Paléo 2010 a success, Caribbean theme for 2011.
- Catherine
- Jul 26, 2010
- 4 min read
"Another successful Paléo", was the summing up of this year's festival at Sunday's press conference. Jacques Monnier the festival's programmer, announced that on the whole they were pleased with the quality of the music on offer and this year they found the sound was particularly good in the "Chapiteau". Some bands proved to be very popular with the public, Two Door Cinema Club, Foals, Crosby Stills and Nash, My Heart belongs to Celia Winter, Filewile etc and they were pleased that the music of Hugues Dufray crossed generations (echoed by Jonas's post from Thursday )
Meanwhile over in the Village du Monde the Mohatella Queens and Mozulart were also big hits. Daniel Rossellat the festival director said that the festival had evolved over the years and now had a winning formula which worked.
When talking about the Village du Monde-Afrique Australe area, Rossellat recounted his experience of seeing Nelsons Mandela's cell on Robben Island in South Africa. "For the first 17 years (out of 27) when Mandela was incarcerated the cell was so dark and small he couldn0t see outside and he didn't even know what the seasons were." Rosselllat said; " to come out of that and still forgive is an amazing and incredible thing" and shows what a wonderful person he is and he went on to say how he met many similar people on his travels. "Here at Paléo we hope we have given a small glimpse of the wonderful spirit that is in the African people".
There were questions from the press on the implementation of the new smoking laws inside the tents and the fact that the laws were being flouted. Rossellat said they had decided to take a "softly softly" approach this year as many of the public were unaware of the rules at rock festivals. As to why at Paléo bags aren't checked at the entry gates for bottles, cameras etc (as in other festivals ), Rossellat said "We like to think as Paléo as a small town " when you visit a town you aren't checked when you walk around the town so we don't do that here either, it keeps the atmosphere friendly. In fact our security people are there for security and welcome - the two things go hand in hand.
Below is Jonas's final report from Saturday's night at Paléo. Photos throughout this post are from Saturday and Sunday's final day. Dates for your diary: Paléo next year is on The line up is announced on April and tickets go on sale at and The theme for the Village du Monde will be music from the Caribbean.
As the end of the festival approaches and that the lack of sleep builds up, we can be grateful for another wonderful evening. Thanks to the weather, which spared us rain, and to some really good musicians, Saturday night was another great success.
As I’m involved a lot in the circus, it was normal for me to go and watch some of the shows at the Ruche, the area devoted to street performance and circus. I went to watch la cie les Arrosés. They’re three jugglers and acrobats, and they do quite a few impressive things. Their show was interesting, not so as such as as a means of getting to find out new tricks to do. The cie les Arrosés are typically street performers, with a rather “trash” repertoire, with jokes that made adults and children laugh alike, though not really for the same reasons… It’s interesting to see how adults react to hearing sometimes quite crude jokes in front of a show full of small children, sometimes not really knowing what to do. It was fast-paced and full of energy, and I had a good laugh watching them.
I then watched the last five minutes of Mozuluart (a mix between Mozart and Zulu), a band whose idea was to mix Mozart’s music with Zulu music. It works, and quite well too, African rythms and singing giving Mozart a refreshing burst of energy. The layout of the band is three Africans, who sing, play percussions and dance, with a pianist (on a grand piano), and a string quartet. It was quite funny to see them playing again in one of the strange brown structures in the village du Monde a bit later on, reduced to the three singers and the pianist playing on a keyboard balanced on his knees…
It was then off to the main stage for the best concert of the evening, John Butler and his wonderful mind-blowing guitar. The Australian guitar player is a genius, playing the guitar like a god. He made sounds come out of his guitar that you would never think was possible and playing beautiful but extremely complicated melodies. Switching between banjo, guitar and another strangely shaped guitar I don’t know the name of, he subjugated the whole crowd with his talent.
Another memorable moment of the concert was when the drummer told everybody to turn round and face the Jura, then jump round and start dancing like mad. It was quite a sight to see a few thousand people showing their backside to the musicians, with their hands up in the air! Da silva, a French singer was playing under the chapiteau, so I went to have a look. Some of his songs were quite good, even thought his voice rather irritated me, and the violinist was excellent. It lacked (according to me) some accordion and some more wind instruments (saxophone, or more clarinet, we could barely hear the man playing the clarinet and the trumpet ), in a configuration which was too rock for that sort of music. Later on, it was time for Paolo Nutini to jazz up Paleo with his fresh pop-rock. The 23 year old singer was right up to the (sometimes) difficult and intimidating task of playing on the Grande Scène in front of about 30’000 people. But he managed extremely well, and delivered a concert where everybody danced to the sound of his highly energetic melodies. Even if Jacques Ductronc does not figure in my favourite singers, and that I rather dislike the man himself, I went to see a bit of his concert, listening to some of his now cult songs, sometimes even discovering that a song I knew was actually by him… His show was rather strange, involving at one point an extremely tall man and a dwarf lady, for some reason that I didn’t understand… As always, the evening finished by the fires, before a short visit to the Pl’Asse, the off festival, where a DJ was mixing gipsy and balkanic music with quite some success.