The Worldwide Festival, in Sète, in 2015 (Archives) -

VINCENT DAMOURETTE / SIPA

  • On February 18, Roselyne Bachelot, the Minister of Culture announced that the summer festivals should respect a level of 5,000 people maximum, with a seated configuration.

    Modalities that may change, depending on the health situation.

  • For electro festivals, the configuration is far from ideal: "It is an insult to the artist, to festival-goers, and to what we have been promoting for years, freedom, dance, conviviality. », Laments Ludovic Rambaud, programmer of Family Piknik.

  • For his part, Jean-Pierre Rousseau, director of the Radio France festival and Tohu Bohu, hopes to be able to organize “an evening, or even two” in a standing configuration.

Less than 5,000 people, seated, respecting the distance.

If the measures to save the festivals this summer, announced by Roselyne Bachelot, have allowed some to work on a new configuration, others are still working in total vagueness.

Among them, the electro festivals.

For these events, which are numerous in Occitania, where the bamboo is king, it is difficult to imagine, in front of the turntables, installing folding seats so that festival-goers can sit down.

“Electro festivals are going to be nice on a chair,” one Internet user is surprised on Twitter.

Ludovic Rambaud, programmer, with Tom Pooks, from Family Piknik, a very popular techno festival every summer in Montpellier (Hérault), says he is “very disappointed” with the first measures announced by the Minister of Culture.

"We regret that she did not better understand the stake for contemporary music festivals," he confides.

The fact that she focused on sitting, for us, is contempt.

"And this, he notes, while the electro events have campaigned for weeks, so that the revelers can stand up next summer, by proposing to condition for example the entries to a negative test.

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"This celebration, you cannot have it on a chair"

"If a festival takes place in arenas, with bleachers, you're lucky, you have a plan B," he continues.

But for us, under the trees, in the open air, it seems like absolute nonsense to us to consider sitting people, in front of a stage, with a DJ who will play techno for hours.

It is an insult to the artist, to festival-goers, and to what we have been promoting for years: freedom, dance, conviviality.

"For Ludovic Rambaud, those who produce electronic music," have only one goal, to make people dance, to transmit emotions, to break the dancefloor.

That celebration, you can't have it on a chair.

Sitting down, we won't.

"

The festival, which has taken place every summer for 10 years in Montpellier, has also surveyed its community in recent days: of the some 2,000 people who responded, 80% said they did not plan to participate in any way. at such a seated festival.

So for now, Ludovic Rambaud and Tom Pooks are forced to wait, "when we badly need to move forward on the programming".

Hoping that the adjustments, promised by Roselyne Bachelot according to the health evolution, offer current music festivals a chance to take place this summer.

As for the Electros d'Uzès (Gard), the next edition of which is scheduled for August 6 and 7, we are already thinking of alternative solutions for this summer.

"For rap, electronic music or metal, it is not really conceivable to organize a whole seated festival, these are events that are really linked to the dancefloor," confirms Pascal Maurin, the programmer of the Gard festival.

But we realize that it may be a little complicated this year.

I don't really see the horizon emerging.

But we don't want to wait, like last year.

So we try to imagine slightly different forms, such as streaming, very, very small gauges, master classes, meetings, operations for children, etc.

"

A limit on entry or reservations at Tohu Bohu?

Jean-Pierre Rousseau, the director of the Radio France festival, is rather optimistic.

Each year, it brings together several thousand people in July, for several times, for Tohu Bohu, in the open air, on the forecourt of the town hall in Montpellier.

“We will do Tohu Bohu,” says Jean-Pierre Rousseau.

But we will do it, no doubt, in part, with seated devices.

We had already done this in 2019, and it had worked really well.

But I'm still going to campaign so that we can do at least one evening, if not two, with a standing configuration.

It will depend on the authorizations we have, the State, and the mayor of Montpellier.

We can very well limit the number of people at the entrance, for example.

Or set up reservations.

"

Our file on festivals

However, the director of the Radio France festival thinks that we must take into account that "the health situation will change" in the coming months.

“Making the decision today not to make Tohu Bohu stand up is about as ridiculous as saying the Earth is flat,” smiles the programmer.

We have to wait a bit, see how things evolve.

If we can, we will give ourselves the means to do so.

Tohu Bohu is obviously a party, standing up.

We can hope that summer will be the return to the party.

"

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