Today is a sad day in the Charente and the festival world – it was announced that Henri Coursaget, the founder of the Confolens Festival, has died. He was 86 but until recently, when cancer claimed him, he was a spry bundle of energy, often seen around town. I interviewed him for The Times newspaper seven years ago and discovered the poignant story behind the man and the festival. Here is an edited version of the article that was published…
During the Second World War Henri Coursaget and his teenage friends joined the French Resistance. He was the only one of his group to survive. In the following years, trying to answer the question ‘why me?’ Coursaget pledged to give his life ’some meaning.’
And so he has. Using the rather unlikely means of traditional music and dance, Coursaget has faced down dictators and sidestepped political barriers to bring together people of different countries and cultures in a non-stop celebration of singing, dancing and foot stomping. In so doing, he has not just transformed an obscure folk festival in a provincial French town into the largest in the world and part of a global network of more than 300 linked events – the Conseil International des Organisations de Festivals de Folklore et d’Art Traditionnel (CIOFF); he has also made CIOFF an internationally acclaimed campaigner for world peace.
UNESCO, to whom CIOFF is affiliated, has awarded Coursaget its highest honour, the Picasso Medal, in recognition of his contribution to the cultural arts and for his unstinting promotion of friendship, understanding and peace.
The second week of August is when the festival entourage come to Confolens, Coursaget’s hometown, and where it all began in 1957. A pharmacist by trade, when Coursaget originally devised the folk festival it was as a desperate attempt to revive a dying town. ‘If you saw two people gathered together in one place you wondered what was happening,’ Coursaget laughs.
Over the next 10 years, however, Coursaget’s drive saw the festival grow from a simple one-day event to an extravaganza celebrated over many days. ‘But I felt it had the potential to be something more,’ he says.
So in 1970 he launched CIOFF and, in going global, committed his first act of international bonding when he issued an invitation to the Soviet Union to join. Despite the strained political climate, a government delegation travelled from Moscow to Confolens and after a day of talks became a member, declaring they ‘understood the spirit behind the festival’.
Five years on, CIOFF became affiliated to UNESCO who, in the face of globalisation, charged CIOFF with ‘guarding traditional folklore of the world and through this, the promotion of peace between people.’
It is a role that Coursaget has taken very seriously – during the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile, for example, he flew to Santiago at considerable risk to protest against the imprisonment and torture of musicians. ‘Over the years I have experienced the best and the worst in the world,’ he says, becoming a little teary. ‘I choose to concentrate on what is good so it can be used to construct a better world in the future.’ CIOFF has 5,000 charities working with it. ‘Each does so in the spirit of brotherhood, regardless of colour, language or politics,’ he says.
Coursaget has met a long list of heads of state and was given a private audience with the late Pope John Paul II who urged him to continue because ‘the world needs more people like you.’
Coursaget, however, is humble about his contribution. ‘For me it has never been about being superior to everyone else,’ he says. After a pause he adds, ‘Yes, I feel I have done something in my life, but everything I do, I do for my friends who died.’
