Rap, with IAM, Damso, Chilla or Ziak, or electro, with Paul Kalkbrenner or Polo&Pan: Bigflo and Oli kicked off their Rose Festival on Friday in Toulouse, which will last until Saturday night with sold-out tickets.
“It’s great that there is this festival in Toulouse. It’s the first of its kind. Before you had to travel further, to France,” explains Léa Marco, 22, dressed in pink and particularly “happy” to be there, while the Music invades the esplanade of the new fairgrounds of the Pink City.
“There are other festivals during the summer. Doing it at the beginning of September means there are more people,” says 22-year-old Sonia Cayre, also dressed in pink and visibly delighted. Shortly before rapper Zinée opened the ball, Bigflo and Oli said they felt some “pressure” and some “stress.”
“I took little sleeping pills in the last few days,” Florian “Bigflo” Ordonez even said.
Profitable from the start
Although the 50,000 tickets (25,000 daily) were already sold out on Friday, this success was not enough to make the new festival “profitable” from the start. It can only become one in a few years, he also indicated.
The esplanade where the festival is held was dressed in pink on Friday afternoon: from the decoration of the stages, the stands of the Secours populaire, SOS Méditerranée, or the Haute-Garonne firefighters (SDIS 31), to the clothes of the volunteers and number of spectators.
Not “exclusively rap”
Bigflo and Oli “imagined” Rose, like their American colleagues Pharrel Williams and his Something in the Water festival or Travis Scott and Astroworld, whom the rapper brothers from Toulouse easily quote.
But they wanted it to not be “exclusively rap”. Thus, in addition to Bigflo and Oli or Laylow themselves, Ben Mazué or the former singers of the group Zebda, Mouss and Hakim, are among the artists present. Ben Mazué said he felt very “flattered” to be part of it. “I am happy to be supported by this bold project,” he said.
Thanks to the two planned stages, the public has the opportunity to attend the concerts of the headliners and discover “up and coming artists”. On the other hand, to be “an inclusive festival accessible to all”, Rose welcomes at least 1,000 people for free through collaborating associations that reach “audiences far from culture”, such as Secours populaire.
Source: BFM TV
