Solidays 2022 is being held from June 24 to 26 at Paris-Longchamps with a program that brings together a host of big names on the current scene: Orelsan, Eddy de Pretto, Polo and Pan and especially the Black Eyed Peas.
But behind the glitter of this big festival with well-oiled mechanics, a name is less known. However, it counts for a lot in the success of Solidays. This is Luc Barruet, the boss for 30 years of Solidarité Sida, the association who created the Solidays festival to mobilize against sickness. However, the beginnings were not easy.
“When you’re gay or seropo, you can open your mouth”, he was told at the time. “It was at the beginning, let’s be clear,” he explained in an interview with AFP. “Today, relations have calmed down considerably, the environment is not the same, the activists are not the same”.
A student of political and social sciences at the Sorbonne in 1992, the man now nicknamed “Mr. Solidays” was only 25 years old when he decided to act on his own scale against AIDS, a rapidly expanding health scourge. .
Not directly concerned, Luc Barruet is nevertheless driven by a desire to help others which has manifested itself from an early age, for example by defending his comrades who have been extorted at school. By creating Solidarité Sida with a friend, Eric Elzière, they set themselves the goal of raising 1.5 million euros to help the sick.
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“It was hard, you had to go see people, convince people, be taken seriously. I put on my flannel and my blazer, to gain a little bit of credibility”, he still remembers, with a smile on his face. But Luc Barruet defines himself as “a pragmatic utopian”, “someone who aims for the stars, ambitious and who considers that everything that is desirable is possible in terms of solidarity”.
He knocked on the doors of personalities like Antoine de Caunes, whom he approached by posing as a delivery man at Canal +, where the host officiated at the time. Perseverance ends up paying, because Antoine de Caunes has been Honorary President of Solidays for 25 years.
Another significant encounter in the career of Luc Barruet: Alpha, a Senegalese imam, now deceased, whom he knew during a mission in Africa. Alpha came “once, twice” to Solidays, when he was not used to leaving Senegal. When he asks him if he likes the festival, Alpha replies: “You know Solidays is a place of pilgrimage. A place where you go to share things with your community. When you get out, you feel stronger and you believe more strongly in human value”.
Words that still resonate with him. “You cannot imagine the number of people and even young people for whom Solidays has become an initiatory meeting”, a passage “towards a daily life more open to others”. At age 55, “despite a few small bumps”Luc Barruet is not yet ready to leave his place as “director” of the Parisian festival.
“Solidays is a bit like an affective centrifuge
Luc Barruetfounder of Solidarité Sida
“Solidays is a bit like an emotional centrifuge; we found the ignition key and we manage to activate it every year, when we open the doors”. So for this 24th edition, from Friday to Sunday, the founder of Solidays intends to make people forget the two years of health crisis and do better in terms of attendance and revenue than in 2019, a record year. Black Eyed Peas, Damso, Eddy de Pretto, Matthieu Chedid, Ninho, OrelSan and Yseult are among the personalities who will be on stage this weekend at Solidays.
In addition, “there should maybe be between 20 and 30 personalities who go
volunteer this year”says Luc Barruet. “Perhaps the festival-goers who go to buy T-shirts, merchandising will come across Antoine de Caunes, Kad Merad or Roschdy Zem”, he adds, looking mischievous. See you on Friday at the Paris-Longchamp racecourse.