Draft:Silent Choirs

The Silent Choirs (Catalan: Cors Muts) event is a popular celebration in some neighborhoods of Barcelona that takes place during Whit Monday. Humorous choral groups or choirs from Barceloneta and Raval participate, which are entities traditionally formed by men, but now also by women, organize parades and other events in the respective neighborhoods.

On the Saturday before Pentecost, the choirs, organize a gathering and go out of town to spend a weekend together, in a festive atmosphere, accompanied by good food and drink. Before leaving, however, they make a parade through the neighborhood to say goodbye to neighbors and relatives, dressed in their characteristic clothing and with the identifying element that represents them, accompanied by bands. Generally lots of drums and brass instruments are used.

On Monday afternoon (Whit Monday), when they return after having spent the weekend away, they make a big parade, but this time with a more demure and burlesque tone, loaded with elements representative of the place where they have passed the weekend – which can be anything from food to gifts and the most improbable instruments, accompanied by music, firecrackers and fireworks.

Reason
The Silent Choirs are part of the celebration of Pentecost, a festival in which Christianity commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus Christ on the day of the Jewish Pentecost of the year 30. With this epiphany the disciples were imbued with great wisdom and an important gift of languages ​​that allowed them to go around the world to preach. That is why Pentecost also commemorates the birth of the Christian church and the beginning of the spread of the gospel throughout the world.

History
The origin of the festival of choirs, silent because they no longer sing, is the combination of two elements. On the one hand, these choral groups originated in the mid-nineteenth century at the initiative of the musician, poet and politician Josep Anselm Clavé, who wanted to create a whole cultural movement to give employment to the workers who, once the work was finished, spent the hours left at the tavern. In 2001 the tradition of Silent Choirs was recognized by the city council, which awarded it the Barcelona Medal of Honor.

Items of interest
Many of the participants of the choirs carry giant utensil that have to do with the origins. For example, in El Raval, the most common utensils are those related to cooking: food, grills, forks, spoons, knives, etc., because when the groups went to the gathering in Sant Mus they already brought these items in large format and wanted to keep them. In Barceloneta, on the other hand, the tools of the members are related to sea trades (fishermen, shipwrights) which were the most common in the neighborhood; for this reason, rudders, oars, axes or wooden needles to repair nets, among other things, predominate.