Antibes Got Talent.

France celebrates the Summer Solstice, June 21, as the Fête de la Musique, where musicians perform on make-shift stages at street corners. Our friend Malika from Tchad went to Nice to celebrate. She said in past years, the music there did not disappoint but we decided to appreciate the local talent. There were seven official locations in the City of Antibes and more than twice as many unofficial ones, and the City printed out a program with the times beginning at 19h:00 going on to midnight.

Jeroen and I were anxious to hear the choirs. The first, wearing uniform white shirts, was the choir of the Cathedral, which sang Mozart and other Classical composers. We sat on the steps that lead to the Picasso museum and listened for about fifteen minutes.  Jeroen and I were both inspired to join a local choir on our return to the US, and I felt the need to sing. More significantly, listening to the choir gave me a new confidence that I’ve never known: I can hold  the right note as approximately as the best of the singers we heard.

We moved on to the next choir, a secular senior community choir in the Salle d’Associations. This performance was not on the street but in an auditorium. Once again it was refreshing and liberating to hear amateurs. A man played the harmonica, a child of two ran onto the stage and clapped for himself, a cell phone rang. A tenor sang something soulful about amour, and I felt duly romantic until the soprano took over, when I found myself tensing up. The last piece we heard was a French folk song about a gypsy, which made me inexplicably sad. For so it is, I am much affected by music.

As we walked through Old Town, we listened in passing to snatches from more bands, notable for their courage and self-confidence. In no particular order, we heard a jazz band, some rock music with French kids in American T-shirts playing electric guitars and beating out an unimaginative 4/4 rhythm, a folksy charming group of hatted men serenading bonneted women, more soul-free rock, and a duet at Chez Felix which would have sent M. Greene home to work on a novel in which a man with a gun drinks too much whisky to remember all his sins when he goes for confession.