Oktoberfest: origins an history
Oktoberfest is the world’s largest Volksfest (peoples’ festival» in German). It is held every year in Munich (Bavaria, Germany), and it is a 16 to 18 day folk festival running from mid or late September to the first weekend in October, with more than six million people from around the world attending the event every year. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture, having been held since the year 1810. when crown Prince Ludwig, later to become King Ludwig I, was married to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on 12th October.
The citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities held on the fields in front of the city gates to celebrate the happy royal event. The fields have been named Theresienwiese («Theresa’s fields») in honor of the Crown Princess ever since, although the locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the «Wies’n».
Horse races in the presence of the Royal Family marked the close of the event that was celebrated as a festival for the whole of Bavaria. The decision to repeat the horse races in the subsequent year gave rise to the tradition of the Oktoberfest.
NOTE: Explanations took from the official Oktoberfest website
Today Oktoberfest is a worldwide festival
Many other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations that are modeled after the original Munich event. The Munich Oktoberfest originally took place in the 16-day period leading up to the first Sunday in October.
In 1994, this longstanding schedule was modified in response to German reunification. As such, if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or the 2nd, then the festival would run until 3 October (German Unity Day).
Thus, the festival now runs for 17 days when the first Sunday is 2 October and 18 days when it is 1 October. In 2010, the festival lasted until the first Monday in October (4 October), to mark the event’s bicentennial.
Oktoberfest Concert Versus Sweet Winds
Meanwhile Lilofee sings only songs in German in her Oktoberfest performance, Sweet Winds proposes a program of international songs in part extracted from their Drinking Songs from Europe recital, with more german songs, and not only contains typical celebration songs. The songs refers to friendship, drinking, places of drinking, typical drinking events and its contexts. According to the composition of the audience and the stage places (pubs, wine cellars, private party, concert hall and so on) the program also refers to the general subject of drinking and conviviality in its specific terms, historical and contemporary. If the contracting party prefers only german songs, please see the Lilofee’s Oktober Fest proposal.
The first presentations of the concert take place in 2014, at the beginning two times in the german restaurant Ein Prosit Bilbao (website here) in the city of Bilbao (Biscay, Basque Country, Spain) and in the pub The Quiet Corner in the little town of Areatza (also in Biscay). You can download the musical program of these first venues here:
