Pícnic de Blues
Every May, Capibola Blues brings blues music to Parc Central de Nou Barris as part of the district’s neighbourhood festivities. A blanket on the grass, a cool box, live music and spring sunshine — or rain, which has also happened. Since 2013, we have been there.
The Pícnic de Blues is a free, neighbourhood event with no pretensions, which for some reason always works. Perhaps because blues in a park, with people lying on the grass and kids running through the crowd, is exactly the right setting for this music.
Capibola Blues is the organisation that puts it together year after year with the same energy and the same limited resources — the same people behind the Festival de Blues de Barcelona, the city’s reference festival for African-American music. The Pícnic is the spring warm-up: blues in the body before the summer and the main festival. In 2016 it rained and they played anyway.
Free. Because culture stands above the speculation that rules the entertainment industry.
It may have grown from the spirit of 9binblack, an initiative we were part of. However it began, this event is becoming essential in Barcelona’s African-American music calendar — and we have the privilege of documenting it from the very first edition.
Editions documented on the blog
