You can't travel far in Britain in July without stumbling across a music festival or three hundred. Most, to be frank, are much the same as each other. BRASS 2008 isn't. Running for a fortnight from today, in and around the great cathedral city of Durham, it may be the most eclectic celebration of brass instruments, brass players and brass music ever seen in this country. Possibly even in the world.

The event was inaugurated last year by a collective of music organisations in northeast England, backed by Durham County Council. Some 80,000 people flocked to it. If that impressive figure isn't exceeded this year, I'll eat my own trombone. The breadth of the line-up is astonishing.

In this country we tend to think of brass in terms of the traditional “brass band” movement rooted in the colliery villages and industrial towns of northern England, Scotland and South Wales. Rightly so; those magnificent ensembles have been powerhouses of musical virtuosity for more than 150 years. And they flourish still, even if the mines and mills that sponsored them have largely disappeared. One of the greatest of them, Brighouse and Rastrick, is indeed featured in the festival.

But in the past century brass bands of manifold shapes and sizes have sprung up around the world. Ensembles from five continents are descending on Durham. From Colombia there's LA33, playing brass salsa music. From Chicago comes a much-acclaimed nine-piece outfit called the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, mixing jazz, hip-hop and soul with traditional New Orleans marching-band music.

The amazing and sometimes bizarre brass band tradition of the Balkans - as much a zany visual spectacle as an exhilaratingly skew-whiff musical one - will be evoked by Orkestar Sercuk, headed by Macedonia's finest trumpeter (I am reliably assured). Canadian Brass, one of the world's most distinguished classical brass quintets, will be playing. But so, too, will the aptly named Bellowhead, the vigorous British collective who, in their own words, play “English folk tunes heavily funked up with kickin' brass”. Nobody sleeps when they are on stage.

One festival highlight should come next Saturday, with the presentation of the Durham Miners' Gala. For 138 years the gala has been a celebration of brass-banding and working-class socialism - a somewhat unfashionable political movement in recent years, but one with a noble campaigning history in the North-East. Next week's gala, however, will be given a welcome international flavour. Parading alongside the 30-odd British bands will be an American university marching band and the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band from India.

Maybe I'm biased, because I oompahed away a large segment of my impressionable youth in a brass band. But I've always felt that brass players are bonded by a greater camaraderie than that of any other musical tribe. Which is paradoxical, because this camaraderie exists alongside a fierce competitiveness. Anyone who has witnessed the ferocious passions unleashed at brass-band contests can attest to that. Even so, the sense of communal exuberance at brass events is infectious. BRASS 2008 could be one of the year's liveliest musical happenings.

And Durham's pubs should enjoy a pretty good fortnight, too.

www.brassfestival.co.uk

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