Traditional Music Groups

The Festival Paivascapes # 1 pays special attention to traditional music from the Paiva river valley. This region retains ancestral forms of music and orality, such as the groups of “tocadores, ” acoustical groups that continue to animate the traditional dance parties, or challenge singing groups (a form of improvised singing accompained by accordeon, that in the region is called “cantar o fado”). Many of these groups have been extensively recorded by Binaural / Nodar for a documentation project on the acoustical, oral and musical heritage of the region.

The three groups invited to the festival are also representative of various parts of the course of the Paiva river: “Grupo de Concertinas Terras do Demo” Vila Nova de Paiva (near the source of the river) Orquestra “Sons of Beira Alta”, from the villages of parada de Ester, Cetos, Reriz, Picão and Mós (in the middle valley of the Paiva) and Orquestra “Finfas de Paradela” of Nespereira, Cinfães (near Alvarenga, close to the mouth of the Paiva).