Liri Blues Festival
| Liri Blues Festival | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Genre | Blues |
| Dates | late June - first fortnight of July |
| Location(s) |
Isola del Liri (near Rome, Italy) |
| Years active | 1988 - present |
| Founded by | Luciano Duro |
| Website | |
| http://www.liribluesfestival.it | |
The Liri Blues Festival, founded in 1988, is one of the main blues music festivals in Italy. It takes place every year in July near Rome in Isola del Liri, a small town twinned with the city of New Orleans since 1997.
The Liri Blues Festival, known as "Liri Blues", has been taking place since 1988 in Isola del Liri, a small Italian town famous for its waterfall, which is 28 metres high and situated in the centre. The festival is a free, annual event and usually occurs during the month of July. Concerts are held in the main square (Piazza Boncompagni), in the streets and jam sessions happen late at night.
Following its initial success in the first few years, the Liri Blues Festival was shared with neighbouring towns in Ciociaria. However, since the early years of the 21st century, Isola del Liri is once again the central location for the festival. Boncompagni Square plays host to the main events just as it did for the very first gig in 1988.
A winter session of the festival was briefly introduced in the early part of the century (“Liri Blues Winter”) and saw performing some famous Italian bluesmen such as Roberto Ciotti, Fabio Treves and Paolo Bonfanti.
The festival, organised by Duke & Bird, has always counted on the important help of volunteers and blues connoisseurs like Mario Insenga (Blue Stuff), who has been a supporter of Liri Blues ever since its initial formation.
When the first annual festival took place in 1988, Isola del Liri had been seeing its paper mills close one after the other. For more than 100 years these factiories had provided work for the local population. The first three evenings of this festival symbolised an attempt to overcome years of deep industrial crisis.
The festival was created thanks to Luciano Duro, who managed to bring big international bluesmen to a small town in central Italy.
In the first years, organized by the jazz club Big Mama, important bluesmen like Albert King, Pinetop Perkins and Buddy Guy performed at Liri Blues.
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Wikipedia