Let your imagination go as Europe’s largest festival of traditional and ethnographic music takes place in Paris for six weeks from March 3-April 12.

Organised by the Maison des Cultures du Monde, the 13th Festival de L’Imaginaire features masked dancers from Zambia, bards from Azerbaijan, ancestral court music from Uganda, gamelan and dance performances from Javanese master Rahayu Supanggah, Sufi flute and drum players from Algeria who have fascinated Bartok, Brian Eno and David Byrne, and much more.

One of its purposes, says director Arwad Esber, ‘is to fight against the tendency for globalisation and uniformity in the world. And do artists have to be European or Western in their aesthetic to be contemporary? Can’t they be contemporary in their own way?’

Most performances are in the intimate auditorium of the MCM, but others are in the Louvre and the Bastille Opera.

www.mcm.asso.fr

Tags: festival de l'imaginaire, paris