Face & Si

For more than two decades, the first weekend of September gave Mouilleron-le-Captif a different rhythm. Face & Si was never simply a collection of concerts placed at the end of summer; it was a cultural gathering built around the idea that several generations should be able to share the same event without being separated into different audiences. Children, teenagers, parents and older visitors could occupy the grounds together, each finding something different in the programme. Over time, Parc de Beaupuy became the physical expression of that approach. Trees, lawns, the château surroundings, temporary marquees and family areas created something closer to a large communal celebration than an anonymous touring festival site. A French pop star could appear on the same weekend as a rock band, an urban act, a children’s production, comedy and street performance without requiring the organisers to explain the contradiction. Eclecticism was not a side effect of Face & Si; it was the central organising principle of an event designed to close the summer by bringing together people who would rarely buy tickets for the same specialist festival.

The story began in 1998, when the event was held at Les Étangs and was still primarily conceived for the residents of Mouilleron-le-Captif. That municipal and community foundation remained visible even as the festival grew into a recognised event across Vendée and began booking nationally established artists. Unlike a festival created around one scene, Face & Si never had to defend a strict musical identity. Roger Hodgson could bring the memory of Supertramp, Patrick Bruel and Jenifer represented mainstream French pop and chanson, Lost Frequencies introduced contemporary electronic music, Black M and 47Ter connected the programme to urban music, Biga*Ranx added reggae and Louis Bertignac carried decades of French rock history. The value of that programming lay precisely in the overlaps it created. One member of a family could arrive for a specific singer while another preferred a comedy show or a discovery stage, yet everyone could remain within the same weekend. Programming functioned less like a genre manifesto and more like a portrait of a broad local audience.

The move to Parc de Beaupuy in 2014 gave Face & Si room to develop that philosophy on a much larger scale. Close to La Roche-sur-Yon, the green park could accommodate thousands of people while preserving a relatively human sense of circulation. At its peak, attendance moved beyond twenty thousand visitors, but the festival continued to depend visibly on volunteers, local partners and community structures rather than presenting itself as a detached commercial machine. Major concerts were only one layer. Food areas, children’s spaces, street entertainment, humour, free activities and smaller performances gave the day several different speeds. Families could arrive early, younger visitors could discover artists away from the headline stage and the atmosphere would gradually shift as evening approached. This flexible use of time became one of the event’s strengths. Face & Si could feel like a local village celebration in one corner of Beaupuy and, a few hours later, resemble a large regional concert beneath the main marquee without either identity cancelling the other.

The twenty-fifth edition in 2024 deliberately redesigned the site around three distinct atmospheres. The Grand Chapiteau, capable of holding several thousand standing spectators, carried the principal Friday and Saturday concerts. Louis Bertignac, Naïve New Beaters, Les Yeux d’la Tête, 47Ter, Ridsa, Roland Cristal, Colt and Dynamite Shakers represented the familiar mixture of rock, pop and urban music. The Petit Chapiteau offered something entirely different: Les Ogres de Barback installed their family production Pitt Ocha in a smaller, more intimate environment. Beyond both stood the free Village, with food, bars, wooden games, family activities, emerging performers, roaming entertainment and DJ sets. Sunday could therefore function differently from the previous nights, opening the festival more widely to people who might not have bought a concert ticket. Rather than forcing all three areas to chase the same audience, the design allowed Beaupuy to support several kinds of cultural experience at once.

That twenty-fifth edition became the final chapter. By the end of 2024, rising production costs, increasingly expensive artist fees and lower attendance had put the municipal model under pressure, and Face & Si was brought to an end. Beaupuy later gained a new free community celebration under another name and with a different scale, but the long-running festival itself was finished. What disappeared was a very particular September tradition: twenty-five editions in which popular music, humour, children’s entertainment and local participation were treated as equally legitimate reasons to gather. The memory of Face & Si therefore extends far beyond individual headline bookings. It belongs to hundreds of volunteers working gates, bars and services, to families able to spend a full day together without following the same programme, and to a park transformed each year into common ground for people whose ages and musical tastes could be radically different. That ability to make eclecticism feel social rather than random was ultimately the festival’s most distinctive achievement.