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Serbian trumpets blast down cultural barriers |
Guca, August 14, 2002. - Grown men were dancing on tables in this normally sleepy Serbian village last weekend as some 300,000 devotees of the brass band sound gathered for the annual Dragacevo brass band festival.
For three days and nights the village of some 5,000 people threw open its doors for the world's wildest celebration of a previously obscure folk-music tradition, which is now blasting down cultural barriers between Serbs and the rest of Europe.
Dozens of 10-man brass "orchestras" vied for attention and tips as they wandered through the small streets and tented restaurants, driving revelers to Bachanalian heights with their relentless rhythms and melodies.
It is a music that has evolved from the "um-pah-pah" sound of Turkish military bands to the haunting soundtrack of Emir Kusturica's award-winning film "Underground" and the disco-inspired grooves of modern rave parties.
"When I go to bed at night my body shakes with the rhythm for at least another half an hour," said one festival goer.
"I listen mainly to rock and roll but the trumpet music is something else -- it stirs the blood," said another.
The festival at Guca, some 157 kilometers (97 miles) south of Belgrade, went virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world for decades. But things are changing as Serbia emerges from communist-style autocracy and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Festival promoter Ilija Stankovic has sold the television rights for 10 years to a German media group, and has recently released a CD anthology of the best recordings from Dragacevo's 41-year history.
"There's been a lot of interest since the revolution in this country," he said, referring to the popular uprising which led to the downfall of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000.
"The international feeling of unhappiness has been replaced by more positive feelings about this country. In the last 12 years during Milosevic this music was used as a political symbol of nationalism. It was manipulated. Even before that, during the 50 years of Tito, bands were pressured to play marches.
"But the most exciting thing about the history of the festival is that a political speech has never taken place on the stage of Guca. It is the people's festival."
Dragan Lazovic, 24, plays lead trumpet in the orchestra his father founded in 1978. On Sunday, after snatching a few hours sleep in the back of his car, he led his band in the festival's main event -- a play-off between more than 20 of the best orchestras in Serbia before an audience of some 20,000.
With senior Serbian ministers in the front row, the competition on the stage at Guca's soccer field was a formal affair compared to the raucus jam-sessions in the town's bars and restaurants the night before.
That's one of the endearing things about Dragacevo -- the real action takes place at ground level among the festival goers rather than on a distant stage.
"The trumpet has a very loud sound and crazy rhythms and some people get very excited. The faster we play, the crazier people get. That's when we are the most satisfied, when everyone gets up and starts dancing," Lazovic said.
Typically the formal competition comes down to a battle between the more traditional Serb bands, with their bouncy, syncopated dances, and the oriental interpretations of the country's Gypsy musicians.
This year the southern Gypsies players took the main awards, with Elvis Ajdinovic winning the coveted "Golden Trumpet" and the Vranjski Biseri band the title of "Best Orchestra".
Trumpet leader Sinisa Stankovic, 28, said his tiny Gypsy village of less than 500 people in southern Serbia supported no less than six brass bands. He said the Gypsy musicians were more experimental than their Serb colleagues.
"There's a difference in the mentality between the two styles but the main difference is that we play all types of brass music. Here (central Serbia) they play the traditional style almost exclusively," he said.
"Ours is more modern and not as conservative as the other style... A lot of the new songs have almost disco rhythms, and they're for younger, urban audiences."
The experimentation has paid off, with brass bands becoming increasingly popular outside the region (they have featured recently in festivals in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy).
But promoter Ilija Stankovic warned that the musicians would reap none of the rewards until Belgrade stamped out rampant CD piracy.
"Belgrade is the music piracy capital of Europe at the moment and I'm really fighting to end that," he said, adding that he suspected hundreds of illegal digital recordings were made during this year's festival.
"It's about the survival of authentic cultural heritage in the battle against music piracy."
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Source: AFP |
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