The island of São Miguel in the Azores was the venue for the 6th edition of the Tremor Festival, an annual event of a social-cultural and inclusive nature in a combination of music and nature, and one which involves the local community like no other. The 5-day event, held from April 9 to 13, featured a varied and interdisciplinary programme consisting of several concerts, adventure, walks, conversation and experience-sharing, artistic presentations, socialising and plenty of surprises.
The Galp Foundation and Galp Azores promoted the opening ceremony, a unique, stirring concert that brought together the Rabo de Peixe School of Music and 20 participants from the São Miguel Deaf Association, two very different organisations, but which, says Carolina Esteves, a director of A.C. Cymbron (Galp retailer in São Miguel), are the same when on stage: “We´re all the same for half an hour, just wanting to dance and have fun”. A unique experience that only the energy of music is capable of providing. One of the driving forces behind Galp´s sponsorship of Tremor and the Rabo de Peixe social project, Carolina Esteves adds that the future of the festival is important and this is why she has been striving to obtain backing to ensure it continues: “A soon as the festival ended (last year´s) we said: it must go on. We went to talk with Galp, who liked the proposal and embraced the project straight away, thereby ensuring the idea turned into reality”.
Indeed, and according to Carlos Lopes Silva from Galp Azores, this project makes perfect sense for the foundation and the company itself, as “it´s a good way of forging closer relations with the local community and, at the same time, of putting some of Galp´s ideas into practice”.
This initiative, created by ondamarela, an entity that draws inspiration from people and places for the execution of artistic, social and educational projects, has arisen from the work conducted by the Tremor Festival with several communities in São Miguel in the past few years, in a major contribution to the social-cultural development of the region. The man behind this initiative is the musician Ricardo Baptista, for whom “the project has a very special significance, namely the specific characteristics of these communities in particular. We´re extremely grateful for having been invited and particularly for having been given the opportunity to work with these incredible people”.
In the opinion of Luís “Fita Preta” Sousa, one of the guest musicians that worked with the participants from the São Miguel Deaf Association, the event was highly gratifying due to the experience provided with the community of deaf people: “It´s all about exchanging emotions, interaction and mutual help”, he declares.
Find out more about Tremor 2019 in the documentary soon to be published in Energiser.
