We Love Green

We Love Green is the music festival in the Bois de Vincennes, in Paris's 12th arrondissement. The first edition was 10 and 11 September 2011, at the parc de Bagatelle, inside the Bois de Boulogne. 20minutes, on 12 September 2011, counts more than 10,000 people over two days. Le Point, on 16 September 2011, counts 10,000. Both figures stay. Marie Sabot, of the collective We Love Art, and Emmanuel de Buretel, of the label Because Music, put it together. There were solar panels instead of a petrol generator, compost, hybrid buses from the metro, and scenery recovered from Rungis and from sorting centres. Marie Sabot said a dance floor from a Chanel showroom ended up as bins, and that the material would afterwards go to rooms in the region. The official page is kept.

Max Pilley, in NME on 3 June 2024, dates the stretch from 30 May to 2 June and calls it three days, with 40,000 people in the rain. Emmanuel Marolle, in Le Parisien on 1 June at 09:41, walks Friday 31 May in the afternoon and speaks of several tens of thousands. Both date marks stay. Both figures stay. The sky was not blue. Rain that day and on the days before left the ground wet, with mud and slippery patches. The grounds stayed usable if you avoided the puddles. In 2022 the Saturday night concerts had to be cancelled after a huge storm. That Saturday was not a lived night.

On Friday, Belgian rapper Shay played under the open big top of La Clairière, before Ninho and Burna Boy. It was the first festival of her career. Hooded dancers in leather suits waved enormous flags while scaffolding and screens came into view. Shay came in among shouts that shook the canvas and a tide of phones. On Notif she plugged in the phone camera, filmed herself live and sent the picture to the screens. Then she sat on a real motorcycle to launch 1000 à l'heure. Marolle also writes it 1 000 à l'heure. The crowd sang along at once to Cocorico, Liquide and PMW. The 10:12 note the same day adds Jolie Go. From Cocorico the room repeated De quoi tu m'parles. From Liquide, Je ne veux pas du minimum. As she came down she said she hoped she had been up to it.

Ninho, early on Friday, drew the first big cheer of the weekend. On La Canopée, the Los Angeles duo Paris Texas had Louis Pastel and Felix jumping in among the crowd, and some of the crowd came up on stage. On Saturday, BADBADNOTGOOD, from Toronto, played with the wind in their faces and mud in their shoes. Slide guitar gave way to the synths of Last Laugh, and mud splashed the raincoats. L'Impératrice took the big stage: Flore Benguigui wore sequins. Pulsar, their third album, came out on 7 June. That date belongs to the album. Kim Gordon, in La Clairière, built towers of noise and distortion, with the spoken voice of the album The Collective. Four Tet played a DJ set on the LaLaLand stage and the bass carried across the rest of the grounds.

Justice arrived with a black-and-white backdrop and little gear. After the slow start of Genesis, the muddy field moved on to We Are Your Friends and Waters of Nazareth. D.A.N.C.E. sounded again in the encore. When the room lost it once more, Gaspard Augé let a smile out. On Saturday, outside the perimeter, there was a large march. Stu Mackenzie, of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, stopped on Sunday on the big stage to declare solidarity with the people of Palestine. In front there were garage riffs and pits.

Kenya Grace, on La Canopée, brought out the track Paris early and then Strangers, one of the biggest reactions of the weekend. SZA closed, weeks before topping Glastonbury. On Low she swung from a wrecking ball. On Kill Bill she carried a machete. She came back with 20 Something wrapped in a Palestinian flag. The stages that weekend were the big one, La Clairière under canvas, La Canopée and LaLaLand. You walk among trees. The rain in 2024 did not stop the weekend.