After a five-year hiatus, the Babel Med music festival and market, one of the most renowned in Europe, returns to Marseille in March 2023 with an “extended” formula renamed “Babel Music XP”, to serve as a “bridge” between musicians from different continents and the music industry.
For this first edition of Babel Music XP will be represented as much traditional music associated with the “classification of world music” as rock, hip-hop or jazz groups from Asia, Africa or America, announced Tuesday the director of the festival, Olivier Rey.
Budget cuts
For the revival of this institution which had known 13 editions under its old version, the message is to “say that with the new practices [de consommation] of the public and new techniques [utilisées pour la création artistique]the musical and geographical borders are porous and that one can pass from one musical aesthetic to another”, he summarized in a press conference.
Interrupted in its old form after its 2017 edition due to budget cuts by the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur Region, the Babel Music XP festival had a prologue in November 2020 in the form of remote meetings but without music, due to the Covid-19 epidemic.