There will be no short supply of music as Formentera residents close out 2015. The New Year's Eve concert bash will be headed by Fundació Tony Manero as the group turns Formentera into a stop on its Superficial Tour. Starting at 1 am, the Fundació will take to the stage in the festivities tent in Sant Ferran. DJ Miguelito Superstar will then take the reins and finish out the show. The ensemble event is an unbeatable opportunity for anyone interested in the historic (and now in its 20th year) disco-funk operation.

Crowning what had been a total experience in imaginative songwriting, the members of Pandilleros spent the next five years constructing parallel universes (Los Fulanos, Chocadelia Internacional, Cardova) and dabbling in projects that were both publicly- and critically-acclaimed (Banda Achilifunk, TheExcitements, Hypnotic). Now, Miguelito Superstar and Lalo López unite disco-funk heroes and Spain's black music pioneers into the Fundació Tony Manero. Their goal? Hatch a follow-up to accompany the group as it treads a path from bass drums to roots music and straight back home to the dance floor.

With SUPERFICIAL the members of Manero harbour zero pretences; the goal of the album is to get listeners dancing. The group pledges unequivocal allegiance to the sacrosanct values of party and music. In so doing, they float past disco and electrofunk, gravitate between the analog seventies and digital eighties that followed. As all the great funk-soul soloists and groups before them, Manero finds evolution by forcing a clash of the seventies and eighties and then reaping in the rewards. The composition of the ten-track disc varies from acid synthesisers and digital pianos to primitive drum machines and so-sharp-they-cut riffs on wind instruments. With the typical touches from singers Miguelito and Paquito Sex Machine, all of it just oozes Manero.

Back on their home turf (the dance floor), Fundació Tony Manero has got a somewhat tweaked line-up. The old crew – Paco “Mantecao” Manzanares on keyboards, Deliciosa Smith on bass, Ginés Brown on saxophone, Tom Johnson on trombone, Paquito and Miguelito on vocals and Lalo López on guitars – is joined by the magnificent drummer Marc Benaiges and Marçal “Sweet Lips” Borràs on trumpet, fresh blood that will pump the Manero family forward on this next portion of their twenty-year journey.

Where: Sant Ferran
When: 1 am on New Year's Eve

For more information contact Music bus at 93 320 82 92

Servei de comunicació
Consell de Formentera

The Formentera Council’s department of culture and patrimony held a press conference today and announced it is accepting applications for the 2015 period for its 6,000€ research grant. Department head Susana Labrador indicated applicants can come from any area of the arts, humanities or social sciences.

Councillor Labrador reminded the crowd of winning work from years past, including the 2012 study “De qui venim: anàlisi psicocultural de la gent gran a Formentera” by Josep Maria Garcia-Borés, the first grant recipient. In 2013, Vicent Ferrer Mayans and Raquel Guasch Ferrer were awarded the grant for “Estudi ecotoponímic de les véndes de gregal de l’illa de Formentera”. And last year’s winner was Maria Bofill Martínez, for her project “L’estudi de les comunitats prehistòriques de Formentera a partir de l’anàlisi funcional dels artefactes lítics i ossis”.

In the coming days rules of participation will be posted on the online bulletin of the Balearic Islands (BOIB) and candidates will have 20 business days to present their projects. Then, when the deadline has closed, a panel will select a winner based on «scientific interest, coherence, methodology and a CV submitted by the applicant», said Councillor Parellada.

According to Parellada, the grant – now in its fourth year – demonstrates the Formentera Council’s clear support for scientific research on the island of Formentera. She noted this year’s call for applications would be published in universities and other educational centres in the Balearics and across the Catalan-speaking territories.

The Formentera Council’s department of trade has set tomorrow 18 November as the date for local card-holding artisans select a new representative. Three have come forward as candidates: Hernan Fernández, Cristina Chapuis and Àngel Berenguer. The poll will be open from ten in the morning till one midday in the Council’s office of the department of culture. The winning individual will serve a four-year term on the island craft workers advisory committee, an arm of the local administration. All of Formentera’s 54 card-holding artisans and 9 accredited master artisans may exercise their right to vote.

The traveling exhibit 1715. La fi del regne enmig del mar? premiered at the Born Centre Cultural de Barcelona  and is now making its way across the islands. Yesterday, 9 November, local crowds got a first look at the exhibit, on display at the municipal gallery (la sala d'exposicions) of the town council in Sant Francesc. The exhibit’s creators cast a gaze on a war known as the Guerra de Submissió (1705-1715) and, on the occasion of the tricentenary of the event, they set out to represent the perspective of the Balearic and Pitiüsa islands.

1715 shows the participation of residents of the Balearics in a historical event often forgotten or ignored today. The curator, Bartomeu Mestre, readily dusts off different bygone images: the sailors and artillerymen helping defend a besieged Barcelona, or those men depicted in El Regne enmig del Mar, set in the Balearics. The exhibit was created by Born CC de Barcelona with the additional help of the OCB (Orquesta Sinfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya) and the 1715-2015 Tricentenary Civic Committee.

Short texts and some twenty images across twelve panels form the heart and soul of the exhibit. Each panel is headed by two lines of verse written by Guillem d’Efak and culled from El Regne enmig del Mar (Siau qui sou!). It is open to the public Monday through Friday from nine a.m. to two p.m. until 21 November.

Conferences
To mark the occasion, two special talks have been organised. The first will take place Monday 16 November, led by local historian Santiago Colomar under the title Les Pitiüses i la Guerra de Successió: la derrota d’un model politic. The talk will begin at eight p.m. in the gallery of the exhibit.

Then, on Friday 4 December, Mestre, who not only curates the exhibit but also authored the text used therein, will give a visual conference entitled De la presa (1715) a la represa (2015) at eight p.m. in the Marià Villangómez library.