Fete de la Musique

Every June 21, Paris holds a Fete de la Musique.  It's a day of free concerts all over the city.  After work, I met up with the family at one of the parks and we headed out.  As we walked through, we could already hear some music.  We swung by and listened for a bit. 

We then headed toward one of our favorite areas of the city, the Latin District, to grab some food.  On the way, there were a number of bands playing on the sidewalk, in front of stores, etc.  Rock bands, pop bands... a little of everything.  Here was a hard rock band setup outside of an upscale women's clothing store.  Seriously.

After we grabbed some wonderful gyros, we headed out for more music that included an Italian women's choir...

A jazz band that frequently took beer breaks...

and a local rock band that was very good...

From there, we walked across the street to Notre Dame.  There was a 17 member men's choir singing there.  It was beautiful to hear. 

From there, we walked to Hotel de Ville.  As we were in front of it, we heard someone playing guitar and singing, so we followed it.  The guy singing kind of sounded like Paul Simon.  It turns out he's an American living in Germany named Chris Paulson.  He was just playing with a basket for anyone wanted to give him some money.  I think we stayed there for 4 or 5 songs until he was done.  We ended up buying 2 of his CD's. 

It was great to see such diverse groups, and we barely even scratched the surface of what the city had to offer.