Road Tripper: A fantastic summer's interlude: le Festival International de Musique Universitaire

For a fleeting four days the Kackwetter we've been experiencing for the past few weeks gave way to clear blue skies. Yeah, its going to !@#$ing rain again tomorrow. Thunderbolts of lightning, very very frightning me, Galelio galelio, figaroooooooo.

In this very brief summer interlude, when men could roam the world in shorts without having their nuts frozen, a very French town called Belfort hosted 2500 musicians. And they performed at 14 different venues over three days. It is called the le Festival International de Musique Universitaire. It is held every year in May, and next year will be the 25th edition. The musicians are usually music students, but that does not mean they play like amateurs ;)

Picking from across genres should in theory have been simple. But it wasn't, because most of what we heard was good. And this festival lets you do exactly that, pick a venue, see if you like the music, if not, move on to another one. Simple.

If, if only if I had to pick the best band from what I heard, then I'd have to pick Sunergy. Sunergy, I learned later via the internet, is a group of four music students from Campus Notre-Dame-de-Foy Canada. They played Mike Stern's Chromazone, and boy they kicked some serious ass. These guys had the crowd on their feet. They were enjoying themselves on stage and their state of mind manifested itself in their music. It was downright infectious. I hope these guys don't stop playing. Heck, I even found them on facebook! They sounded better at the venue than on this video though.

These three pics are not by me! Pulled them off Flickr.

Then there was this group performing Jean-Baptiste Lully's Armide, where the actor's faces are ghoulishly painted white. It was well, Opera. Yeah. WTF? And I did ask myself for a moment - WTF? But once, I went past the WTF stage, it was smooth sailing.

There was also an Indian duo on the Sitar and Tabla. It has been a while since I have been at an Indian classical concert - I think the last one was by Pt. Shivakumar Sharma on the Santoor in 2008. Anyhoo, they were not too bad. I have no idea what ragas they played though.

The other bands which did the trick for me were the Jazz band from Zurich - ETH Big band, a group from Morocco, and of course - Somogo with their didjeridoo and percussion inspired collective madness at the L'Arsenel on Saturday night. And I did see a David Hasselhoff wannabe - blinking lights and everything :)

Not every band we heard was good, not every genre moved the soul. For example a Chilean group dealing in Chamber music played such somber pieces that you could be forgiven for thinking you were at a funereal. Doesn't work for me. Sorry.

And then, there was this new music. One would expect new music to be different, something so profound that we ordinary mortals cannot conceive. But what if we cannot even appreciate it? One such artist was this guy making weird sounds - like the clearing of a blocked nose or the gargling noise one makes when using Listerine in the morning, or the rumble of an empty stomach reverberating in a hollow chamber. In my humble opinion this is exactly what parents tell their children not to do. And this guy was professing such hogwash as music. Sorry, but village idiots like me just fail to appreciate you. Or maybe, it was all just a choreography stunt. I hope.

Allegro con brios typically can not put you to sleep, but voilà, a guitar ensemble did exactly that with Mozart's Symphony number 25. They killed it! Ok, it was like 11.30 at night and I was on my feet for the better part of the day, so sleep came very naturally to me, but I have no doubt that these guys did play their part!