The Med 23 Festival is back this summer in the south of Portugal and the music with its healing force is the great attraction from Thursday, June 29 to Sunday, July 2.
The relaxed atmosphere of Loulé, a small town in the Algarve region and host of the event, will be upside down for four days. This city of 70 thousand inhabitants opens its welcoming arms and hosts one of the most complete, least pretentious, and most affordable world music festivals in Europe.
This is a party of the arts that includes from cinema, painting, handicrafts, gastronomy, and literature. Indeed, the nineteenth edition of the Med Festival is a meeting of musical cultures, with emphasis on the Portuguese-speaking world.
The lineup of the festival, at first glance, does not seem to have striking names. However, many days you will find nice surprises when the first musical chords begin to sound on the four main stages (Matriz, Cerca, Castello, Chafariz) scattered throughout the historic center of the city.
Italy brings the cadence of Nicola Conte and the seductive charm of Bandadriatica. In the meantime, Brazil offers Bia Ferreira, a great performer and social activist and a talented pianist named Amaro Freitas.
Neighboring Spain provides danceable beats with La Sra. Tomasa while Caamaño & Amexeiras, feature violin, accordion, and vocals rooted in Galician tradition.
This is a very small sample of the music to come, which also presents higher profile artists such as Nancy Vieira (Cape Verde) and husband and wife duet Amadou & Mariam (Mali).
Paulo Carvalho da Silva is the artistic director of the event and does a wonderful job in the selection of artists. Paulo has a sixth sense in choosing groups and artists that will surprise you.
Paulo has a few cards up his sleeves, such as the promised inclusion of the group Poil Ueda, an experimental mix of progressive rock and other genres. In fact, there are some provoking names such as the Jamaican Horace Andy and the Japanese duet Tomoro.
Festival Med is a celebration of musical diversity, a promoter of the union of peoples and tolerance. During these musical encounters in the cobblestone streets of Loulé, the spectator realizes that there are more things that unite us than those that do not separate us, despite the barriers of languages and cultures.
Every day at Festival Med, there are about 17 performances that start around eight o’clock in the evening. All the concerts are synchronized in schedules so that the spectator can make the most of all of them.
At 7:30pm on the first night of the festival, the Portuguese group Duo Guirimbadu will open the festival and the music will continue with the performance by Onipa (Ghana & United Kingdom) at 1:30 in the morning.
The big party at Loulé is about to begin!
More information at festivalmed.cm-loule.pt/en/
Author: Rafael Mieses
