The general director of the festival, Kelly Tonaco, told the Lusa agency that the festival will resume activity this year in the year that marks the 10th anniversary of its first edition, but maintains its commitment to promoting traditional dances and music from Portuguese-speaking countries. , such as Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde or Angola.
"Pé na Terra is a dance and music event, during the day we have several 'workshops' of traditional dances and at night concerts are held, all of this takes place in a context of Lusophone culture, because we work with traditional culture from Portuguese-speaking countries , and the idea is to bring these more traditional rhythms that, because of pop music and more contemporary songs, end up being more erased", explained the festival director.
Kelly Tonaco stressed that the event has always been held in the village of the municipality of Olhão, next to the Ria Formosa, and this year will feature African artists such as "Bonga, who needs no introduction and the whole world knows", or with a "group of drummers from Cova da Moura, which are the Finka Pé, and represent Cape Verde".
"For Portugal and Brazil we will have an unprecedented concert with the samba circle, which will perform with António Zambujo and Maria Inês Graça, who is a fado singer who was in the [talent contest] The Voice and has connections to Fuseta, where he came from and where he watched the festival since he was a child", highlighted the general director of the event.
This unprecedented concert will allow "to show how, even being from different countries, and because as in the past they were all mixed up, the rhythms end up influencing each other", making it possible to "put fado in a samba circle, because it works wonderfully", assured Kelly Tonaco.
The director-general of the festival acknowledged that setting up the festival in the year in which it celebrates 10 years since its creation was a "challenge", because "everyone is starting over" after the pandemic, there is "lack of sponsorship" and everyone drags " losses for 2020", but thanked the support of the Câmara de Olhão and the Union of Parishes of Fuseta and Moncarapacho, which made this return to activity possible.
The person in charge of the event also stressed the importance of the festival having already fulfilled one of the goals it had set itself since its creation, which was to become "part of the culture of the village and that the people of the land feel that the festival was theirs". .
"And if at first this was a little difficult, now they see the festival as part of the village's cultural calendar", he welcomed, announcing that Pé na Terra is also an "event for the whole family", it has "a special space for children, called Pezinho da Terra" and, "at concerts, parents can leave their children in a nursery with the monitors and enjoy" the shows.
