Festival Musicalarue in Luxey, France 26/7/2024

Musicalarue means literally music on the street and it describes the vibe at the event in Luxey quite well and I really enjoyed the festival for its atmosphere. The festival is a village event and for the weekend the small village area became extremely lively. The area was open throughout the day and after arriving around lunch time we could simply walk around the streets and even see the stage and buy food at one of the food stands. Many of them were open the full day and the area had at least three stages in different sizes, several bars and little music performances here and there. 

At some point in the afternoon or early evening the area was emptied and people went later in with tickets to see the concert part of the day. I didn’t follow the other stages but saw Hoshi on stage before Mika and enjoyed her performance a lot. The day was hot and sweaty, maybe one of the sweatiest days I’ve ever experienced, but still in many ways very enjoyable having lunch and not needing to wait too much. Hoshi started soon after we had entered and Mika was right after that.

The audience wasn’t a typical Mika audience at all, everyone who lived close enough had simply showed up and I could see a lot of children and a lot of elderly people who are not usually represented in such big numbers, and maybe a bit surprisingly the atmosphere was extremely good. It was good when Hoshi started and became only better because she communicated and interacted with the crowd a lot and it was definitely good for Mika who seemingly enjoyed the vibe and even mentioned the good energy from the front area until the very back during his performance. 

The stage and the backstage area behind it were literally next to a cemetery and that gave a topic for the night and there was a lot of chatting that I couldn’t all catch that moment but got later more specific translations and it made the night even more Mika style and also very talkative, him describing the place poetic and emotional and talking about the spirits among us. 

Some young fans had worked hard making handwritten signs in different colours saying “Let’s Bloom Together” to give people to show during C’est la vie and it was a nice gesture and Mika noticed it and generally the new French songs C’est la vie, Jane Birkin and Bougez were my favourites during the night and made me extremely happy to be able to hear them one more time before festivals outside France. 

I also particularly loved songs like Underwater and Happy Ending and could so easily focus on listening to them - the crowd was very relaxed that way - and when Mika made the audience sing in the end of Underwater it joined beautifully and the moment became the highlight it’s supposed to be. Happy Ending was generally emotional, we all agreed about that afterwards, and at some point during it Mika took handfuls of flowers to throw them to the audience and it was very considerate because the stage was so high it was not possible to see the flowers properly and it was delightful to discover a flower in my clothes afterwards. 

Even though the age distribution was quite unusual the energy in the crowd was good in an enjoyable, relaxed way and during the high energy songs the full audience was participating and I danced a lot during the night as well. Dancing is not something I can force myself to do to feel better, dancing is something I want to do when I already feel relaxed enough and in Luxey it happened several times during songs like Relax and Elle Me Dit and Bougez (just to mention a few songs). Unfortunately I don’t have any photo material but the memory of this festival is good and it was definitely one of my favourites this summer.

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