This is our second piece about boats in as many days, but with Malta sweltering right now, all thoughts turn to water. Having been stuck in the 1pm rush hour from Valletta today, with my son singing ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go out in the Midday Sun’ behind me, I can tell you I was pleased to get this cool news when I got home and checked mail…

Malta Jazz Festival Cruises
I can think of fewer better ways to spend a sultry July night in Malta than listening to some world-class jazz with a cool breeze from sea enveloping me. If that appeals to you too, then listen up, because booking’s just opened for a places on a Turkish Gulet, the Hera, which is running Malta Jazz Festival (15,16,17 July) evening cruises of Grand Harbour with a buffet included.

Those veteran Jazz Festival goers among us will have seen the boats anchor up each year for one of the most memorable seats in town. The Hera is a sponsor of the festival, so has its rightful place among the craft that are bound to jostle along the wharf near us landlubbers and the stage. Even if you’re not on board, the yachts bobbing nearby make the setting uniquely Malta Jazz.

Booking Details
Tickets are €50. The package includes a 45-minute cruise of Grand Harbour taking in the sunset, and a cold buffet and welcome drink.

Departure from Sliema Ferries opposite Burger King/ Nazzarenu Church.

Time 8.00pm – 11.30pm
Price €50 per night
Transport included.

For further details, e-mail:
info@heracruises.com or call +356 21330583/ 21347483

To book, call 79445448

Fancy a festa? If you do, then there are plenty to choose from, several each weekend across the Maltese Island throughout the summer from June – September. Some main ones are here below, but for the full diary, see, Malta & Gozo Parish Feasts 2010. Each festa has its own flavour, so ask around, for example, for the best for fireworks (perhaps Mqabba for sheer volume and Lija for aesthetics), or the most authentic, rowdy, village-like, religious and so on.

• Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Zejtun – Third Sunday of June
• Saint George, Qormi – Last Sunday of June
• Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Mnarja), Nadur, Gozo – 29th June
• Saint Joseph, Msida – Sunday following 16th July
• Saint Sebastian, Qormi – Third Sunday of July
• Saint Venera, Santa Venera – Last Sunday of July
• Saint Gaetan, Hamrun – Sunday following 7th August

I write this to the constant boom of fireworks both from my village and from a neighbouring one. Malta & Gozo’s summer festa season has begun big time. And there’s no getting away from festas, love them or hate them. People I speak to tend to fall into one of three categories in their attitude to festas:

1. Love them - relish the noise, colour, fireworks, excuse to meet friends, the mêlée, the fast food, nougat, bands, heat, sweaty faces, and the religious regalia everywhere…

2. Just see them (tourists’ view) – a quaint, weird, fun, in-your-face, tradition of Malta with amazing fireworks, so ‘must-see’ at least one good one while on holiday here.

3. Hate them – and all that goes with them such as traffic and parking chaos, roads blocked, noise (above the senseless noise of petards), and the fact that in some parishes, the religious origins are superseded by excess and rowdiness.

Island visitors seem the most middle ground in their views. Well, they aren’t subjected to non-stop festas for three or more months. Locals don’t tend to be middle ground about festas – it’s an all or nothing affair with us mostly.

What are Festas or Parish Feasts anyway?
They celebrate the day of the parish patron saint. But tend to last around a week to 10-days and involve weeks of build up and work. For a flavour of what festa is, see our article Saints and Street Parties.

Verdict: They are colourful – fireworks and the characters you see milling around at them. So for that alone, find a festa this summer, at least one, and enjoy it for what it is. A good time had by all in the community, with a statue of a saint involved somewhere!

Photo: Leslie Vella

Malta Arts Festival is summer at its best on the Islands. It’s a concentrated three weeks of eclectic entertainment from the thought-provoking and classical to the light hearted and thoroughly contemporary. As usual, it’s a blend of homegrown and overseas cultural talent and this year’s programme of Malta’s premier summer cultural event has a very Mediterranean flavour. But there are Slavic and Swedish overtones too and a dash of science meets art as well.

Over the best part of three weeks, you can treat yourself to an exquisite melting pot of music, theatre, dance, visual arts and more. The last week blends with that other international flavoured event, the Malta Jazz Festival, 15-17 July.

Malta Arts Festival is to Malta what the Avignon theatre festival is to Provence (indeed all France and the world of theatre) and the Edinburgh Festival is internationally to new talent and performance genres of the world. Our festival is becoming set in stone as ‘the’ event in our cultural calendar and there’s no reason why it won’t in time cut the mustard with Europe’s renowned festivals.

Malta’s private sector is fantastic at bringing in big name acts and cult DJs, but it falls to the Islands’ public sector to pays the lion’s share of funding the annual July Arts Festival.

And rightly so. We need Malta Arts each year because it opens our eyes and minds to cultures and cultural forms that we’d rarely get the chance to savour here – apart from online. Wayne Marshall conducting and the Shakespeare Globe Theatre’s touring group are not to be missed. Some events in the programme are not big budget nor field big names, but they are no less inspiring.

The Malta Arts Festival is special for many reasons. World class artists, postcard settings, world heritage contexts, a journey for the heart, the head, the eyes. And sometimes, the feet.

At around Euro 15 a ticket for a great night out, there’s no excuse not to go to a couple of events on the programme.

Photo [bottom]: Fiona Moorhead, courtesy of the Globe, London.

The countries around the Mediterranean basin have more in common that just olives, limestone and sun. They nearly all have a rich culture of traditional music; a kind of homespun, vibrant, village, folkloristic and often impromptu musical heritage. This music, along with contemporary off-shoots of the traditional genres, is celebrated, now annually, in Malta’s Ghanafest held in Argotti Gardens, Floriana, 4-6 June and organised by the Malta Council for Culture & the Arts.

Ghanafest 2010 is once again more than simply three evenings renditions’ of Malta’s traditional Ghana. The programme sees groups and performers from Tunisia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt and Malta. The event is an eclectic blend of Arabic, Andalusian, Egyptian and Balkan beats and rhythms. From Malta, we see a variety of locally renowned Ghana musicians and singers as well as Maltese hip-hop from No Bling Show.

For the uninitiated or just plain curious, the festival is a wonderful opportunity to come to grips with Maltese Ghana in its various forms. If you know Ghana at all, you are probably familiar with the high-pitch singing, but that is just one form. Ghana covers: ‘Spirtu Pront’ (quick-wit), an improvised form of song duel (extremely difficult to perform yet done raucously and flawlessly by a few real professionals); ‘Tal-Fatt’ (factual), a composed narrative that may be fictional or based on true events; and ‘Fil-Għoli’ (high-pitched), a style of singing on a high vocal register.

Ghanafest itself promises three nights of all-round Mediterranean musical fun, and it all takes place in the magical night-time setting of Argotti Gardens perched on the bastions. It goes without saying that this is a family affair. There’s an artisan fair and Maltese food on offer, as well as a series of workshops on traditional instruments and a special programme for children.

This year’s edition of the festival is dedicated to Maltese folk guitarist Indri Brincat (il-Pupa) who passed away on the 24th of March 2010. Indri Brincat was also a renowned guitar maker.

Programme: see the Ghanafest website.

Festival Info
The Festival runs over three evenings, 4-6 June from 19:00, Argotti Gardens, Floriana – within walking distance from Valletta.
Tickets: €2 available at the door.
Parking available at the Floriana Boy Scouts headquarters, right next to the venue.

For more on Ghana, see Wikipedia.

Malta Council for Culture & the Arts

Photo: Ghanafest ‘07 performer. Photo by Jeremy de Maria, courtesy of MCCA.

This weekend sees two events ideal for all-round family fun – the Malta International Fireworks Festival, 29-30 April, over Grand Harbour, and on a totally different note, the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Spring Fair at Palazzo Parisio, Naxxar on Sunday 2nd May.

We covered last year’s Fireworks’ Festival, here. The write up will give you the info you need on where to watch from, and also a low-down on what to expect. Although last year our correspondent had a few words to say about the long wait between displays. I am sure the technical hitches will have been ironed out this time round – after all, the event is in its 9th year, so practice must have made perfect on how to set the blessed fireworks off!

Festival starts an hour or so after dusk – seemed to be around 9pm last night, soft launch night. If you want pole position, plan well ahead – park a good distance away (Floriana chock a block last night by 8pm). So prepare to walk a bit! More details here.

I’ve been to the last two SPCA Fairs (Spring and the Xmas one held in mid November) with my son who loved them both. The spring fair has plenty to keep kids occupied – small farm set up with ponies, sheep, goats and so on, and animals to pet, like special breed rabbits. You can buy a bucket of mixed fruit and veg to feed some of the animals. Hand washing facilities at the farm section entrance, though take your own wipes as well!

Kids also love the fairground fun, like throw-the-wet-sponge-at -mum stall! And I remember a lucky dip, and sort of coconut shy as well. Highlights include the numerous local crafts’ stall but the homemade cake and preserves stall is the place to head for first as its goodies sell out quickly! You’ll find it upstairs in the ballroom at the end. Very brave of Palazzo P to let masses of us public crowd into its prized rooms. Take in the gardens too – a joy this time of year…

Fair Times: 10.00 – 18.00, Sunday 2nd May. Details on Facebook.

Photo: courtesy Andrew Galea Debono

This is a cake designed to appeal to kids, or the kid in us adults. While Christmas cakes are ice-rink smooth perfection, the prinjolata, which starts appearing in cafés and confectioners in late January and therefore well before carnival, is a mound of mess. Splattered with melted chocolate, pine nuts and glacé cherries glowing neon artificial green and red, the prinjolata is like a kids’ art session crossed with a Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake.

Its name comes from prinjol, pine nut, which is similar to the Italian word, pinoli. But pine nuts seem to be just a bit of decoration. The cake itself, which can be a counter-top mountain (as in the St James’ Cavalier café), is made of cream, sponge, citrus peel and biscuits. It has a substantial calorie count with its condensed milk and a bit of a boozy bite to it with its Vermouth content.

My son drools when he sees it. I have to say my stomach turns at its grotesque carnival appearance. But I do admit that it is the epitomé of pre-Lent excess and puts the Protestant Shrove Tuesday pancake in the shade. The prinjolata certainly does use up any fattening ingredients that might be in the store cupboard.

If you feel like giving it a go at home, this seems a good recipe source for it. Decorating it could make for a fun mid-term activity with the kids. If you fancy tasting it, cafés sell it by the slice, and some places have smaller, almost individual-sized plated domes of it for sale. You’ll need a sweet tooth to enjoy it; seeing it is the greater pleasure I think.

Photo: Peter Grima [Know Malta]

Carnival is on the horizon. If you’ve children, carnival seems to happen almost back to back with Christmas and New Year as kids always leap at the next chance to have a holiday. So, with around three weeks to go, I am being told of local shops with costumes for hire and pestered about hiring one now, should the best be gone by the time I bother.

Carnival’s history in Malta is well documented here. It was a key festivity in the religious calendar in Malta under the Knights of St John. While encouraged at first, its growing licentiousness, rowdiness, brawls and wild festivities in general made some Grand Masters curtail and even censure it in various periods.

Certainly, it has included elements that might make today’s kids pale as they make their annual and harmless trek mid-term to Valletta to see the floats in their ‘grand défilé, with the King Carnival pride of place. You’ll find the 2010 Carnival Programme (12-16 Feb) here. Carnival is centred on Valletta, where the city gate was demolished in the late 1950s, as urban legend has it, to build one high and wide enough for floats to pass through!

Some aspects of the darker sides of carnival’s history – the macabre, lewd and grotesque – live on. The Nadur carnival in Gozo, is one of the only surviving spontaneous (rather than totally organised) carnivals today, and definitely includes some blacker moments, though probably none as vicious as those in the times of the Knights. Last year’s did see some of the revellers, who had dressed as nuns and one as Jesus, hauled up in the courts for violating a ban on villifying the Catholic Religion. The case spawned a Facebook group calling on lots of people to go to the Nadur carnival this year dressed as Jesus.

If you do delve into the history of Malta’s carnival though, you’ll find the debate about its returning to its roots (whatever they really were) has come up time and again over the centuries. No single era seems to have harnessed carnival and avoided its propensity to surprise, defy, and live on!

For children though, carnival is an annual and predictable event. It’s a time to not wear school uniform, and to eat a gooey mound of prinjolata (a carnival-time cake of sponge, cream, citrus peel, glace fruits, biscuits and more calorific things) and to enjoy the organised processions in Valletta.

Photo: Courtesy of Valletta Suites

Notte Bianca isn’t the only weekend a year it’s worth visiting Valletta to get a cultural fix. You know autumn has set in, chillier evenings aside, when Valletta venues start packing in the events. And this weekend is no exception. We’ve done a quick round-up of some of the highlights that are worth heading to il-Belt for this Sunday. Halloween flavoured of course, but with some music and drama thrown in. Whether you’re going to the capital for morning coffee and newspapers or a post-prandial stroll and tea, try to make time for, and support, something cultural while you’re there.

The First Malta Comic Book Convention

31 October – 1 November
Entry: €7 per day, €12 both days. Children under 11 enter for free.
This is history in the making as it’s the first such convention held in Malta. A friend’s daughter, who is participating with her own art work, is ‘very excited’ to be rubbing shoulders with David Lloyd who did the art for the comic versions of “V for Vendetta”, “Time Bandits” and the “Dr Who” magazine which is published in the USA. That gives you a flavour of what’s in store. Just about everything to do with comics is going to be showcased at the two-day event. Other comic industry names include: Staz Johnson (Spider Man, Wolverince); Mike Collins (Doomsday, American Gothic); Yanick Paquette (X-Men, Superman); and Brian Bolland (Batman, Wonder Woman); and Sean Azzopardi (Twelve Hour Shift). Full details, see St James Cavalier website.

Scream for Halloween

Sunday 1 November: midday, 3pm & 6pm shows. Price euro 10.
Kids’ drama performance at St James Cavalier, billed as ‘the original Malta-Made Musical Monster Show’; suitable for kids aged 6. As with almost all drama aimed at youngsters these days in Malta, tickets for this sold like hot cakes. So much so in fact that there’s now an extra performance Sunday 1 November at midday. So it’s still worth checking for availability if you thought you’d missed out. See St James Cavalier website or call the box office: 2122 3200

Valletta Waterfront Halloween

Every Saturday and Sunday from 1-4pm, the Waterfront hosts family entertainment and street animation. This Sunday 1st Nov. should be taking on a Halloween guise. See vallettawaterfront.com for more info.

And now for something different…

St Catherine of Italy Chapel – Sunday morning concerts

Sunday 1 November: Baroque Jewels for Flute & Harpsichord.
Works by: Valentine; Telemann; Vivaldi; & Blavet.
Entrance: free, but Euro 5 donation appreciated.
Don’t forget about this gem of chapel and its wonderful lunchtime concert programme that’s become a regular winter feature, running Thursdays at 12.30 and Sundays at 11am. Details from St James Cavalier.

This weekend sees the annual Malta International Choir Festival (30 Oct – 1 Nov). Annabel Mallia is a veteran of the competition, but even for her, this year is a whole new challenge. Here, she talks about what goes into the event and why it’s a delight for the audience.

‘This is an intensive period’ reads the memo from our conductor, Hugo Agius Muscat, and it certainly is with something going on six out of the seven days which end in a ‘Grand Closing Concert and Prize Giving’ on Sunday 1 November at 5.30pm at the Catholic Institute, Floriana. Nineteen choirs will be taking part in the event, including three choirs from Malta. The international contingents come from Germany, Bosnia Herzegovina, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia.

My choir is St Paul’s Choral Society and we have been practicing for weeks. We are going to sing five pieces a capella; unaccompanied. We will feel very exposed, standing on the large stage at St Publius Church, Floriana, at 1pm Saturday, singing pieces in Russian, Latin, Italian and English not only unaccompanied but off-by-heart: bringing our music is strictly forbidden by Hugo. It certainly makes for a better performance if we all know the pieces perfectly and can then watch the conductor rather than bury our faces in our scores and ignore his frantic arm-waving. And we do know the pieces well; we’ve even been coached in Russian pronunciation by the Russian daughter-in-law of one of the choristers.

A highlight for us is meeting the other choirs and having the opportunity to sing with them all together in the spectacular setting of St John’s Cathedral on the Saturday at 8pm. We’ll be nearly 600 choristers in total, all ’singing together for peace’; it’s a moving, hopeful and uplifting joining of people from different walks of life, different beliefs and nationalities: our common and binding interest being the making of music, sacred and secular.

We have studied and we want to do well. But as the event dawns, the worries set in: will the other choirs be full-time professionals, or are they like us – housewives, architects, bankers, doctors, students and teachers? They are on holiday in Malta; we have to fit in our commitments to the competition around the routine of work and family. It’s an ambitious challenge and may the best choir win!

More Info
For more info, and to download a detailed programme of the event see: Malta Council for Culture & the Arts

It’s that time of year for festivals. Last weekend was Valletta’s show with its Notte Bianca; this weekend we cross Grand Harbour for the Birgu Festival (Vittoriosa) which runs 9-11 October. Autumn is for festivals what summer is for festas. Yes, there’s a difference – in brief, festas are religious in origin; festivals are more about pageantry and celebrating a locality’s uniqueness, be it in history, crafts, food, traditions or whatever.

The BirguFest isn’t something just dreamed up. It’s a fixed event now, having been around on and off since 1990. For those interested in a blow-by-blow account of how it became one of Malta’s best loved, most attended and colourful festivals, there’s a full history of it on the Birgu Local Council website. So, we’ll keep the background short…

Why the BirguFest?

To quote the local council, “BirguFest is an extravaganza highlighting Birgu’s glorious past and celebrating Malta’s oldest maritime city”. Today, people have a far better understanding of the importance of Birgu in Malta’s history – its landmark, Fort St Angelo, saw off the Saracen’s Great Siege of Malta in 1565. But, until the early ’90s, most of the Three Cities area, including Birgu, was somewhat in the doldrums; run-down, neglected, off the tourist trail and associated with industrial Malta (dockyards). The Birgu festival was born in part from the need to focus attention on the area’s amazing wealth of heritage and to heighten awareness of what the city has to offer locals and visitors. And it has done just that, most successfully; thanks also to an energetic Birgu mayor.

Highlights of BirguFest 2009

The programme is extensive with open-air events, historical reenactments, street theatre, concerts (everything from choral to traditional and ethnic-inspired music), state museums and palaces open to the public beyond regular hours, and historical street scenes replete with hawkers of traditional Maltese foods.

Each day’s programme starts between 09.00 – 09.30 and runs till the early hours. Given the expected crowds, official parking is being organised (so follow the signs – see the Birgu Council website for info). There is lot to entertain families, with kids no doubt appreciating the reenactments that include scenes from the time of the Great Siege, such as life in the Dominican Priory, the Turks discussing battle plans, and the reaction of poor, local folk to impending invasion!

Don’t miss!

Tribali – Malta’s anarchic, ethnically-inspired band has a huge following, so don’t miss this last chance to see them in 2009. The concert is at the Birgu Bastions in Couvre Portre, which will be candlelit for the occasion. Doors open at 7pm and tickets are 12 Euros (in advance), 17 Euros at the door and 25 Euros for VIP tickets which include an after part at D Centre in Birgu. Tickets on sale at all Puma shops or D’Centre in Birgu, or see: www.jaggedhouse.com. For more information call ticket hotline 99017470 or email: dcentrebirgu@gmail.com.

‘Birgu by Candlelight’, on Saturday 10th, 18.30 onwards, promises to be a magical and atmospheric event. Streets are lit as they would have been before electric lights, thanks to Vittoriosa residents doing their bit and positioning candles and lanterns everywhere they can.

The Jackson Pipe Band, from 19.30 on Saturday in various streets. The Jackson family band plays traditional Maltese instruments including a kind of bagpipe. There is a remarkable story behind this family group.

Info

Full programme and background, see: http://www.birgu.gov.mt

Photo: Andrew Galea Debono

Postscript: Birgu or Vittoriosa? Birgu is the local name for the city which the knights named Citta’ Vittoriosa after its role in the victorious defeat of the Saracens at the 1565 Great Siege.