the Musical Festival and a Harmonious
Society
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