Maré de Agosto opens on a clifftop at sunset. The other three nights run till dawn on the beach
The Azores festival returns to Santa Maria from 19 to 22 August with 13 acts, among them Terrakota, Queen Omega & The Royal Souls, Vitor Kley and Talco. Wednesday starts at 6pm at the Macela viewpoint; Thursday to Saturday begin at 10pm on Praia Formosa.
Maré de Agosto returns to Praia Formosa from 19 to 22 August, and the running order for all four nights is now set. Thirteen acts, two stages, on an island where the festival is more or less the social calendar for the month.
The opening is the odd one out, in the best way. On Wednesday the 19th the Terra Stage goes up at the Macela viewpoint from 6pm, with the bay far below and the light going soft — Azorean acts We Sea and Antoine C play, alongside Manga Limão from the mainland. Nobody is dancing at four in the morning. It is an early evening on top of a cliff, looking down at the beach where everything else happens.
From Thursday the festival moves onto the sand. The Maré Stage opens at 10pm on Praia Formosa and closes at 4am on the 20th and 21st, stretching to 6am on Saturday. Thursday brings Terrakota, Trinidad and Tobago’s Queen Omega & The Royal Souls, and Egypt’s K:77. Friday has Oma Jali, Germany’s Wüstenberg and Britain’s OKO. Saturday closes with Cais Sodré Funk Connection, Brazil’s Vitor Kley, Italy’s Talco and local band A-Kids.
Getting to Santa Maria is half the plan
This is the part that catches out anyone deciding late. The island has no daily direct link to the mainland and the journey almost always routes through Ponta Delgada, so sort the flights before the wristband. One festival partner, Moby Dick Tours, bundles a three-day pass with return travel from €90, which at least gives you a sense of the scale of the outlay.
The festival is run by ACMA, the cultural association based in Vila do Porto that founded it and has kept it going for decades — no small thing on an island of just over five thousand people. The full line-up, night by night, is on the festival’s own site, along with ticketing and stage times.
Anyone charting an Azorean summer already had a chapter in July, when Horta filled up for Semana do Mar. Maré closes the season further south, with fewer people and the sea always in the frame. For a lot of the crowd, that is precisely the point.
Photo: Jules Verne Times Two / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
