Festival MIMI 2014


Festival MIMI : 29e édition
2 - 6 juillet 2014


Since 1985 and since 2001 on the Frioul Islands in Marseille Bay. An innovative, transaesthetic programme.

 

esthétiques
Les éditos de MIMI 2014

les éditos (EN)

place à Ferdinand Richard

les éditos (EN)

By Ferdinand Richard, director

Good news: despite the very fashionable abstention, the free town hall of Frioul has not gone over to the National Front... But I admit, I had a plan B, just in case: to have a festival of Provencal and military music, with a historical reconstruction in vintage bathing costumes (of brownish pure wool, itchy from knees to chin), like a kind of insular Puy du Fou pageant, with ethnic profiling checks at the Vieux-Port ticket desk, with the festivities stopping at 22:30 and Mass at 8:30am in Latin (for the France that gets up early...), but still with all the rough red wine and saucisson you can eat (the national preference...).
And since the trend is for populism, we had even considered The Voice live in the hospital, with a large grant from Marine Le Pen (the head of one of France’s richest clans, although she says she’s interested in the poor... Come on, Marine, cough up the francs!).
Caramba, missed again! We felt the wind of the cannonball... So, on our island, for this year at least, we will continue to act like Adonises dressed in virtually nothing (but virtue is classy...), we will act like irresponsible but ecologi- cally-responsible teenagers, crazy about decadent and immigrant music that is sure to bug your national software. Better again, this year, we are invading the mainland: the big-eared MIMI horde arrives at the U.Per- cut on July 2 and at the Friche on July 3, not to mention the WAAW on June 10, etc. In brief, the Black Flag is flying over Mar- seille-Provence 2014...
Ah, it’s hard, Culture!...
But politics is chic,
the artist is trendy,
and Frioul is cool...

Mercredi 2 juillet

Nuit des langues pendantes

At the U.Percut, they punch right in the belly. It’s a real boxing ring... We know where to enter, but we don’t know what stretcher we will leave on... To start MIMI, a little intravenous injec- tion of adrenaline, to get rid of the impurities of the past twelve months: it can’t be bad for you. You need some horse medicine. It shows in the whites of your eyes, badly yellowed by the excesses of 2013. Oh yes, too much marshmallow kills!...
We found the best nurses in town: Postcoïtum, who are more of the rugby trainer kind, and Sugarcraft, of the Dr. Strangelove kind... It grabs you, it churns you up, it paws you, it drives you nuts, it dazes you, it clears every drop of toxin out of you, it’s no time for nitpicking, you’re too ill. You’ll leave on your knees, with your tongue hanging out, but you will bless this good daddy Ferdinand and Sista Elo, who know what is good for you.

Jeudi 3 juillet

Nuit du chapiteau et de la plume

Everybody has their own conception of folk music, and everybody has their own jazz...
That of the cheap lounges where you get blind drunk on Johnny/Quebec wit- hout ice and without girl- friends, or the provincial formal evenings wearing a Ted Lapidus jacket.
I like supernatural jazz and animist folk, which will connect you to the after- life. Josephine and Camel dabble a little in the super- natural. Real mediums... After the sacred dug-out canoes along the Niger River, Camel continues his search for the “unwise passage” with the Gnaoua musicians from Biskra, old Algerian sages, plus some crazy young guys press- ganged in the streets of Marseille, plus a brass sec- tion to inflate the Pinder circus tent. Like a hummi- ngbird’s feather caressed by the breeze, Josephine floats gently down to our poor suffering earth, her unreal voice makes our hearts bleed, the tables turn, and our heads too, captivated by the grace- fulness of the folk-blues, all in love with the archangel!

Vendredi 4 juillet

Soirée Juliano Mer-Khamis


Everywhere where there is resistance, you can be sure that there are artists behind it. This is true in Cairo, it is true in Kiev, and it must have been true here...
But the bare-handed rebel artists do not have a Kalash- nikov. They are open targets, like Juliano Mer-Khamis, the son of Arna, the man from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, shot down like a dog by a masked man on April 4, 2011. We dedicate this evening to him. Long ago, the Lebanese artist Zeid Hamdan, who is multi-ta- lented, became our brother. He brings us the radiant Maryam Saleh from Egypt on a silver platter: a cha- rismatic young artist who sings the satirical political pamphlets of Sheikh Imam and Ahmad Fouad Najm, Egyptian writers who were too often imprisoned. It is the paving stone from Tahrir Square. DakhaBrakha, other lady singers who give us goose-bumps, freshly down off the Maidan barricades, draw from the songs of the old Ukraine to build the new. They are lighting fires from MIMI to the Transmusicales.
When women sing, the walls crack... It is the biblical power of ultrasound.

Samedi 5 juillet

Nuit des lambeaux de corazón

Our archipelago is a glo- bal crossroads.
Look at the map (the real one, not the Michelin map): Frioul is an extension of New York, just before Sarajevo. The bus driver is the indisputable keyboard player Nicolas Cante, half from Aix and half from Sarajevo, in spite of being a night owl and free-wheeler of free par- ties. He will connect the extension lead between the stars of Sevdah, who make Bosnian girls swoon, and the most famous night owls of New York/New York, that is, Suicide, Alan Vega and Martin Rev, the prophets of the minima- list nocturnal keyboard, who are often imitated but never equalled, Presidents of the United States of the Bowery, the owners of the world’s finest beatbox. A dark, glowing Saturday evening, a cocktail that flows down the throat wit- hout the slightest bit of fat, a taste of embers, of bur- ning ice floes, of shredded corazón and of the stuff that strips teeth... Don’t miss this, otherwise you will sob your regret forever in the desert of Cours Julien. Sicuramente...

Dimanche 6 juillet

Nuit je-te-tiens-tu-me-tiens-par-la-barbichette


Look, this evening, it’s weird, two completely unrelated concerts.
But does that exist, two com- pletely unrelated concerts? Who, among Rafaelle, Yann, Etienne and Richard, is the most cheerful or the sad- dest?
Will AIE’s joyful corro- siveness have no effect on Pinhas and Jaumet’s relentless groove? Will the stinging duo’s thorns tickle the rebel of the 1970s? Will the refrain of the delicious harpist and her giant dru- mmer remain as carefree in front of Heldon, the same person who committed the 45rpm single to support the Red Army Fraction, or in front of Jaumet, drip-fed with John Carpenter’s night- mares? In the end, is this not all the same language? Must we cry with laughter? Must we laugh until we cry? Will the audience be the first to crack?