Kumpania Tzigane Festival, Toulouse June 2007
We were traveling through the Languedoc region of France the other summer and decided to check out this festival. After much driving around the Toulouse ring roads without much of a clue where we were going we spotted across the fields the hallmarks of a festival - marquees and a random assortment of vans, and made towards it. What we found down a little lane was the most splendid squatted buildings - "Terre Blanque". We pulled up our van into the parking spot for the "Living in a White Van" tribe and set out to check out the place before the festival kicked off.
We managed to find out that Terra Blanque is a long running community of radical artists and activists. What they had done with the buildings was amazing - some of them even had Gaudi - esque facades grafted onto the buildings. It just shows what you can achieve with a squatted space if you can hang on to it longer than a month! Around the land was an amazing assortment of live in vehicles and even a boat. The field out the back was where the festival was to take place with an outdoor stage, bar (also serving food for a few euros) and a large marquee. The assembling crowd was a happy mix of alternative types and mums and dads from Toulouse.
As the sun went down the bands took to the stage. Out of the three bands the stand out one for us was the first band - Traio Romano (Gypsies from Trannsylvania living in France - check out their myspace), playing Gypsy Jazz accompanied by an amazing woman dancer. Their children also kept trying to be naughty and climb onto the stage only to be told off by the band! Late into the night the beats kicked off in the marquee as Kumpania Tzigane DJ's took to the decks joined from time to time by the younger members of Traio Romano to do some impromtu vocals, and later in the night the older blokes in the band gave it a go as well. Finally by dawn we dragged ourselves, tired, danced out and mosquito bitten, back to the van for some kip.
Kumpania Tzigane are a long running collective promoting gyspy, balkan and klezmer culture, who do loads of other events as well as their annual festival - check them out on at www.myspace/kumpaniatzigani
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