This orchestra is quite a spectacle. It’s wild, anarchic and intoxicating. The costumes and make-up bring a world of crazy totemic figures to life. The offbeat, loud music emanates from homemade gourd instruments (cougourdons, or bottle gourds). The project draws on the folk carnival of Nice, which dates back to the thirteenth century. A staple of the parades until the 1960s was the peculiar 'Vespa' orchestra, which means 'wasp' in both Occitan and Italian. Even back then, its instruments were made from pumpkins, a type of local gourd. La Vespa used these to accompany the cycle of darkness, when spirits rose from the earth to visit the living.