Paris Music Festival (2011)
A grand performance by a large choir in the small park near my home.
The first day of summer is the Music Festival (June 21). Music becomes a national movement in France, with almost all tastes and styles released into public spaces for everyone to share. From classical and modern music to youth, techno, heavy metal, foreign genres, soloists, and bands, every generation and group can find their preferred taste and style. June 21 has become the people's music festival in Paris.
In a blink, the festival has thirty years of history. Beginning under the French Socialist Party, it aimed to liberate art, making it a popular activity to drive cultural development and break out of art's ivory tower. Now, not just Paris but over a hundred countries worldwide have followed suit, making this day the world's largest folk music festival—a rare and unimaginable phenomenon. The charm of music embraces the world; people easily immerse themselves in their favorite musical realms, entering a meditative state through melody and rhythm, relieving life's stress, and awakening awareness and consciousness.
Music is the most popular and widespread of all arts. In times of social turmoil and innovation, people use music to express feelings and fight with gentle power, demonstrating its magical strength. Friends, did you participate in this year's festival? Step out of your own ivory tower, listen to beautiful melodies from life, and experience its wonder. Take the opportunity to listen more to the music you like, indulge your mind, and feel how happy it is to quiet down and listen. Try listening to the silence late at night; you may discover existence growing quietly. Feel those moments where silence speaks louder than sound. Living is truly happy; whether there is sound or silence, it is all music. How you enter it depends on your mindset, which will be endlessly joyful.