Music is Life, and vice-versa

veradapozzo8

Jun 21, 20243 min read

Updated: Jun 28, 2024

A sleepless Night

Filled with awful dreams

A rainy Morning

A tiring Day with

A horrible Headache

In the Afternoon

Illness without Stillness

But Music, as always,

Came to my Rescue

Giving me an Evening

Carefree and Joyful

For Music is Life

And vice-versa.

Paris, 21st June 2024

The Music Day in Paris, like the White Night, could be a very bad experience if you don't know where to find a good event: in many cases, in fact, it is a cacophonic festival where young or not-so-young people scream and laugh out loud to some disco tunes played by a DJ on the terrasse of a restaurant, or to some live - but very bad - rap or trap or hip pop babbling on a noisy base, lacking both taste and inspiration, or to some musique de variété badly sung by a choir of elderly people.

This year, for the first time since I live in Paris, I went to the Irish Cultural Centre for the Fête de la Musique, as it is called in French, in order to enjoy some really good music well played and sang.

My favourite part of the Irish Fête de la Musique was Bog Bodies, an excellent trad rock band from Tipperary, performing for the first time on the Continent. Great energy and very good music to shake one's body and dance.

Many songs were accompanied by the Jew's harp or jaw harp (scacciapensieri in Italian, marranzanu in Sicilian), building a bridge of hypnotical notes between the Island of Emerald and the Island of the Sun.

And, not surprisingly, one of the themes of Bog Bodies' songs is the power of Music, creating a community of souls in an ideal world where there are no boundaries.

The indie folk cello - guitar - voice duo Lemoncello, from Dublin, was the first band to perform and my second favourite one : the ladies are really good musicians and singers and also two nice entertainers, even if their voices were often a bit too much syrupy for my ears' taste.

Strange Boy, from Limerick, was the last band and the weakest part of the concert, not just because I don't like very much hip hop, which is purely subjective, but also - and mostly - because, due to its music style, and in spite of the mix with Irish traditional music, the group was much less energetic than Bog Bodies and, in my very humble opinion, not really fitting to the last part of the concert; by the way, the attendees, although cheerful, seemed less involved.

The best part was the final song, a traditional Irish one, revealing the vocal skills of the lead singer much more than the hip-hop songs that sounded quite boring to me. Maybe I would have liked Strange Boy more if it would have been the second band to go on stage, before Bog Bodies. Anyway, Strange Boy was a nice discover.

Unfortunately, Bog Bodies's CD album wasn't available and the vinyl would have been just a piece of home decoration, as I don't have a turntable.

Above: my Irish Fête de la Musique in Paris in a short comic strip on my diary.

Below: a picture taken at the ending of the concert. While leaving the Irish Cultural Centre, these lovely flowers told me: "Good night and see you again soon".