Perspectives on Festivals

The phenomenon of “festivals” has been problematised by scholars from different disciplines of the social sciences, mainly related to event management and tourism studies (Getz Reference Getz2010; Mair Reference Mair2019; and many others). In addition, during the past decade, four scholarly journals in popular music studies and ethnomusicology dedicated special issues to festivals: Flath, Beate, Adam Behr and Martin Cloonan (Reference Flath, Behr and Cloonan2019); Laville (Reference Laville2014); Moreno Fernández (Reference Moreno Fernández2019b); Spencer Espinosa (Reference Spencer Espinosa2020).

As the scholars mentioned above point out, there is no generally accepted definition or typology of “festivals,” and the meaning of the term is distinct in different languages. In modern English, the term primarily denotes sacred or secular celebrations or periodically recurring festive events. Donald Getz, who pioneered the systematisation of festival studies, points out that the term “festival” has been “overused and misused” as it has been associated with commercially oriented public entertainment (Reference Getz2012:51). He broadly defines festivals as regularly held “themed, public celebrations” (Getz Reference Getz2012:51–52). In a more recent definition, Judith Mair emphasises the importance of festivals to the communities that hold them, as privileged sites for social interaction, fostering feelings of belonging and sharing among festivalgoers and local residents (Reference Mair2019:4–5). As these and other authors have shown, festivals can be single or multi-site, for profit or not, and can include a competitive component, featuring a local, regional, national, or transnational cultural dimension. Many are place-based, showcasing cultural practices and legacies through multiple performative acts such as music, dance, or parades. Music festivals can focus on one or several genres, musical instruments, or the legacy of a musician.

Increasingly, events named “festivals” are “modern constructions” promoted by local authorities, entrepreneurs, and communities to serve economic, touristic, ideological, social, or political purposes (Stoeltje Reference Stoeltje and Bauman1992:261). Many are mobilised in urban regeneration and rural development, place-marketing, and tourist promotion. Funded by local governments and/or private enterprises, a growing number of music festivals are institutionalised and professionalised. As ethnomusicologist Owe Ronström suggests, “festivals can be read as a ‘form of cultural production’” that has developed into a major cultural industry with a significant impact on the cultural economy, and on the music represented, formatting repertoires, as well as the behaviour of musicians and audiences (Reference Ronström2016:72, 76).

Since the mid-1980s, and especially following the integration of the country into the EEC in 1986, Portugal has witnessed an increase in the number of music festivals, partaking in the global festival boom, and integrating the “transnational festival geography” (ibid.:74).Footnote ⁴ Many festivals featured pop-rock, jazz, and other popular music genres (César Reference César and Castelo-Branco2010:492–493). Sponsored by local governments, local tourist boards, voluntary associations, foundations, and private companies, in Portugal, festivals have been used for promoting tourism, as tools for political and cultural action, for the economic and social empowerment of territories, as strategies for place branding, for defending local culture and identity, and for local development and urban regeneration (Abreu Reference Abreu2004; Guerra Reference Guerra2010; Moreno Fernández Reference Moreno Fernández2019a:5–6, among others).

The interceltic festivals of Porto and Sendim that constitute the focus of this article share some of the above-mentioned attributes of festivals. They are placed-based, non-profit annual public events that are celebrated over several days with the aim of attracting tourism, and contributing to urban regeneration (Porto) and rural development (Sendim). Launched in 1986 and 2000 respectively, both events have integrated the circuit of European festivals featuring local, national, and transnational popular and traditional genres branded as “Celtic music,” a controversial notion that has been the subject of debate in the scholarly literature and among festival organisers, musicians, and others.Footnote ⁵

Celtic Music and its Festivals

Celtic music is a modern discursive construct that has been mobilised for ideological and commercial purposes, as well as for fostering identification with an imagined “Celtic community” (Chapman Reference Chapman1992:2–3; Kuter Reference Kuter, Rice, Porter and Goertzen2000; Porter Reference Porter1998). As a generic term, it identifies music genres and styles that are supposedly rooted in tradition, revitalised during the final decades of the twentieth century, and associated with the Celtic nations, particularly Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and their diasporas, as well as the regions of Galicia and Asturias in northern Spain.Footnote ⁶ The term is also used to label hybrid musical styles, mixing traditional repertoires from the above-mentioned countries and regions with transnational musical idioms promoted by the folk music movement and the world music industry. The notion of Celtic music is also associated with the use of Gaelic languages, musical instruments such as the Celtic harp, the bagpipe, and the tin whistle (Shahriari Reference Shahriari2017:111), as well as dance genres like the Irish jigs and reels, or the Galician dance-music genre known as muiñeira (Campos Calvo-Sotelo Reference Campos Calvo-Sotelo and Fernández2012). However, as Timothy Taylor points out, for festivalgoers “it matters not if what is labelled ‘Celtic’…has any real connection to Ireland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man or Cornwall (the ancient Celtic nations), only that sound and image correspond to what consumers expect the Celtic brand to be” (Reference Taylor2014:171). As a market category, Celtic music has been a “structuring force” (Holt Reference Holt2007:2) in the constitution, by the recording and festival industries, of a field of cultural production and a brand that is used in marketing transnational musical practices globally (Dietler Reference Dietler and Rieckhoff2006:242–243; Taylor Reference Taylor2014).

As we discuss below, while the promoters of the interceltic festivals of Porto and Sendim interrogate the notion of Celtic music, both festivals promote a celticist discourse, mobilising the notion of intercelticism as an ideal that evokes Portugal’s historical connection to and contemporary affinity with the Celtic world, and as a brand that can encompass diverse musical genres and styles represented in both festivals.

Celtic music festivals, sometimes labelled “interceltic festivals,” have been one of the main contexts for the performance of Celtic music. They have proliferated on a global scale as sites for promoting the identification with the Celtic imaginary, providing it with sonic referents. As anthropologist Michael Dietler points out, these festivals “represent a perfect nexus of Celtic Romantic spiritualism, heritage-seeking ethno-nostalgia, and commercialisation that are simultaneously in tension and reinforcing each other” (Reference Dietler and Rieckhoff2006:242). Celtic music festivals also emphasise shared legacies, values and aesthetics, and are connected by a set of routes, tangible and intangible, constructing cultural and economic transnational networks along which artists, audiences, repertoires, ideas, and forms of social behaviour circulate (Ronström Reference Ronström2016:74; Stokes and Bohlman Reference Stokes and Bohlman2003; Symon Reference Symon and Harvey2002:195, 197).

In Europe, one of the most significant Celtic music festivals is the Festival Interceltique de Lorient. Celebrated annually since 1971 in the city of Lorient in Brittany, France, it is considered the largest “folk music” festival in Western Europe (Bévant Reference Bévant2009:36), and has inspired many other festivals, several on the Iberian Peninsula,Footnote ⁷ including the Festival Intercéltico do Porto / Interceltic Festival of Porto (IFP).

A Tale of Two Festivals

Portugal has rarely figured in discourses on the Celtic imaginary, and with the exception of a recent edited volume (Castelo-Branco, Moreno-Fernández, and Medeiros Reference Castelo-Branco, Moreno-Fernández and Medeiros2022), has been generally absent from scholarly publications on modern representations of celticity in music, and on Celtic music festivals. At the same time, Celtic music did not figure as a brand for any of the popular music genres and styles that have thrived in the country prior to the 1980s and that have been labelled as “música popular,” “música ligeira” or “música popular portuguesa” (Castelo-Branco Reference Castelo-Branco and Bohlman2013; Castelo-Branco and Cidra Reference Castelo-Branco, Cidra, Prato and Horn2017; Moreira, Cidra, and Castelo-Branco Reference Moreira, Cidra, Branco, Prato and Horn2017). References to music in Portugal often highlight fado, the genre that most often represents the country abroad. What, then, motivated the launching of a Celtic music festival in Porto in 1986 and in the rural setting of Sendim in 2000? What were the conceptual and ideological bases that sustained these festivals? What musics were represented under the labels Celtic and Interceltic? What was the impact of both events?

The story of the interceltic festivals of Porto and Sendim weaves development strategies, identity politics, individual agency, and transnational cultural flows. It begins in Porto, Portugal’s second largest and most important city that has traditionally rivalled with the capital, Lisbon. Up to the mid twentieth century, Porto’s city centre concentrated on industry, business, services, and cultural activities. However, between the 1960s and the 2010s, Porto declined considerably due to de-industrialisation, the migration of over half of its residents to the suburbs and neighbouring regions, and an aging population (Balsas Reference Balsas2004:397–398; Queirós Reference Queirós2015:163). Since the 1970s, Porto’s Municipality invested in the regeneration of the city centre, later joined by private companies from the 1990s onwards. In addition to rehabilitating buildings, public spaces, and cultural infrastructures (museums, libraries, performing arts schools, performance venues including those where the interceltic festival was held), the Municipality invested in tourism, cultural events, and heritagisation. These initiatives can be framed more generally within one of the strategies of the European Union of supporting cultural programmes as a driving force for developing the economy and tourism, and promoting a European identity anchored on the official discourse of “unity in diversity” (Sassatelli Reference Sassatelli2002).

One of the goals of the Municipality’s cultural policy was to sponsor an annual programme of cultural activities in the city, including existing and new music festivals and other events, contributing to the formation of audiences and to the attraction of visitors. The inscription, in 1991, of Porto’s historic centre on UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage List was decisive for the valorisation and global projection of the city and region. The Municipality also promoted large cultural events, most notably Porto 2001–European Capital of Culture (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2014:15–16).

These measures contributed to reconfiguring Porto’s image and identity, to reinforcing its cosmopolitanism and incrementing its attractiveness as a tourist destination, as well as a space for leisure and cultural activities (Balsas Reference Balsas2004:399; Queirós Reference Queirós2007). The rehabilitation of Porto’s centre and the investment in the promotion of tourism (Queirós Reference Queirós2007 and Reference Queirós2015) allowed the city to emerge as “…modern, European and cosmopolitan” (Barbosa and Lopes Reference Barbosa and Lopes2019:10). But it also had negative consequences that drew strong criticism from residents, political activists, and scholars who rejected the gentrification and excessive touristification of the historic centre.

It was within this context of rapid transformation that the French Institute of PortoFootnote ⁸ launched the Interceltic Festival of Porto (IFP) in 1986, a pioneering event in the country, organised with the collaboration of the publisher and promoter of music events, Mundo da Canção. In 1992, Porto’s Municipal government institutionalised the IFP, constituting it as a municipal initiative up to 2000.

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The emergence of IFP in Porto was entangled with two intersecting processes. The first concerns the Europeanisation of Portugal, involving new possibilities for identifying with Europe, a space that in this case was symbolised by the Celtic imaginary. In this context, Porto’s festival served as a site for the “reframing of collective memory and the reinterpretation of the idea of a common European heritage” (Kockel et al. Reference Kockel, Clopot, Tjarve, Craith and Kockel2020:1). The second process concerns the regeneration of Porto’s centre and the reconfiguration of its image and identity (Azevedo Reference Azevedo2014; Queirós Reference Queirós2007). This influenced the selection of indoor venues in the city centre as the space for the festival’s celebration, which takes place during the Spring, contrary to similar events in other parts of Europe that are usually celebrated outdoors in the summer.

IFP was shaped by its political, economic, and institutional contexts, as well as by the agency of several individuals who conceived, organised, and promoted the event. The institution Mundo da Canção played an essential role in the festival’s organisation and promotion, and guaranteed its continuity (1986–2008). The municipal government of Porto provided financial support for most iterations. Two central figures in the city’s cultural milieu during the last quarter of the twentieth century played a fundamental role in launching and guaranteeing the continuity of the IFP: Bernard Despomadères, director of the Cultural Department of the French Institute of Porto, and Avelino Tavares, founder and director of Mundo da Canção. The first iteration was launched by Despomadères, in substitution of the annual “French Cultural Fortnight” to celebrate Portugal’s entry in the EEC and to “…reflect on our common roots” (interview, 31 May Reference Despomadères2014). Taking the Festival of Lorient as a reference, with which both Déspomaderes and Tavares were familiar (Avelino Tavares, interview, 27 January Reference Tavares2011), the festival aimed at creating a space for reflecting on the Celtic imaginary, and for promoting the cultural exchange between the north of Portugal and the Celtic nations.

The festival’s first iteration was organised with the support of the Municipality and other governmental entities. The inaugural concerts took place in two of Porto’s prestigious auditoriums, the Teatro Rivoli and the Auditório Carlos Alberto, located at the city centre and renovated in the 1990s and 2000s. Following a five-year interval that, according to Avelino Tavares, was due to the lack of financial support (ibid.), IFP was relaunched in the Spring of 1991. Maintaining the Mundo da Canção as the main organising entity, it was financed by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the newly elected Municipal Government, with a majority of the Socialist Party, that constituted culture and tourism as priorities for the city’s development (Melo Reference Melo, Portugal and Marques2007). The support of Manuela de Melo, the director of the Municipality’s Department of Culture and Tourism, was fundamental for the festival’s sustainability.

The following nine iterations (1992–2000) saw the festival’s consolidation and its institutionalisation by Porto’s municipal government, as one of the initiatives serving the city’s cultural and touristic promotion. At this stage, the festival’s continuity and success depended on the agency of its founders and the director of the Municipality’s Department for Culture and Tourism. The French Institute of Porto continued to collaborate and the organisation remained in the hands of Mundo da Canção where Mário Correia, an experienced cultural promoter and a scholar of Portuguese traditional and popular musics, was responsible for the festival’s programming between 1992 and 1998. He then resigned from this post and founded the Interceltic Festival of Sendim which will be discussed below.

The final six iterations of the festival in Porto took place between 2002 and 2008 when it ended due to financial and institutional problems. This period coincided with the election of the Social Democratic Party to Porto’s municipal government, and a change in policy. No longer a Municipal initiative, the festival became the sole responsibility of Mundo da Canção. Between 2004 and 2008, the Festival became multi-sited, having been celebrated in Porto, Lisbon, and other localities on continental Portugal and the Azores with the support of Municipalities and private institutions.

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The Interceltic Festival of Porto was an influential event. It created a scene for the performance of the musics associated with the Celtic and interceltic brands, and with the European folk revival. It contributed to the development of a professional structure for the organisation of music events, integrating Portugal into the transnational network of Celtic music festivals. It also inspired several inter/Celtic music festivals that were launched in the north of Portugal,Footnote ⁹ providing an ideological and conceptual framework and a programming model, consisting of concerts of European and Portuguese well-known and emergent musicians and groups, “parallel activities” (see below), and jam sessions.

The Festival Intercéltico de Sendim / Interceltic Festival of Sendim (IFS), launched in 2000, is a spin-off of Porto’s interceltic festival. Since then, with the exception of the pandemic years (2020 and 2021), it has been celebrated annually, figuring regularly in Portugal’s Summer festival calendar. Coexisting with the IFP for seven iterations, it was launched and has been organised by Mário Correia, who, as mentioned above, had been IFP’s main programmer between 1992 and 1998.Footnote ¹⁰ Sendim’s interceltic festival central figure, Correia is its organiser, producer, artistic director, and public relations manager. His agency has been fundamental in the positioning of this event in the circuit of Celtic music festivals on the Iberian Peninsula, and for its sustainability. Integrated in the activities of the Centro de Música Tradicional Sons da Terra,Footnote ¹¹ founded and directed by Correia in Sendim, IFS has been supported by the Municipal Government, the Tourist Board of Northeast Trás-os-Montes, Portuguese companies, the media, local cultural associations,Footnote ¹² and more recently the INATEL Foundation.

Sendim is a small town with a population of approximately 1200 inhabitants (Censo 2021) situated in Terra de Miranda, an interior rural and historically isolated and underdeveloped area in the region of Trás-os-Montes, in northeastern Portugal bordering with Spain. As with other rural areas of the country’s interior, since the 1960s, it has seen a massive exodus to cities in Portugal and abroad, leaving behind an aging population. The region is also affected by low birthrates, de-ruralisation, and problems in the agricultural sector (Pereiro Reference Pereiro2018:69–70).

Terra de Miranda, where Sendim is situated, is characterised by a distinctive history, culture, and language. Ethnographers and folklorists have highlighted the region’s archaic culture, including music and dance genres and practices, such as ballads, stick dances (dança dos paulitos), as well as musical instruments like the pipe and tabor, and the local bagpipe. Their publications often emphasise the similarity between this region’s traditions and those documented in Spain, especially in bordering areas.

In 1999, the locally spoken mirandês was recognised by the Portuguese parliament as Portugal’s second official language. This recognition was instrumental in stimulating the Municipal government and local cultural associations to vindicate Terra de Miranda’s identity, promote regional heritage, and foster sociocultural and economic development, primarily through tourism (Pereiro Reference Pereiro2018; Raposo Reference Raposo and da Silva2004). Since the late 1990s, old and newly invented fiestas, festivals, pilgrimages, fairs and other celebrations showcasing local culture and heritage proliferated, attracting local residents, festivalgoers, migrants who return for their holidays, and tourists. It was within this context that IFS was launched in Sendim, in August 2000, the month in which most Portuguese and other Europeans take their annual vacation.

The Sendim Festival integrated the Municipal plan to use cultural and natural heritage to attract tourism, considered by local authorities as a way of fostering the economic, social, and cultural development of the Terra de Miranda (Concelho 2014). The presidents of Sendim’s Parish and the Municipality in which it is located emphasise the importance of the IFS as part of the strategy designed to raise the town’s visibility and to attract tourism, bringing social, economic, and cultural benefits (Artur Nunes, email, 23 November Reference Nunes2016; Rodrigues Reference Rodrigues2001:6).

The Discursive Construction of Intercelticism

The celticist discourse promoted by IFP’s and IFS’s mentors corresponds to one of the “forms of celticism” defined by Dietler as “the recent attempt during the 1990s to create a sense of pan-European cultural identity in the context of the evolving European Union based upon a purportedly shared Celtic past” (Reference Dietler and Rieckhoff2006:239). The organisers of the IFP and the IFS promoted a celticist discourse, mobilising the notion of intercelticism as an ideal that evokes Portugal’s historical connection to, and contemporary affinity with, the Celtic world, and as a brand that can encompass diverse musical genres and styles represented in both festivals.

Since it was launched, IFP promoted a discourse on the Celtic imaginary that grounded the Festival conceptually and ideologically. Considering the process of Europeanisation that was taking place and inspired by the pioneering Interceltic Festival of Lorient, the first iteration of Porto’s interceltic festival aimed at creating a space for reflecting on the Celtic legacy that is supposedly shared by northern Portugal and the Celtic nations. IFP also attempted to promote cultural and musical exchange across the European space, informed by the ideal of intercelticism that grounds Lorient’s festival.

The second series of the journal Mundo da Canção,Footnote ¹³ published annually in conjunction with Porto’s interceltic festival between 1992 and 2008 by the homonymous institution, was instrumental in disseminating the ideal of intercelticism. The celticist discourse promoted through this publication is based on the argument of the French historian and archeologist Venceslas Kruta that the Celts were “the first to constitute a real European aggregate, uniting populations of several territories through culture” (Kruta cited in Anonymous 1992:21–22). Kruta’s discourse, shared by other authors, assumes that Celtic heritage, shared by Galicia and the north of Portugal, “remains alive” (ibid.:22) and is reflected in the continuity of “musical instruments, rhythms, and melodies that are similar to those of territories that are profoundly marked by Celtic traditions” (ibid.:21). The idea of a supposedly common Celtic heritage assumed to be still alive and representative of the “first Europe” was fundamental to the launching of IFP and was sustained throughout the festival.

In addition to the celticist discourse, the legitimation of IFP drew on the atlanticist discourse, arguing that the Atlantic coast of Western Europe is characterised by common cultural traces that go back to pre-historic times. This area was institutionalised in 1989 through the Atlantic Arc Commission that aimed at promoting regional interests in the European Union.Footnote ¹⁴ From the perspective of Manuela de Melo, the Atlantic Arc Commission represents “a concerted effort…linked to the current political and economic situation in Europe…[an area] that shares common traditions, influenced by the culture of the Celts” (Reference Melo1992:19). According to an anonymous editorial published in Mundo da Canção, it constituted an “undeniable right to difference so claimed by the peoples of the Atlantic Arc” (Anonymous 1992:21). The common “cultural roots” evoked by the festival’s programme and by the discourse that grounded it were also seen by the festival’s organisers as “powerful factors in the resistance against homogenisation and cultural uniformity, [and in] safeguarding and preserving…identities” (Anonymous 1995:13).

Throughout its seventeen iterations, Porto’s interceltic festival was established as one of the major annual events in the city. It was also constituted as a brand that promoted and repositioned Porto and the north of Portugal in the space of Celtic nations and regions. Through the Festival, “Porto turned necessarily northward…in order to counterbalance Lisbon’s importance” (Mário Correia, interview, 8 December Reference de Melo, Correia and Moreira2017). On the other hand, the label Celtic was also used as a marketing strategy to emphasise IFP’s uniqueness, and its distinction from “folk festivals”, thus creating a Celtic music community of fans in Portugal and contributing to positioning Porto as an attractive city for festival and event tourism.

As in IFP, in IFS, intercelticism was used as a marketing strategy, inscribing this small-scale event held in Sendim in the transnational circuit of Celtic music festivals. For Mário Correia, IFS’s mentor, intercelticism is “an expression of celtitude…, an attitude that has the Celtic imaginary as its main reference,” justifying the inclusion of musics resulting from cultural exchange across distant areas (Correia Reference Correia and Lobo2013:155, 159). In programming Sendim’s festival, he gives priority to the musics of “countries and regions that share a common Celtic past,” preferably the Celtic nations, as well as the Atlantic Arc and its diasporas (ibid.). The celticist discourse has been promoted primarily by Mário Correia through his public presentations and the Festival’s journal Trad & Folk Footnote ¹⁵ which he directed and published between 2001 and 2014. This discourse has been used to vindicate Terra de Miranda’s identity, emphasising its difference from the rest of the country, and its historical and cultural connections with the neighbouring regions of Spain with which it shares several cooperation and socioeconomic development programmes.

Sounding Intercelticism

In both festivals, the “interceltic” discourse was sounded through a programming strategy combining paid evening concerts and free parallel activities throughout the day, sometimes extending to the evening. These concerts featured music groups and soloists from the Celtic nations, including neighbouring Galicia, Asturias, and other Spanish regions, marketed under the labels of Celtic music, folk music, folk revival, roots music, or world music. These were paired with Portuguese groups and soloists associated with the Portuguese folk music revival movement that emerged following the 1974 revolution, locally subsumed by the generic category música popular portuguesa (Castelo-Branco Reference Castelo-Branco and Bohlman2013; as illustrated in Figure 1, Cidra and Castelo-Branco Reference Moreira, Cidra, Branco, Prato and Horn2017). While largely following the model established by IFP, Sendim’s interceltic festival also featured musicians and groups from Terra de Miranda that represent the region’s emblematic “traditional” instruments and genres such as the local bagpipe and stick dances (see Figure 2). The programme also included musicians and groups from diverse Spanish regions, reinforcing the ideal of an “Iberian folk music” (folk ibérico) that has been disseminated by some musicians, promoters, journalists, and festival organisers. It also expanded the geographic representation of European Celtic music by including groups from the US, Canada, and Japan.

Figure 1.

Cover page of the booklet announcing the programme of the seventh Interceltic Festival of Porto, March 1996.

Figure 2.

Poster announcing the programme of the nineteenth Interceltic Festival of Sendim, August 2018.

The interceltic discourse was also promoted through “parallel activities” that were offered for free to festivalgoers and other audiences. During the first decade of Porto’s interceltic festival, these activities showcased Celtic history and culture through lectures, film screenings, exhibitions; book, record and crafts fairs; and competitions. In Sendim, the festival was also used as a space for “celebrating the land and its people” (Correia Reference Correia2002:3), including music, culture, language, and landscape, giving visibility and adding value to little-known local musicians and music and dance groups in this isolated region, as well as to the Centro de Música Tradicional Sons da Terra. The parallel activities took place in different venues throughout the town and its suburbs, including workshops of local dances (see Figure 3), nature walks, and tributes to local traditional musicians, events in which CDs published by the Centro were featured.

Figure 3.

A workshop of local dances integrating the Interceltic Festival of Sendim, August 2012. Photo: Susana Moreno Fernández (used with permission).

In both festivals, but especially in Sendim, following, and occasionally parallel to the formal programme, some musicians and festivalgoers jammed together in a convivial atmosphere. While in Porto these informal sessions took place in bars and hotels in the city’s centre, in Sendim, as we observed, this small town’s squares, streets, public buildings, and the esplanades of coffee shops were transformed into performance spaces buzzing with musicians and enthusiasts and filled with music, often up to dawn.

The inaugural concert of Porto’s interceltic festival featured Alain Stivell, a highly mediatised composer and multi-instrumentalist (Celtic harp, bagpipe, and the double-reed shawm bombarda) who is internationally acknowledged as the central figure of Breton music and a pioneer of the “Celtic music movement” (Wilkinson Reference Wilkinson and Vallely2011:233). Other prominent musicians and bands from the Celtic nations featured in both festivals include: The Chieftains, Andy Irvine, Gwendal, Boys of the Lough, Fairport Convention, Bagad Kemper, and Dervish. Prominent bands and musicians associated with the Celtic and folk music movements in neighbouring Spain also participated in both festivals, such as Milladoiro, Emilio Cao, Carlos Núñez, and Kepa Junkera. As for the Portuguese folk music revival groups the most salient are: Vai de Roda, Brigada Vitor Jara, Júlio Pereira, and Galandum Galundaina. In addition, Sendim’s festivals showcased local groups such as Lenga Lenga-Gaiteiros de Sendim and Trasga.

As for the audiences of both festivals, although there has been no systematic study, articles in newspapers and in the festivals’ journals, and interviews with festival organisers indicate that IFP and IFS drew a relatively young audience that was attracted by the international folk revival movement and its repercussions in Portugal. Several of Porto’s festival promoters highlighted this event’s popularity, recalling regularly sold out performances (Manuela de Melo, Mário Correia and Júlio Moreira, interview, 8 December Reference de Melo, Correia and Moreira2017). This pioneering festival contributed to the formation of an audience in Portugal for the musics associated with the interceltic label, some of whom later became regular attendees of similar festivals, including that of Sendim, which also attracted festivalgoers from the neighbouring regions of Spain. According to Correia, during the past decade, there has been a decrease in the number of festivalgoers, and their age range has tended to increase, a development that he attributes to the proliferation of festivals, including Celtic music festivals, and that has stimulated him to consider the “reinvention” of this festival (Correia Reference Correia2012 and interview, 27 December Reference Correia2016).

Final Observations

The two interceltic music festivals analysed in this article were strategically used by local governments, institutions, and other agents to promote Porto and Terra de Miranda as tourist destinations, to contribute to urban regeneration and rural development, and to create a new image and place-identity. In the case of Sendim, the festival was also part of a strategy aimed at placing this traditionally isolated town and the Terra de Miranda on the map by valorising its heritage and lifestyles, and reaffirming its distinct identity.

Porto’s pioneering interceltic music festival launched a new space for the performance, circulation, and exchange of musicians, sounds, and ideas, incorporating the north of Portugal in the European Celtic “‘festivalscape’, a dense and intricate network spreading from large cities to small, remote villages” (Ronström Reference Ronström2016:74). This space was extended to other inter/Celtic music festivals celebrated in the north of Portugal. Sendim’s interceltic festival also nurtured collaboration with musicians and institutions across the bordering regions of Spain, fostering the ideal of an “Iberian folk” music. In all, Porto’s and Sendim’s interceltic festivals can be read as part of the process of the Europeanisation of Portugal, using the celticist and atlanticist discourses to defend a common cultural heritage, and identifying the north of Portugal with Europe’s Celtic fringe.