Serbia August 2011 : 51st Guca International Trumpet Festival. Young foreign musicians.
Guca is a small village in central Serbia, 150 kilometers south of Belgrade. Every year a famous traditional trumpet music festival takes place there. The traditional trumpet festival of Balkan music takes places Some young men are waving their three-fingers' sign to heaven : God, Country, King, the orthodox trinity. They are shouting , Srbja!- showing their T-shirt with Karazdic's portrait on it. There, one can find the power of the brass and bass-drums, hundreds of sucking-pigs on the spit and Serbia's many-sided appearance, with so many people still clinging to Karadzic and Mladic's effigy. The Rom musicians, who are the real soul of the Guca festival. Their music is the one we know thanks to Kosturica's films, thanks to Bregovic's arrangments. The Guca festival is also a good 'observation post' if one wants to understand what Serbia is like, after Milosevic. Many of them, dressed in modern clothes, dance the 'Kolo', the traditional Serb dance. The combination is astonishing. All around, more pork on the spit, more pumpkin-seeds, more pottery and plastic slippers. As a matter of fact, along the streets one can buy almost everything at the stalls : including the portraits of Karadzic and Mladic. A lot of young Serbs stop and buy T-shirts with the motto 'I am a real Serb' or 'Karadzic and Mladic national heroes'. Of course, not all the young people wear those shirts, but they seem to accept them as normal. Guca's Serbia seems to feel new whithout being new. This is the most 'visceral' Serbia, a part of the country that lately has mixed traditional music, mafia, kalasnikov and rakja. Serbia is not only Guca, but Guca is full of people that is still attracted by the perverse union of tradition with 's Serbia is also Guca, vital and sterile as its music is.
Size: 3872px × 2592px
Location: Guca, Serbia
Photo credit: © Ferdinando Piezzi / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: balkan, bass, boys, concert, festival, guca, music, musician, nationalism, play, playing, serbia, serbian, srbija, trumpet, tuba, young
