This week Ferrara celebrates the 20th Buskers Festival. For seven days straight, every night the medieval town center will be invaded by a few hundred street performers coming from all over the world and playing the most amazing instruments and music styles. It’s like the whole town became a giant stage 50 acres wide, surrounded by monuments and typical shops and shared by many parallel concerts. If all those performances were to be executed one after the other, they would continue uninterrupted for over 100 days.
I’m lucky enough to be currently on vacation, so in past few days I have walked the city center several times. Walking through the massive crowd is usually exhausting, not to mention finding a good spot where you can actually see artists in addition to hear them, but since this week the weather has been so-so, there was less people than normal and this helped. The problem is there’s so much to see that I’m completely overwhelmed. I’d like to give attention to many more artists but you either stop listening something or you wander all night without actually listening anything, which is what I want to avoid.
Among the many artists that I have appreciated so far, the most impressive are Gabriel Delta and the Hurricanes from Argentina (latin blues, swing, r&b with Stevie Ray Vaughan influx), The Fellowship of the Strings from Australia (celtic folk, sort of Loreena McKennit meets Abba), Erika Biavati & the Clan from Italy (blues, Mina and more great female voices), Lou-d Cage from Italy (percussions, including improbable home-made instruments and experimental stuff, very funny), The Moonlovers from Belgium (rockabilly), Gitárduál from Hungary (classical music with two acoustic guitars).
See Fabio’s photo gallery for more beautiful pictures.
