Maria del Mar Bonet wrote in the introduction of the album Cançons de Festa: I begin, once again, with this album, my work about traditional Mallorcan music. I would like to be able to do something for this music one day, just as it has always helped me.

Cançons de Festa is really a record dedicated exclusively to traditional Mallorcan songs, this time fundamentally ballads, gloses (poetic verse) and cançons de picat (improvised verse). She was accompanied by Mallorcan musicians, experts in autochthonous instruments such as the xeremia, a wind instrument, Toni Artigues from S’Alqueria Blanca, the flageolet and tambour with Miquel Aloy from Sencelles, or the ximbomba (friction tambour) with Biel Majoral. The arrangements were by Víctor Ammann who, faced with the task offered to him, wanted to reach the essential nature of the songs, in some cases placing the Mallorca countryside in the recordings. Biel Majoral collaborated with his playing and knowledge, Toti Soler providing the flamenco accent in Cançó de Na Margalida. The critics and opinions of this record generally recognise that she had been able to set her course coherently and rigorously, with creative freedom and at the same time recognising her grand quality as a performer.

In the concerts that year, 1976, they were accompanied by four of the musicians who had also appeared on the record: Gerard Bouvier on wind instruments, Xavier Garcia on the guitar, Manuel Joseph on percussion and Martí Soler on the lute. Among the many recitals she gave during these years the following stand out: in February she sang in the Cicle de Música dels Països Catalans in the Sala Zeleste in Barcelona; in the Teatro Monumental in Madrid before more than 2,700 people, a great success; in July in the Teatre Grec of Barcelona; in the 6 Hours of Canet where the number of people increased compared to the previous year with 60,000 attending; in Fontblanche, France, in the Festival de Musique Mediterranée, which showed that Maria del Mar Bonet now formed part of the outstanding voices of the Mediterranean, both for the quality of her voice and interpretation and for the repertoire based on the traditional music of the Balearics. It was at this Festival of Fontblanche, in Marseille, where she met the Ensemble de Musique Traditionnelle of Tunis led by Fethi Z’ghonda with whom she would establish a musical and personal relationship that has lasted until today.

The record Cançons de Festa would be issued in December of that year.

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