In summer, France profonde changes. From a dwindling winter population of 60, my village, lost in the hills, swells to many times that number as families trek down from the cities to their résidence secondaire—the house where dad or grandad grew up, then left at 18, desperate for work. The shopkeepers in small rural towns depend on these two months as the wage-earning natives return and feed their memories with local gastronomic delicacies. Oh the joys of country living! The children amuse themselves with their cousins, trawling the river or popping beetles with a magnifying glass, but what about the jeunes? For years the elders in each village organised a fête, tailor-made, so they thought, to what the world-weary jeune was supposed to like. So during four successive nights, a weird assortment of fifth- rate rock groups would perform increasingly unrecognisable cover versions of Anglo-Saxon songs of the 1970s to a dozen pissed paysans propping up the trestle-table bar—with not a jeune in sight.
But thankfully, that's all changing. Now, throughout rural France, there are festivals in the true, celebratory sense. Les Vieilles Charrues de Carhaix in central Brittany is emblematic of the new and hugely successful rural festival. In 1992, a group of jeunes from Brest, fed up that large towns always monopolised major events, organised a four-day party near Carhaix, in Bretagne profonde: country games, barbecues and a bit of live music. 500 turned up that first year and had a good time. Now some of the best European and American bands come to this town of 8,000 inhabitants, while 200,000 people come to listen. Les Vieilles Charrues has become a major international rock festival, hosting more than 80 bands over four days, but it's still put together by the same group of friends. This year Peter Gabriel, Charles Aznavour, Bryan Ferry and Sinéad O'Connor top a bill so eccentric it could never have been dreamed up by a slick city promoter. And even more remarkable than the quality of the music is the way the festival is run: 6,000 volunteers work day and night to make it happen in a clean, friendly way; for as well as the music, the emphasis, as one would expect, is on the environment—the festival is run by locals for the benefit of their neighbours, not to alienate them all.
Further south, lost in the sparsely populated Massif Central, Aurillac is two things: the coldest town in France and the centre of the French umbrella business—not obvious tourist attractions. So in 1986 it created a festival of street theatre which has gradually brought this small country town world status. Five hundred groups and performers converge on it for four days every August. The town becomes the stage, set and often subject for a limitless variety of work: clowning, Shakespeare, children's storytelling, rhythmic juggling, police thriller ("Murder at the Umbrella Factory"), puppets, magie burlesque. In addition, 20 invited companies are given board and lodging for a couple of months while they create a new work. For the 100,000 visitors, almost all of it is free.
In France, culture often has a côté pédagogique: at Aurillac there are organised discussions between performers, university types and the public about where street theatre is going, who it should serve, who should pay for it. The roots of street theatre are political and there is often a strong social message: the theme this year is overcrowding in French prisons. For this is not a beach holiday; les jeunes, in particular, come to be stimulated as well as entertained.
Even more thinking is required a little further south. Tucked away at the bottom of the steep descent from the Massif Central down to the Mediterranean plain, few people used to notice Lodève as they sped beachward. Like so many rural towns, it had lost everything—work, population and self-esteem. But now, from nothing, Lodève has created a reputation for landmark summer exhibitions of painting, combining popular appeal with cultural erudition. This town, no bigger than Shaftesbury, also runs "Voices of the Mediterranean," a festival of oral poetry which unites poets from every corner of that evocative sea. A hundred poets from 31 countries are flown to Lodève to read their poetry in quiet squares, shady gardens beside the river, or the courtyards of crumbling hôtels particuliers.
Strolling through the town, you hear all the voices of the Mediterranean—Maltese, Croatian, Arab, Greek—echoes of the time when Arabs, Ephesians and Phoenicians exchanged goods and ideas in nearby Narbonensis. Today Palestinians talk poetry and peace with Israelis, Kosovars with Serbs, and the festival has just been sponsored by Unesco as an important artistic event promoting tolerance and dialogue between cultures. The poets stay with local families, for, like the other festivals, without the help of hundreds of unpaid volunteers, the event would collapse. Between the summer exhibition and poetry festival, nearly 100,000 people visit Lodève and spend their money. But the real benefits are intangible: "Culture," the mayor told me, "has given the Lodévois a sense of pride in their town."
