Date
Tuesday 22 July 2008 — Sunday 27 July 2008
Location
Paléo Festival Nyon
Nyon,
1260,
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 365 10 10
Link
Description
Innovations and musical discoveries set the tone for this 33rd edition, which welcomed total crowds of 225,000. Amongst the big names on show were Mika, Manu Chao, Massive Attack, Alain Bashung, IAM and R.E.M. As for new talent, the likes of Thomas Dutronc, Seun Kuti, Nneka and The Kissaway Trail led the way. The 2008 edition was also marked by the presence of Swiss artists. Lining up on all of the Festival’s stages (the French speakers K and Favez graced the Grande Scène this year), the Swiss scene left its effervescent imprint on this year’s event. Swiss groups became the worthy tenants of the Détour stage, a new performing space dedicated to homegrown talent. Another new feature of this edition was “La Ruche”, which replaced “La Crique” as the hive of activity for circus arts and street theatre. On the site itself, the Festival’s partners in innovation, the HES-SO Geneva, offered a magnificent panorama of the Festival to 30,000 visitors from the heady heights of the "R-310 machine à paysage". Frequent visitors to the Festival, the Cie Carabosse enchanted the quartier des Alpes with their river of fire, “A feu et à braise”, a fabulous, poetic demonstration of pyrotechnic prowess. Over at the Village du Monde, the Dôme vibrated to Brazilian rhythms, with a variety of both traditional and contemporary musical styles. Special mention to the spellbinding sensitivity of Mayra Andrade, the amazing body percussion of Barbatuques and the Brazilian hit by the duo Vanessa da Mata-Ben Harper. Amongst the highlights of the Village du Monde, the presence of the Suruí people, guardians of the Amazon rain forest, did not go unnoticed. Their sponsor NGO, the Geneva based association, Aquaverde, was the Festival’s special guest this year. Finally, on the environmental front, the “dry toilets” soon became a much-appreciated natural feature on the Festival campsite.
Line-up (89)
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