L-Ghana

L-Għana is Maltese folk singing, sung over guitars in a nasal declamatory style, and its most demanding form is the spirtu pront, in which two or more singers improvise verses at each other in turn, answering, mocking and countering within a fixed rhyme scheme while the guitarists carry the line between rounds. It belongs to bars, village squares and festa nights rather than to concert halls, and it was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021.

The main sights

• The spirtu pront - improvised sung duels between competing singers.
• The guitar interludes - the instrumental passages carrying between verses.
• The bar setting - a tradition that lives in village bars rather than on stages.
• The rhyme discipline - verses improvised within a strict fixed scheme.

When to go

Year round; sessions happen informally in village bars, particularly at weekends. Festa season in summer brings more of it. Organised folk evenings are staged for visitors but are a lesser thing.

Good to know

Finding a genuine session takes local knowledge and the tradition has an ageing following. It is sung in Maltese and the improvised wordplay is lost on outsiders. Staged versions for visitors bear little resemblance to the real thing.

Nearby

Village bars across Malta and Gozo are where it survives.