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Traditional
music is still very much alive in Formentera. The ball pagès (folk
dance) is not just a showpiece but part of the people's festive
expression, never missing from island fiestas (Santa Maria, 5th
August; Sant Ferran, 30th May; Nostra Senyora del Carme, 16th July;
Sant Jaume, patron of the island, 25th July; El Pilar, 12th
October; Sant Francesc Xavier, 3rd December).
Along with traditional music, música de raíces has taken strong
hold in Formentera: young local performers compose their own
creations going back to their roots in traditional folk music.
Formentera's arts and crafts are varied and reflect the island's
newfound diversity. In the La Mola bazaar (on late Sunday
afternoons during the summer), naturalized Formenterans from
distant places offer their wares of jewellery, paintings, ceramics,
clothing, and a long, wide-ranging etcetera, all of which can be
purchased in the knowledge that handcrafted production of all
these goods is guaranteed by the commission of craftsmen that
organizes the market. Together with such items of cosmopolitan
inspiration, visitors will find others that are more traditional,
such as thick hand-knitted sweaters of crude Formenteran wool.
Handicrafts, in any shape or form, are
the most usual and recommendable purchase in Formentera. Visitors
appreciate well-crafted work and will find it here with creators
from all over the world, whose work is midway between craft and
the strictly artistic. Painters and sculptors from the island, or
some with international reputations, who have second studios in
Formentera, show and sell their work, sometimes in the studio
itself. |
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