Week #2017.12 on SébPhilatélie

Friday 24 March: Election of the best musical stamp of 2016.
The International Philatelic Music Study Group, based in Germany, organised every year an election, opened to every one, of the best musical stamp of the previous year.

From ancient instruments in Peru...

The stamps in competition can be watched there and the participation file is over here. Advantages of the membership are explained on this page.

... to the public enjoying festivals on print-on-demand stamps of Faroe Islands.

Sunday 26 March: Philatelic exhibition at the Algerian Cultural Center in Paris.
The French and the Algerian governments seem to wish celebrating quietly, each on its side, the 55th anniversary of the 19 March 1962 ceasefire - or "victory day" for the soon to be independent Algeria.

The French commemorative stamp of March 2017: the monument displaying victims of the Algerian Civil War, Quai Branly, Paris (via Phil-Ouest.com).

France issued a discreet stamp... so discreet no politicians catched it during a hated and unpredictable presidential campaign. That is surprising because the date to mark the end of the Algerian Independence War is refused by French rapatriates and surviving harkis (the Algerian soldiers of the French army): killings still happened between the many sides of this civil war until the next November.

The 8th anniversary of the beginning of the "Algerian Revolution" - or for the French the "Bloody All Saint's Day" (Memory and History, a final secondary school exam subject in France), is at the beginning of the exhibition proposed by the Algerian Cultural Center in Paris.

On the Algerian philatelic side, apart from stamps on battles against the French colonisation since 1830, Sihem Lakhdari, Director of the postage stamp and philately of Algérie Poste, introduced by a conference at the Algerian Cultural Center, Paris, an exhibition on the philately of Algeria since 1962.

Her speech detailed the history of the first independently created stamp of the Algerian postal administration, nicknamed "1+9" because of his important donation to a benevolent cause. Issued on the 1st of November 1962, it commemorated the first general attacks against French people and interests in Algeria.

And replaced the French metropolitan stamps overprinted "E.A." for "État algérien" (Algerian State) hastily created the previous July for the declaration of independence. You can discover their story in an article by Raoul Michau and Michel Soulie, dowloadable in the special issue of the journal of the Montpellier Philatelic Association, published May 2015.