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Summary Performers turned to streets of Paris to hold impromptu concerts in 'Fete de la Musique' festival.
Rappers, folk fans and choirs took to the streets of Paris on Thursday (June 21) to celebrate thirty years of the Fete de la Musique festival which saw every corner of the capital turned into a music venue.Amateur and professional musicians gave free concerts at different locations -- many outdoors -- watched by enthusiastic Parisians and tourists coming from all over the world.Under the covered arches of the famous Place des Vosges -- whose residents past and present include French writer Victor Hugo and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- passers-by stopped to dance and sing along to an amateur accordion group.In this most French of squares they played a wide variety of numbers from Irish folk music to Edith Piaf, handing out sheets of lyrics to get everyone to take part.Accordion player Anne-Laure Buhot told Reuters that they have been coming for many years and that the audiences get bigger every time.Thats the idea of the Fete de la Musique, thats why we come here to make people dance and sing for pleasure, there you go, she said.The festival was launched in 1982 back when Michael Jackson was topping the charts but it spread quickly round the world with festival organisers saying that before the end of the 1990s, more than a hundred countries across five continents were organising their own versions.At the Paris festival, tourists from all over the world were impressed.Canadian Linda Gruson described the performance given by the Choir of the Paris Academy of Music in the garden of the Place des Vosges as wonderful.Over there we were singing French music with accordions. And over here its choral and classical and beautiful. And I think theyre students over here and its just a lot of fun and theyre very good. Lovely to hear. And its a beautiful day and a beautiful park and Paris is gorgeous so what else can you ask for? she said.The idea of the festival, said participant Jean Docardi was to introduce people to music they might not have listened to otherwise.
