The beginnings
Aires des Pla de Marratxí was founded by Bernat Cabot Llabrés in June 1979.
Worried to introduce the island traditions through music and dance, and the fact that in 70’s there were a very few folkloric groupings, made that a little group of persons was mobilized leaded by Bernat Cabot and a few months of rehersals the first performance was made dancing “L’Oferta” during a holly office at Pla de Na Tesa local holiday at august of 1979. The musical accompaniment was given by “Xeremiers de Pina” cause the grouping hasn’t got own musicians yet.
For the first year they was consolidated as dance and music grouping, with dancers and musicians and with an own school to provide continuity to grouping.
The dances performed by grouping are from Raiger zone, preserving the four school’s boleros of ancient Marratxí teachers.
Customes is from XVIII century to beginings of XX.
Always with clears and defined targets: spreads our culture through dance, music, custumes and language.
Origin of the name
The name of the group is composed of three different parts:
- Aires, meaning air, which appears in the name of most of the folkloric groups.
- Pla, refers to the village where the group comes from, Plà de Na Tesa.
- Marratxí, the name of the area where the village belongs.
The first years of the group
During its first years, the group participated in different popular festivities and in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th festivals of Majorcan folk groups.
Begin to exchanges with other groups to learn about their coluture and folklore.
The exchanges began with the “Ecos d’es barranc d’Algendar” group from Menorca, who visited us for the first time in 1984.
On our 5th anniversary, in order to further this initiative, we decided to hold a “Ballada popular” featuring the performance of an invited group. A “Ballada popular” is when one or several folk groups of our island play their songs on a stage, for the public to dance if they wish. It is also called an open dance. This way the people can enjoy not only watching the performance of the invited folk group but also dancing our traditional dances.
I Ballada Popular
In 1984 we organised the first “Ballada Popular” (popular dancing), a tradition which continues to this day. Through this we recovered a very old tradition called “Sa Primera” which disappeared during the Fourties. This tradition consists of auctioning the first dance that will be played, so that the winners could have the great honour to be the only ones dancing it.