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
Supported by the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Haizebegi is:
– a laboratory for innovation focused on the transformative power of music
– a space for knowledge sharing and discussion 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
Denis Laborde was born in Bayonne. He grew up in Biarritz, Anglet, and Bayonne, in a family with five generations of carpenters and joiners. His father coached the Aviron Bayonnais rowing club, his uncle played for the BO, and his mother played the piano. He had to make a choice. A poorly executed tackle by an ASB second-row player sent him to the hospital: he chose the piano.
After studying at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, he conducted the world premiere of Alvin Curran’s *Crystal Psalms* (New Albion Records, San Francisco) at Radio France. He discovered anthropology and began working on a doctoral dissertation at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) on the poetic-musical improvisations of the Basque bertsulari. He became editor-in-chief of the journal *Ethnologie française* and joined the CNRS. Appointed to Göttingen (Max Planck Institute for History) and then to Berlin (Marc Bloch Center), he organized an international research network on world music festivals. Upon his return to Paris, he was elected to a faculty position at the EHESS. In 2017, he founded the ARI Institute in Bayonne, which in 2020 became a research team within the CNRS’s UMR Passages, under the joint supervision of four institutions: the University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux Montaigne University, the National School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the CNRS.
Denis Laborde uses music as a tool for analyzing human societies. He focuses his attention on specific situations, draws his theoretical framework from social anthropology, and maintains an ongoing dialogue with history, philosophy, and a pragmatist-inspired sociology. In both the traditional Basque repertoire and the world of jazz, he is interested in how a musician transforms the environment into a resource for action. He thus demonstrates that, far from being a game of chance, improvisation is a game of skill: one does not simply become an improviser (Memory and the Moment; Thelonious Monk, Sculptor of Silence).
His interest in the analysis of interactions leads him to examine situations of open conflict, particularly allegations of blasphemy (Bach in Leipzig, Good Friday 1729; *The Unbearable Sound: The Strange Career of Music Clashes*, MIT Press; “Listening to Music Is a Grave Sin,” Geneva).
His research in Germany on music venues led him to focus on figures of knowledge and cultural institutions. He has edited several publications (*Germany: The Question*, with Alf Lüdtke; *Erinnerung und Gesellschaft: Maurice Halbwachs (1877–1945)*, with Hermann Krapoth; *Desires for History*, with Michael Werner; *The Royaumont Case*, Paris).
In collaboration with the Institut Convergences Migrations, and later with Columbia University in New York and the Center for World Music in Hildesheim, he has organized international projects on this topic. Together with his doctoral students, he has created an original form of scholarly expression: the Haizebegi festival, “The Worlds of Music”—featuring concerts, films, workshops, symposia, and gatherings that allow musicians and a wide variety of audience members to share in the “libido sciendi” that drives these researchers, who, like him, use music as a tool for understanding human societies. In Bayonne, he leads the MusiKautisme project alongside Fabienne Cazalis (CNRS).
Denis Laborde received the 2020 CNRS Silver Medal for the originality of his work and its international impact.