Our Take
We had the idea of having our first Festa Junina in 2007, more precisely at Bloc Festival, in England, while sitting in a cafe waiting for our English Breakfast to arrive. How would we do it, thou? We were all a bunch of clubbers, music addicts, totally immersed in the cosmopolitan, international London flow, yet always looking for a reason to party. Could we ever go back to our school days, when we dressed as countryside people, stole little sips of quentao from our parents and fought to be the bride at the quadrilha? Hmm. Those days were gone, but we could definitely tap into the colorful, lively and lighthearted Festa Junina spirit to make our electronic party much more fun, and that’s what we did!
We took what we considered the best of the Festa Junina (the silly clothes and games) and mixed it up with what we know best (quality electronic music) in a dreamlike location in the middle of southeast London, the Sanford coop. The first Festa Junina had no quadrilha, very little forro, but everybody loved our caipirinhas and our choice of DJs. 300 people came, and our London version of Festa Junina was born.
The second edition in 2008 had more of Brazil in it. We cooked more food, played more Brazilian music, drank lots of quentao but didn’t manage to dance the quadrilha and it all ended up with loud, bangin’ electronic music once again. People were ecstatic, shaking our hands and thanking us for bringing a more relaxed atmosfere to the sometimes stiff London party scene, and starting the festival season with “the right foot”. It was all about the music. We had double the audience (more than 600 people) and double the fun.
In 2009 things started to get really messy. The amazing audience and the fantastic DJs spread the word and now we had this monster party to organize. We tried to add even more of Brazil to it and made an effort to keep the correio elegante (cheeky mail) going all day and night, but around 2 pm we had more than 1000 people filing all spaces at Sanford, everybody going mental. Here’s a lovely (half) video of what United vibrations did to us when the sun came up:
The crowd went on until 1 pm the next day, when the residents of Sanford (yes, people live there) started to clean things up, planning how to explain to our excitable minds that Festa Junina was now an adult, and had to leave home. We needed a new venue.
In 2010 we moved to a huge east London warehouse and filled its 3 floors with more than 1000 people again, but this time we completely forgot the quadrilha, the quentao and some of the food. The party was great, the music was wicked, but we promised this year, in London and for the first time in Berlin, we would make the most Brazilian of all Festa Juninas we had so far. We are still going to play mostly electronic music at night, but daytime will be full of surprises and folk delights. Get ready for Festa Junina London on the 18th June and Festa Junina Berlin on the 25th of June!
