About 500 000 spectators vistit the festival every year.

The Guča trumpet festival in Serbia has recently become a very popular tourist attraction, mostly among students. You may learn how to do the traditional kolo dance or try belly-dancing on the table. You might not remember doing it, but your friends will gladly remind you by putting it on Youtube. By WAVE author Marija Kovač from Pančevo, Serbia

In central Serbia, there is a village called Guča, famous for its annual trumpet festival. It is officially called the Dragačevo Trumpet Festival and it started back in 1961. Most of the music played are popular melodies of the Roma (or Gypsies). And you are expected to dance.

This festival has recently become a very popular tourist attraction, mostly among students. They first got acquainted with Emir Kusturica’s films, consequently with Goran Bregović’s music (and Boban Marković’s band) and then they find out about the festival and come, eager to see this exotica and indulge in a five-day drinking binge. The majority comes from ex-Yugoslav republics, but many are from countries where the trumpet doesn’t play such a prominent part in their national music – namely France, Australia, Spain, Canada, Britain and Germany. Among 500 000 Guča spectators during August 6 – 10 in 2008 there were about thirty thousand foreigners.

750 000 litres of beer and 600 roasted pigs

So, what is in there for you? If you are a vegetarian, or a teetotaller, or if you obsess over cleanliness, you are very likely to be disgusted – let’s just say that 750 000 litres of beer have been drunk, 600 roasted pigs and 700 lambs eaten and each vendor has sold approximately 5000 pieces of grilled meat. As for the rubbish, you can expect to step on many beer tins and the total is 600 tones of rubbish for five days. People drink (mostly beer and local brandy) and drive. If it is any consolation, they have practiced it before. They are more of a nuisance when they are on foot, making fools of themselves, shouting or singing or both. I read somewhere that the louder the music, the more people drink. It was a recent experiment in France and it proved that with louder music we drink faster and order more. The researchers said that it is either due to increased ‘arousal’ by the music or the fact that friends can’t hear themselves over the music, so they drink instead of talking. It makes perfect sense, in Guča at least. Back to food, for vegetarians, there is cabbage, cooked in huge earthen pots. Meat chops are put in it during the cooking process, but you are free to take them out.

The festival might not be a pleasure for Vegetarians.

However, you might like the music and the fact that people everywhere are smiling non-stop. The musicians are fully responsible. They do their best because winning would secure them a recording contract and wedding bookings. You see, they earn their living by playing at everything from christenings to funerals. The fee naturally raises with their popularity.

They play in catering tents, on the streets and on the local stadium. This year, the ticket costes 500 dinars (6.5 euros). It all starts at 7am with bands going through the village, waking people up and ends at about 2am. The music is heated up and powerful, sometimes even heartbreaking. People sometimes compete for musicians’ attention by asking them to play at their table – for tips, which are plastered onto the musician’s sweat-wet foreheads or put in their trumpet’s horns. Apart from Serbian and Roma bands, there were also some foreigner brass bands this year, eleven of them, from France (e.g. “Boules de Feu”), Poland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and FYR Macedonia.

World trumpet competition planned in 2010

You may learn how to do the traditional kolo dance or try belly-dancing on the table. You might not remember doing it, but your friends will gladly remind you by putting it on Youtube. If you like merry-go-rounds or souvenirs, you will find plenty. I would like to recommend seeing the Festival Wedding (real couples getting married simultaneously) and Toast Competition (although an interpreter would be needed).

Music ranges from jazz to Beethoven.

At the end, I would like to mention Boban Marković again, a Serbian trumpet player and a brass band leader who has received world acclaim and won numerous awards, the last one being put among the greatest musicians in the UK’s Songline magazine. He has won the Guča Festival many times in a row and has decided to withdraw, leaving his son, whom he believes to be even a better player than himself, in charge. Marko Marković has broadened and modernized songs by adding everything the audience knows and appreciates – from jazz to Beethoven. They tour Europe and America and have recently been to Germany, France and Scandinavian countries.

In 2010 organisators plan to make a world trumpet competition in Guča. Some would not miss it for the world. Some prefer Exit. You know, the festival in Novi Sad, with completely different music but the same happpy-go-lucky atmosphere. The choice is all yours.

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