Walk through most Maltese villages and you will pass two band clubs, sometimes on the same square.
They are not branches of one organisation. They are rivals, and the rivalry is old.
Where the split came from
Most villages celebrate a main parish feast and a second one.
Over the last century supporters of each formed their own club, with their own band, their own colours and their own hall.
Once both existed, neither was going to fold. Some of the splits go back to the 1880s and the families involved have not changed.
What a band club actually does
Each club keeps a brass band, runs the marches through feast week, funds the fireworks and pays for the street decorations.
The statues, the banners, the lights on the church front and the ground displays all come out of club money and club labour.
Most also run their own fireworks factory, licensed and out in the fields, where members make the shells by hand through the winter.
Bands are amateur. Members learn an instrument at the club from about ten years old and play for nothing.
Pika: the competition itself
The word for it here is pika.
Whose fireworks were better, whose march was longer, whose decorations went up first, whose statue got the bigger crowd.
It explains how a village of four thousand people puts on a display that would embarrass a city.
It also explains why the two feast weeks are kept apart in the calendar. The parish priest spends a good part of the year refereeing.
Going into a band club
The bar downstairs is usually open to anyone and drinks cost less than in a cafe.
Nobody will mind you being there. In summer the chairs come out onto the square and you order from inside.
Two rules. Do not wear the other club’s colours, and do not ask which club is better.
If someone offers to show you upstairs, go. The halls hold the instruments, the trophies and a century of photographs.
The clubs worth seeking out
Mqabba and Ħal Għaxaq are known for fireworks. Żebbuġ, Naxxar and Ir-Rabat have some of the oldest clubs on the island.
La Stella and Leone in Victoria run the two Gozo bands, and their rivalry is the loudest of the lot.
Feast season runs from May to September, with the bulk of it in July and August.
