Marc Poirier, the Par-en-Bas festival’s artistic director, moved to southwestern Nova Scotia last year and says he was struck by the Acadian culture and heritage of the Municipality of Argyle.

“And it’s such a beautiful area that it should be on everybody’s agenda,” he said.

Originally from Moncton, Poirier accumulated much experience working with festivals in New Brunswick. In mid-January he began his job as artistic director of what used to be four separate Acadian festivals in Yarmouth County.

The new festival will be held over a two-and-a-half-week period from July 11 to July 27, with a variety of activities to be held throughout the Par-en-Bas area, from an official opening ceremony in Tusket and an opening-night concert in West Pubnico to the closing-night show in Wedgeport.

“We’re basically set to go,” Poirier said in an interview at the end of June. “Right now it’s just going through the little technical (details), tying the ends of the different strings that are going to make this festival happen.”

The new, larger festival brings together activities that previously were held as part of Acadian festivals in Ste-Anne-du-Ruisseau, West Pubnico, Wedgeport and Amirault’s Hill.

While organizers of the events in those villages may have been accustomed to doing their own thing, Poirier said, “In the end, in the broader spectrum of things, there’s a lot of willingness to work together, to get the different Acadian communities in the Argyle area to work more together for the bigger picture.”

As for what the festival has to offer, music is a major component, with several concerts planned in addition to the opening-night show at the Village historique (under a huge tent) and the closing-night outdoor concert at the school grounds in Wedgeport.

Musicians from southwestern Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and elsewhere have been lined up for the festival, including Zachary Richard of Louisiana.

“This guy’s got like a 40-year career almost and the bigger (Acadian) groups like 1755, they all look up to him,” Poirier said of Richard. “Back when they started at the end of the seventies, he had already amassed quite a following.”

Poirier notes that francophone/Acadian music can vary in style.

“This festival is a prime example of that because you have everything from rock and roll to African rhythms to blues to straight-up Acadian jigs,” he said.

Particularly interested in getting young people involved, he hopes the music will help accomplish this.

The festival is about more than music, though, and the inaugural Par-en-Bas festival will include some of the same activities that were held when the four Yarmouth County festivals were separate events.

“It was also important to keep that grassroots feel, to have those (activities) like the fishing tournament and the historical workshops and the arts and crafts and all that,” Poirier said.

The Par-en-Bas festival’s last day (July 27) will be the day after Clare’s Acadian festival begins.

“It’s kind of like a relay of the torches for the Acadian events in southwest Nova Scotia,” Poirier said, “and that’s one of the great things, I think…for those two festivals to work together, just to kind of create this great big smorgasbord of activities.”