Esperanzah

Today we met with Aurelie and Romain, Sophie and Martin (a friend of them with her little baby boy) in Floreffe for the Esperanzah festival.

This festival is a world music festival I had joined them last year and had a great time. This year I dragged along Wolfram (yes the guy who says "I don't do festivals") hoping to change is point of view on festivals. How can it not be pleasant to listen to music while seating on the grass under the sun? I wonder.

After a home made breakfast we drove to Floreffe. The festival takes place in the abbey which is a really nice location for listening to music.

We started with Bassekou Kouyate from Africa. Lot's of percussion and good rhythm.

Then Color Humano much more rock and punchy.

The discovery of the festival for me was Souad Massi from Algeria who mixes different music styles from traditional to jazzy.

The highlight of the festival was Tiken Jah Fakoly with his militating reggae denunciating all the injustice in Africa. Apparently he sings in French but Aurelie and I never managed to understand more than a few words from the lyrics. This aside rhythm was great and the whole crowd was dancing.

During the afternoon we received a green paper plane. The concept was to write a message on it and at 6:50pm we would send them in the air exchanging them. Wolfram took the task very seriously and here is all what we wrote:

and at the given time the planes were in the air: