That time of year again! June 21 is the summer solstice, which means the most daylight we'll get during any 24-hour period in 2015. The solstice is also the date of the annual Fête de la Musique, a "world music day" invented by the French in 1982 and subsequently exported throughout the world. It's been held in Beijing since 2012, the product of nominal oversight and funding from the French Embassy and Institut Francais, plus a lot of mostly unpaid legwork done by volunteers, venues, and musicians on the ground to make it happen. This year, Fête de la Musique includes no fewer than 28 separate events, running from noon 'til well past midnight, mostly clustered in Gulou, but with some significant outposts in Sanlitun, Ritan, and even one out in Tongzhou. You can peruse the full schedule here. And below are the SmartBeijing picks for Fête de la Musique. Remember, though: all of these events are FREE. Aimless wandering from gig to gig is kind of the whole point of this thing.

JAZZ @ CARAVAN

For their part, Ritan Moroccan restaurant Caravan, which has been getting a lot of mileage out of the sound system they inherited from beloved Liangmaqiao rock'n'roll dive 2 Kolegas, will be hosting a Moroccan musical brunch for Fête de la Musique. Music is jazz standards and bossa nova from the duo of Pierre Pradat and Jesus Santandreu. Brunch is pitchers of Sangria, Bellinis, and more for 120rmb, and a choice four 4 dishes starting at 60rmb, including shakshuka and other Moroccan specialties currently being tested in the Caravan kitchen. RSVP by email (caravanbeijing@outlook.com) or phone (8563 0801). ***

ROCK @ MAO LIVEHOUSE

Mao, as in years past, is the center of the action for Fête de la Musique 2015. The photo above depicts confirmed Frenchman Djang San crowdsurfing at last year's finale, and his band is on the docket at Mao again, along with Maoxuewang, Luv Plastik, and French indie pop band 1984. As Mao is somewhat of a geographical center point for greater-Gulou live music, expect this one to be packed with walkups en route from points A to B, C, D, etc. ***

PUNK @ DMC

Meanwhile, waaaaay the fuck out in Tongzhou, DMC is hosting the one solid punk offering of this year's Fête. I heard that the Drunk Fest they held a few weekends back was pretty sparsely attended, but with better weather and friendlier promoters behind the bill, this could be a nice holiday Sunday to camp out at one of the city's best — because most remote, least commercial — live music dives. Solid program, including a showcase by thrash label O.S and live sets from d-beat kings D-Crash, grunge unit TOSS, and first-wave street punks The Demonstrators. Cheap beers and BBQ to boot. ***

HIP HOP @ DDC

For flyer vibes, check out DDC for a rare pairing of two of the city's most active underground hip hop promoters/MCs. Nasty Ray, he of the monthly Natural Flavor hip hop and R&B parties, will share the mic with J-Fever, who's been turning in some high-profile performances around the country lately, and is readying two 12" EPs for a late 2015 release. These guys sort of come from opposing schools of Beijing hip hop — one more flash, one more underground grit — and almost never play together. Should be an interesting mix. Maybe there'll be a b-boy battle! Joining these two is Rennes-based group Bukatribe, "tags: alternative world beatbox rap & hip-hop soul vocal". Chill! ***

FOLK @ MAI BAR

For something more relaxed, a bit classier maybe: check out Remedios the Beauty at Mai Bar. In addition to being a killer Gabriel Garcia Marquez reference, Remedios the Beauty is the stripped-down violin+guitar+vocal folk duo of Beijing-based musicians Robin Koob and Nathan Borofka. They can regularly be found around town, anywhere from established folk haunts like Jianghu and 69 Cafe, to more laowai-trending SLT joints like Home Plate. I saw them play at Juice by Melissa on Cinco de Mayo, quite a nice pairing to sipping cold-pressed watermelon margaritas outdoors. Remedios the Beauty is actually pulling double duty, playing a later set at Là-bas. I'd recommend their 6pm slot at Mai Bar for the relatively sparser audience, and, of course, for the top-notch pre-game cocktails. ***

SCHOOL BAR BANDS @ SCHOOL BAR

I have my issues with Fête de la Musique. They promote it as "Beijing Music Day", but it features very few musicians actually from Beijing. Really mostly foreigners playing this thing. Partly this is because the institutional affiliates connected with it don't allocate funds to pay all the musicians, or even the team doing the heavy lifting to make this sprawling labor of love happen each year (see below). Fête puts the onus on partner venues to compensate the acts playing from a cut of their own bar sales, as they also don't allow for there to be a ticket. This is especially hard for clubs with a mostly non-drinking/Chinese clientele like XP, which is not included in this year's Fête. School Bar, on the other hand, is packed with lushes every weekend, and is contributing one of the only all-Chinese lineups to Fête 2015. Really a great bill, including hard rockers Chinese Modern Guys, shredding hardcore band Lai See, and more. *** Well, those are my picks. Peruse the full schedule here. I also picked the brain of Fête de la Musique 2015's main director, Elie Rosenberg, on how this year's edition matches up to years past, and what he'd recommend you check out this Sunday:

SmBJ: You have almost 30 events lined up for this year's Fete de la Musique. How does this compare with years past? Is there a different theme or emphasis on the program for 2015?

: This year we have 28 venues total, which is one less than last year, but a lot of venues from last year closed. Like 2 Kolegas and Zajia, to name a few. I don't know that we want to massively increase the number of venues in the future, the important thing is to get the quality venues on board so that musicians have a good place to play, and also to try and build clusters so that people can walk from place to place to respect the original atmosphere of the Fete. In terms of themes, well, Fete de la Musique is also about representing as diverse a range of music as possible, and we never had a proper hip hop show until now. So we're having that at DDC this year. We're doing the traditional rock show at Mao again, but we made a point of putting there bands we care about, especially Luv Plastik, which has made a deep impression on our team over the past few months. Elie: I guess we did also push for a French theme at 77 Theatre, where we associated bands with different styles, but all sharing a deep connection with France. We were also pushing for Fete to be more of an outdoors party, to recreate the kind of fun we have in France, which is the main reason for us partnering this year with C!Here Art and Vintage Fair. We were hoping to have 3 outdoors events (77, C!Here and Vintage Fair), but unfortunately Vintage Fair had to cancel.

SmBJ: What are the main zones where events will be happening this year? Gulou, Sanlitun, etc?

: This year we’re mostly covering Gulou and Sanlitun. But we are making some inroads in Tongzhou with DMC, which I felt strongly about because I think there is a population there of creative people who can appreciate the concept. There are a few other islands of music with Caravan in the Ritan area, C!Here at Dongzhimen, and Capital M at Qianmen. Maybe if more interesting venues open in these areas we can try to bring the good word over there as well in the future.

SmBJ: I know Fete de la Musique is supported annually by Institut Francais and the French Embassy. Who else is involved with its organization and curation? Can you introduce the team for the day-to-day operations?

: We are a team working independently from the French Embassy, which makes us very different from all the over events in China. Our team is part of a larger French group called Jeune Chambre Économique des Français de Pékin, which has other teams covering other projects, notably related to wine and business. My team has eight people in total, who’ve been involved pretty much throughout the year. We are an international team with 4 French members, 3 Chinese, and one American. Renee is in charge of organizing the team of volunteers on the 21st. We’re going to have about 80 of them this year, so it’s a daunting task. Reejay is our Wechat guy, he also helps upload stuff on our Facebook page. Ophélie was one of the three founders of FDLM Beijing back in 2012, and she came back to give a hand this year, especially with scouting bands we liked and talking to venues. Helena has helped work with the Sanlitun venues and has also helped me with coordinating our work with the French Embassy. Will and Laurent are respectively our film and photo crew leaders, we’re so lucky to have such pros helping us! Finally, Yaodong is our sound engineer and logistics guy, he’s been amazing at helping us set up the outdoors stage (for example last year, one of my proudest moments was when Fabao came to me after his show at 2 Kolegas and told me there were only a couple festivals every year in China that could have such good sound quality, and that was all Yaodong’s work). They’ve done fantastic work, and I hope people let them know that, since we’re all volunteers and do it for the love of music. film crew leader Will Griffith doing what he does best (film bands while drunk)

SmBJ: What would you recommend as some of the highlights of this year's Fete de la Musique? What would a good roadmap through Beijing be for someone trying to see as many shows as possible?

: There is an amazing number of shows I could recommend this year. If I could only pick five, it would be first of all the show at 77 Theatre in the afternoon, which is going to be outdoors and will show some of the best of what our event stands for. Musical diversity, great musicians, passion and openness. The hip hop show at DDC will be a blast, we were lucky enough that great local musicians are participating. Of course, the show at Mao will be great, it’s a great venue and we’ve been working with them since the start here in Beijing. They get the concept and have continued to support us, so we always make a point of creating nice line-ups over there. I have to mention two places which have done a big effort this year: School Bar, they’ve lined up four great bands, and the guys at Buer Jiuguan, it’s a tiny place but they’ve got a great folk show they put together. Special mention to the Wisemann Brass Ensemble who will be playing at Capital M at 4pm, they’ll be playing some Yann Tiersen and that’s bound to be a great show as well. Elie: We’ve put together itineraries this year so that people can go see as many shows as they can according to the style of music they like, it’s on our website and on the WeChat official account. If you’re trying to see as many shows as possible, I would recommend leaving a bike in Gulou. You’d have to start at Rechenberg or Caravan, they’re starting at 12, and then take a cab to Buerjiuguan, catch a show there, bike to Chill by 3pm, then go to 77 Theatre, head to Mai Bar by 6pm, have a quick bite and go to 4 Corners, then straight to Mao and finally School. If you do that, you’ll have seen a bit of everything, and you won’t have missed both our French bands Bukatribe and 1984. And you’ll have had a nice workout too.

SmBJ: A lot of music events and outdoor programs have been canceled lately, due to various reasons, but mostly because of an increasingly sensitive political climate in Beijing. Are you worried about any of your events being canceled? Have you taken measures to prevent this?

: I’ve hinted at it above, we’ve felt the increasing difficulty to make music here as well. Some of our partner venues closed down, and, for example, this year’s partner Vintage Fair has had to cancel their event last-minute, which has been a big blow for us. Since I became director for the event, it has been one of my concerns, and I’ve met with lawyers and talked with people at the French Embassy to try and find solutions to make sure Fete de la Musique can be sustainable, become an institution of sorts, with a real legal basis and support from the right places, but it’s a delicate subject and so far we haven’t made real progress. For us, the important thing is that partner venues try to have good relationships with their neighbors and local government representatives, and warn them early enough for the outdoor shows. Unfortunately at this point there is not much more we can do, there is always a degree of uncertainty and it does not look like it will go away anytime soon.

SmBJ: Anything else you want to add?

: Please pray with me it doesn't rain on Sunday. Get on our WeChat account (@fdlm_621) and share the love. *** Find the full lowdown on Fete de la Musique + associated venues and artists at their website or WeChat account.