Music+Festivals

When you think about music you cannot forget to mention Italy. Throughout the whole year, but especially during summertime, Italy becomes a proper magnet for millions of music fans because it offers a different festival for every kind of music, from pop to jazz passing through rock and punk that is from Sanremo to Umbria Jazz passing through Festivalbar and Heineken Jammin' Festival.

The most important festival in Italy is Sanremo. The **//festival della canzone italiana//** is a popular Italian song contest running since 1951 and held annually in the city of Sanremo during the last week of February. Internationally known as **Sanremo Music Festival**, it was the inspiration for the [|Eurovision Song Contest.] From 1951 to 1954 it was transmitted only on radio RAI. However, since 1955 it is broadcast live on TV Rai 1 in Eurovision Network. For some years (from 1953 to 1971, except 1956) each song was sung twice by two different interpreters (singer or band). In the past, also foreign singers could participate to this contest, but they had to sing in Italian. Nowadays, on the contrary, only Italian singers and bands can take part to this festival singing, of course, in Italian. The theatre in which the ---The winner of Sanremo 2007: [|Simone Cristicchi] festival takes place


 * Festivalbar** is another very famous musical festival in Italy. It has been founded in 1964, so it is more recent than the San Remo Music Festival, and it is different from it for many reasons. First of all, it takes place during all the summertime and it crosses almost all the country, since it moves in many sities. Moreover, it looks more like a concert, people are often standing and raise banners addressed to their favourite singers. Songs are not unknown since this festival presents the most famous songs of the moment, so also foreign singers are admitted, and the winner song is the hit of the summer, the most broadcast on radio and the most sold in musicstores.



The most popular live rock event in Italy is **Heineken Jammin' Festival**. It is a three-day marathon of live music, which features many international and Italian rock stars. It started in mid-June 1998 at the Imola Autodrome and has garnered record attendance figures of more than 100,000 over the people attend over the concerts. Some of the featured acts have included Vasco Rossi, Robbie Williams, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Garbage, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Marilyn Manson, Santana, Pixies, Lenny Kravitz, The Cure, Iron Maiden, and Chemical Brothers. For the 10th anniversary of the festival, the location will change to Mestre (VE), Parco San Giuliano. Until now, artists confirmed are: June 14: Iron Maiden, Slayer, Stone Sour, Papa Roach June 15: Pearl Jam, The Killers, Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance June 16: Aerosmith, Smashing Pumpkins, Incubus June 17: Vasco Rossi, J-Ax

Last but not least, another great Music Festival in Italy is **Umbria Jazz**. Born in 1973, UJ was able to spread the beauty and the elegance of a kind of music like jazz, that unfortunately in Italy was still almost unknown. Rather complicated, this special genre of music characterized by continuous improvisation by the performers, has created a particular atmosphere in the heart of Italy where every summer takes place UJ. Known all over the world, UJ started its history with free concerts: musicians like Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Keith Jarret used to play in the squares of Umbria for free; unfortunately this brilliant idea started being a problem because of thousands of people coming from every part of Europe every summer and the inhabitants of Umbria, who were used to live their lives in perfect tranquillity, did not accept this "messy situation". There were more problems during UJ 1976 in which, in the audience’s opinion, politics was more important than music. After two or three years of misunderstandings and problems, the organizers made a common decision: in order to keep a tidy festival they decided to keep some of the minor concerts free, but to make the audience pay for the most important ones. Nowadays **Umbria Jazz** is focused not only on jazz performers, but also on performers and musicians of other kinds of music, and this is very important because it gives to the audience the possibility to enlarge their mind.