Festival Previews Video Blog

On the 25th January Scotland celebrates the 250th Anniversary of its national bard.  Continuing the celebrations into late Spring, the Burns an ‘A That Festival kicks off in Ayrshire with a superb offering of themed Scottish work to a dedicated festival audience.  Featuring both local and international artists, the Festival enjoys a weeks long programme of peotry, music, dance, whisky tasting and debates.

With such a milestone heralding 2009 there has been a dirth of marketing and propeganda and much commentating.  Jenny Hjul’s excellent article in The Sunday Times entitled, “Beware Salmond’s bid to hijack our cultural festival” proved a most interesting read.  Her article highlights the Nationalists’ offer to fund and “promote Scottish themed work”. On first reading this is a superb offer for any artist performing Scottish themed work.  But as Jenny Hjul writes, such selective funding may be viewed as political manoeuvrings by the Scottish National Party and you have to question, what about funding the rest of the arts?

Like Chaucer, Burns was a great moralist for all his worldly ways.  His eye for detail and the ability to capture with absolute sincerity, natures unfathomed dialogue, reveals what a genius he was.  As the year’s celebrations unfold, we have yet to see what the Burns An ‘A That Festival will showcase in May.  But for now we’re off to our local village hall to celebrate his birth with the most humblest of foods - the haggis!

Have a great Burns Night!

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Portugal brims with medieval monasteries, exquisite castles and elaborate frescoes that date from the 12th and 13th centuries.  An interesting side note is the Anglo-Portugese Alliance (termed, The Treaty of Windsor) which was signed in 1373 and apparently is the longest-standing alliance currently in the world today.  I digress…

Today Portugal has a rich heritage of local festas, romarias/pilgrimages and carnivals.  Within this deeply Catholic country every village and town has a patron saint which is lovingly honoured and exquisitely celebrated with great gusto.  In fact Portugal is THE FESTIVAL COUNTRY OF THE WORLD and the wearing of “Bread Hats” at the Festa das Fogaceiras symbolises thanks and guardianship to their honoured patron, St. Sebastian.

The Festa das Fogaceiras is held in Santa Maria De Feira on the 20th of January every year.  Dominating the skyline is the magnificent Santa Maria de Feira’s castle with its four beautifully domed towers.   The Festa celebrates a vow taken by St. Sebastian during the sixteenth century when a plague beset the local village.  It is said that St. Sebastian cured the villagers and promised to ward off any future infectious diseases.

The Fogaceiras are the young of the village who walk down the street dressed in white with decorated baskets filled with cakes and breads that sit atop their heads. These “bread hats” symbolise favourable harvests and bountiful produce bringing well-being and good health to the peoples of the village for the coming year.

With the traditional religious festivals dominating the geography of Portugal, new festivals such as music, film, food and event festivals help boost tourism within the larger populous areas.  Common to all festivities are the local wines and traditional breads which make celebrating festivals in Portugal such a wonderful social events for all ages and all communities.

Straddling the borders between Germany, France, Luxembourg and The Netherlands we’re off to Belgium to look at one of their more crazy festivals.  The Bommel Festival takes place in Ronse, a small textile town south of Ghent with a population of about twenty-four thousand people.   Lying in the beautiful Flemish Provence of East Flanders, Ronse’s towns folk are bilingual, being both  Walloon and Flemish speakers.

Today the towns folk dress up in large elaborate costumes depicting all kinds of figures wearing grand masks.  They process along a route bumping into each other and knocking each other senseless which must be hilariously funny to watch.  Held on the first Saturday that follows Epiphany, it’s more affectionately  called “Crazy Monday” .

This festival has evolved from deeper traditions as the town of Ronse is more famous for the Church of Saint Hermes.  In the ninth century the relics of St. Hermes came into Ronse.  Viking raids forced the local monks to leave town more than once and the monastery was burnt down. When the relics were recovered they were housed in a Romanesque crypt and later the St. Hermes Church was built on top of the crypt.  St. Hermes was known to be able to cure mental illnesses and pilgrims sought his cleansing power from their torturous ailments.

You can check out more about the Bommel Festival (English version).  Visit Flanders is also worth a scout around as there is more to this country than meets the eye.