Who needs an excuse for a party? Not Gozo

This little island loves festivals, says Michael Church, especially if there's the chance for some friendly rivalry

When Billy Connolly and Pamela Stephenson come to settle in your street, you know you're on to a good thing. But we knew that already." So says one of my friends on Gozo, as he surveys the imposing stone mansion which the comedians have made their secret Mediterranean haunt. Indeed, one of the charms of this tiny island, with a population the size of Gibraltar's, lies in a timelessness reinforced by stringent planning laws, as well as its custom of keeping property within the family.

Look out over the landscape in any direction, and you will see, beyond the ordered fields, dinky little towns dominated by a massive medieval church, and everything built from the local honey-coloured stone. Spend an evening in one of the bougainvillea-hung church squares and, after an hour or so, you'll begin to wonder which of the two nearest foreign countries – Italy or Tunisia – is in the ascendant round here. The priests stroll genially among their flock as they do in Sicily, but the Arabic influence (most noticeable in the street names) can be felt in the pervading decorous calm. This may not be exactly the land that time forgot – Colonel Gaddafi sends gifts of palm trees, and the Mafia is quietly busy – but it's certainly in a loop quite separate from ours.

Did I say calm? Not if you coincide with a festival, and the Gozitans, like the Maltese, celebrate a great many. A festival means flags and fireworks, to a point where the whole sky is lit up with multicoloured explosions. It also means decorated streets, with garlands and lovingly painted trompe l'oeil stage scenery, and brass bands marching through. The Gozitans love to make a noise.

Four years ago the local firework factory in the village of Sannat blew up, killing two people and causing a change in local attitudes. Firework-making had been a lucrative communal hobby, but the grieving villagers decided to switch their energies to the other traditional Gozitan hobby, and formed a band instead. I watch Father Lawrence Sciberas presiding over the fledgling efforts of the new band before robing up to take mass. "But they still miss their fireworks," he comments wryly.

What they really miss is the competition of it all: their fireworks were the best on the island. But bands are just as good a way of competing, as Gozitans have long known. This explains the extraordinary fact that Gozo's capital Victoria (alias Rabat) has two sizeable opera houses literally a stone's throw apart. The Aurora Opera House's brochure claims that opera on Gozo originated thanks to its resident Leone Band ("AD1863"). The rival Astra Theatre's brochure begins, "La Stella Band of Victoria is the first musical society legally established in Gozo, on 11 January 1881." (Note that word "legally".) The cathedral was the driving force behind the Aurora, while the rival basilica supported the Astra. The Aurora built a dance hall, the Astra followed suit; the Aurora built a bigger one, and finally an opera house, with the Astra's supporters matching them step for step. And yes, their shows sometimes contrive to clash.

For one week in November, visitors will get a whiff of this competitive culture, when Gozo's first Mediterranea Festival takes place. The Teatru Astra will offer Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera with an impressive cast drawn from around the world under the baton of music director Joseph Vella; on the following night the Stella band will perform. "We felt it was time we made a grander gesture than our occasional shows," says the Astra's director Paul Zammit. "We wanted to tell the world about the culture we can offer." No word this time round from the Aurora, but you can bet your boots they'll stage something grander next year.

But Zammit and his colleagues have wisely taken a broader view of culture: tourists who sign up for this £350 package – which includes flights plus seven nights at the idyllic Ta Cenc hotel in Sannat – will be ferried round such attractions as the prehistoric Ggantija temples, plus a whistle-stop tour of Malta. They will also get a concert by the folk group Etnika, whose researches into Malta's ancient musical forms are breaking new ground.

When I find Etnika in rehearsal, they're putting some very unfamiliar instruments through their paces – the zummara, flejguta, zaqq, and zafzafa, local variants on the oboe, flute, bagpipe, and friction-drum – and their music is at once modern and authentically ancient. Three years ago they discovered the manuscript of 16 Maltese folk tunes notated for the harp by a British traveller in the 18th century, and it is with material like that that they are now making waves.

This may be intriguing, but it's got nothing on the music I find in a wine bar cellar in Victoria. "Poetry and ghana" says the sign, and what I blunder in on is the Maltese version of England's sweet old poetry and jazz. The poetry is endearingly expat-British stuff about pets, homesickness, and the meaning of life, but the ghana – pronounced "ahna" – really is something else.

Vincent Abela is a burly dustman and Mikiel Cumbo a wiry cement contractor, and what they do is described in my music reference books as being "on the verge of extinction". Their guitarists strike up a leisurely and repetitive introduction which seems to go on for ever, and as they finish their nth repeat, Cumbo opens his mouth. His face registers extreme strain, but the sound which emerges could not be softer or stranger: beginning on a note at the top of the register, it descends like a long caress over the warm thrum of the strings, then he repeats it four times like a truncated variant on the 12-bar blues.

Then it's Abela's turn, and the surge in volume shoots straight off the dial of my tape recorder. His first phrase is like a thunderclap, yet he, too, is singing high in the falsetto register. Then they start to play off each other, bringing out ever more complicated turns of musical phrase: it's an improvised tournament and it ends in a draw, which is appropriate since these are the ghana kings of Malta.

The word means song, and its forms reflect Malta's meld of Christian and Muslim influences. And it's always sung in wine bars: Vincent Abela learnt his art from the men who sang in his father's bar. Those who enrol for next month's festival should take time off for an ghana hunt.

The Facts

Getting there

Malta Direct Travel (020-8561 9079; www.maltadirect.com) offers a seven-day holiday to Gozo from £348 per person, based on two sharing, including return flights from Heathrow and b&b accommodation in a four-star hotel.

Further information

Gozo's Mediterranea Festival runs from 22 to 29 November. For more details, visit www.mediwterranea.com.mt

Malta tourist board (020-8877 6990; www.visitmalta.com).