Music in the mountains

Last night I was invited to attend a jazz festival in a nearby town in the Pyrenees Mountains. The town we went to is a small town not far from the town of Alp. Being August, the whole of Spain – maybe even Europe – seems to have packed up and gone on holiday. Barcelona is full of visitors. I think that English is the language I hear the most at the moment. The European tourists speak English to their Spanish hosts too.

Locomotora Negra

The small towns in the mountains are also full of visitors – just not international ones. A number of wealthy Barcelona residents have holidays homes in the mountains. These little towns are no different to the cities. Fiesta Fiesta Fiesta. The town I went to last night is called Bolvir. It is a small town which has grown incredibly in the last 20 years – when all the city slickers have snatched up second / holiday homes in the mountains. The new buildings are made of stone and wood so they blend well with the antique look of the town. A walk through the town is like stepping back in time...

So we arrived in the plaza (town square) to find the jazz band on stage, hundreds of people both seated and standing in between the old buildings around the square and spotlights aimed at the stage. The band is called “Locomotora Negra” (Black locomotive). It is 40 years old and happened to be playing at the local musical festival of the town of Bolvir to coincide with the band's anniversary. The band is well known in these parts for its classical jazz. It was belting out Louis Armstrong numbers and Duke Ellington numbers. All back from the 1950s. Lots of American Jazz. Great sounds. The band even sang in English, some of the jazz songs which were vocalised. The other songs were mainly instrumental ones. I was impressed. The atmosphere was great inside the plaza - with good classical jazz being belted out, song after song. Later, it became a bit cool though. Reaching 12 degrees ! That is a far cry from the canned heat in the city of Barcelona – which is hot, both day and night.