St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day is a holiday celebrated on 17 March. St. Patrick's Day was made an official feast day in the early seventeenth century and during that time it had gradually become more of a celebration of Irish culture. The day generally involves parades, festivals and wearing green.

In 2004, the CelticFest Vancouver Society created an annual festival in downtown Vancouver to celebrate the Celtic Nations and their culture. This event, which includes a parade, occurs the weekend closest to St. Patrick's Day. The parade includes dozens of marching bands/pipers in traditional costume, unicyclists, stilt walkers, Irish and Scottish dancers, multicultural floats, music performers and more. After the parade, there are plenty of performances on the street.

This St. Patrick's Day, the TV media in Vancouver was using advertising from a Guinness's 2012 Arthur's Day spot. This Guinness's “Paint The Town Black” ad, showed Romanians going berserk, dousing anything they can get their hands on in pots of black paint. This music was performed by the Romanian band “Fanfare Ciocarlia”. To see the video, click here.

Their musical style stems primarily from the traditions of Romanian folk dance music, but they also borrow freely from SERBIAN, Bulgarian and Macedonian musical styles. I wonder why Guinness used this song for the soundtrack instead of Celtic music. Also, if you see the next video about the Guča Festival in Serbia, you will see where this Romanian band found inspiration for this song. To see the video, click here.

Also, approaching St.Patrick’s Day, a ad coincided for the new Joe Fresh Spring 2013 campaign. Music for this ad was performed by the United Kingdom band “Sam and the Womp”. Their music mixes trumpets inspired by traditional Serbian music, aka “trubači”, with modern electronic and dance elements. So, it’s about Guča Festival again. Serbia's famous trumpet festival is held every year at the beginning of August. Although Guča has a population of only 2,000, more than 600,000 people usually attend the Guča festival each year. People from abroad also come to enjoy the music and festivities. To see a sample of the music from Guča, click here.