The New Orleans Dixieland group is a musical event that comes to Menorca every spring and floods the island with the best music ever; it’s a mini festival within the International Jazz Festival of Menorca, with almost twenty years of coming to the island.
Almost as if it was a party al fresco. The Dixieland groups who are invited to perform concerts in the towns on the island during the three or four days they are here and ending the festival with a large concert in which they celebrate a Jam Session, one of the most enjoyable events which surpasses all expectations.
Photo: Diari Menorca
Dixieland Music was born in the early twentieth century in New Orleans, where the criollos (those born in the American continent, but with a European origin) formed groups to play in public places, such as dance halls, clubs, parades in the street during the “Mardi Gras” carnival and even funerals, accompanying the coffin to the cemetery with slow, sad music. Marching back to the village, once the body was buried they played to celebrate the heavenly journey. A trumpet, a trombone and a clarinet are accompanied by a bass or tuba. Percussion, banjo or guitar were the lead instruments in these great parties.
Musically, the basis of Dixieland music is a variation on the types of music that existed up until now, reshuffling it at times and improvising as they went along. Thus was born a new musical style that at that time was considered vulgar and decadent but that has come on in leaps and bounds.
Attention everyone because as from May 4th to May 7th Menorca is going to dance to the Dixieland rhythm with five groups who have been invited. Not to be missed!!
