Haizebegi Festival – Art • Science • Society
Haizebegi was founded in 2014 in Bayonne by a team of socially conscious artists, researchers from the CNRS, passionate students, and humanists concerned about the state of the world. Together, they set out to tackle a twofold challenge: to use music to understand human societies and to turn it into a tool for social transformation.
A participatory and transdisciplinary approach
The festival explores the power of music and fosters a unique convergence of Art, Science, and Society. Haizebegi develops cultural and artistic projects dedicated to social innovation by by bringing together researchers, artists, and underserved audiences.
Art
Haizebegi welcomes artists and musicians from around the world for whom music is a form of of social engagement. The Zohra Orchestra of the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan (in exile in Portugal), the musicians from the Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv (Ukraine), David Krakauer (Klezmer New York), Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Keyvan Chemirani (Iran), percussionist Aurélien Gignoux (Victoires de la Musique Classique), etc.
Science
Backed by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Haizebegi is:
– a laboratory for innovation exploring the transformative power of music
– a forum for knowledge-sharing and debate among leading experts and international scientists
– an international network, Haizebegi Around the World (HAW), whose partners include universities and arts organizations based in Santiago, Chile; Belo Horizonte; Bogotá; New York, Bayonne, and Berlin.
Company
Haizebegi involves social and medical-social workers in the development of its cultural projects. Haizebegi involves its beneficiaries and fosters the creative abilities of people in vulnerable situations by experimenting with projects in which they play an active role in. Don Bosco Institute (Unaccompanied Minors), Atherbea, emergency shelters, at the CADA, the French Red Cross, and the ICRC in Geneva (70th anniversary of the Geneva Convention on the Rights of Refugees), etc.
Denis Laborde, Artistic Director
Music as Anthropology
“Haizebegi isn’t a music festival; it’s a festival about the worlds of music.” Wherever he has lived, Denis Laborde has sought to use music as a bridge between science and society. He views music as a testament to our shared humanity and uses it as a tool to transform social relations.
After studying at the Bayonne Conservatory and then at the Paris National Conservatory of Music, he discovered the anthropology of music and earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology from EHESS, focusing on the poetic-musical improvisations of the Basque bertsulari.
He was then accepted into the CNRS and went to Germany, first to the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen, then to the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin. In Bayonne, he founded the CNRS’s ARI Institute in 2017. He is a Research Director at the CNRS and a Director of Studies at EHESS (Paris). He currently leads the MusiMig project—“Of what is music capable in situations of forced migration”—which brings together 10 research teams from around the world to study the musical practices of people in situations of forced migration.
In 2020, the CNRS awarded him the Institution’s Silver Medal for the originality of his work and its international impact.