Threatened with extinction in the mid-2010s, Musiques Métisses, the oldest European world music festival, is resurrected from Friday in Angoulême. For its 47th edition, the festival will take place from Friday 2 to Sunday 4 June, and will welcome the Franco-Algerian singer Souad Massi, the Senegalese soul singer Faada Freddy, the Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca, Gnawa Diffusion, the Cameroonian Blick Bassy, as well as the Haitian Moonlight Benjamin or Gérald Toto and his folk-jazz-soul with Caribbean accents. "In the age of social networks, it is more difficult to be pioneers because music circulates faster, but we always try to have real discoveries," says Patrick Duval, the festival's programmer. For example, the Ghana Superjazzclub band may have played twice in France before their concert on Sunday night."
Launched in 1976 by Christian Mousset, then a downtown record store, the festival was first called Jazz en France, before being renamed Jazz et Musiques Métisses in the mid-1980s, then Musiques Métisses. Christian Mousset had the European premiere of Malian Salif Keita and the Kassav group in 1984, and Reunionese Danyèl Waro in 1985. World music was then in its infancy. Then it will be the South African Johnny Clegg in 1986, the Cape Verdean Cesaria Evora in 1991 ... At the same time, the festival, alternating on different stages free and paid concerts, gives pride of place to new talents.
In 2015, Mousset left the ship. Patrick Duval, director of a hall in the Bordeaux agglomeration, succeeds him. But a few months later, Musiques Métisses filed for bankruptcy after the disengagement of the city and the department. The festival will singularly reduce sailing and will leave its emblematic place, the island of Bourgines on the edge of Charente, to exile on the outskirts.
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After four confidential editions, Musiques Métisses finds in 2020 a place more in line with its past standards. "We find this incredible site in front of the Cité de la BD with both this large esplanade, greenery and magnificent gardens, which corresponds to us completely," explains Patrick Duval. "These different spaces allow us to have a large stage with festive music and a more intimate space where we can afford to program music that can be listened to sitting quietly."
