Posts Tagged ‘songlines music travel’

The annual brass festival in Guča has been going since 1961 and is one of the wildest parties in Europe. Taking place over four days in August, the festivities see more than 300,000 people descend on the village – usually home to just 3,000 inhabitants – where revellers can feast on spit-roasted lamb and pork, sup alcohol aplenty and enjoy some of the 40 brass bands playing the local dances – the kolo and the cocek.

Here’s a quick taste of the Balkan madness experienced last year by Joe Walker and Marc Engel – who ventured to Guča on one of the  Songlines Music Travel trips.

To join us for the madness of Guča 2011 or for more information, please visit www.songlines.co.uk/music-travel/tours-festivals-2011/serbia-guca.php

Tags: balkan, balkan brass, Boban Marcovic, boban markovic, Brass Band, goran bregovic, guca, guca festival, News, Serbia, songlines music travel, Travel.

“I don’t get it,” said Nell, eyeing me with that expression of untraversable cultural distance which 16-year-old girls reserve only for their fathers. “You’re going to a festival of brass band music with seven total strangers. Like searching for Wallace and Gromit music. With all your goatee mates.” Clearly my attempts to fill the house with Gypsy brass music over the years had failed to provide evidence of the kind of wild sounds I was seeking out by travelling to Guca, deep in the overgrown forests and orchards of west Serbia. I’d been wanting to visit Guca for ages. But this year, its 50th year, was going to be something special and Songlines were planning a tour.

I’d encountered Balkan brass music years before, through the Rough Guide CDs. Its sticking power for me was its perfect tempo for keeping a steady pace on my local gym’s treadmill machines. I can’t tell if that sense of hurtling forward in the music is in its nature or because I heard so much of it while desperately trying – and failing – to keep my desk-job belly at bay.

I’d built up some fear myself of ‘the goatees’ but as it turned out, the group was far from it. A mixture of hardened gig-goers and part-timers like me. By far the most exotic were (as they were to be affectionately referred to throughout the week) “the Americans,” – a retired professor of music, his wife and son from North Carolina. They turned out to be the source of some of the best timed and most urbane jokes of the week.

After a great meal in Belgrade under the wing of tour guide Vlad, it was soon apparent that we were in for something amazing. Namely, Vlad. No quick sketch can do him justice. A man physically halfway between Borat and Bruno, his razor-sharp humour with a definite camp edge had us crying with laughter the whole week. On our first night I learnt a valuable tip from him: how to quickly get rid of those annoying flower sellers that sidle up to your restaurant table offering plastic-looking roses, and more often than not barge into the middle of a great conversation. They always manage to either make you look cheap and tacky for buying their roses – or unromantic and Neanderthal for refusing them. Vlad simply pointed to his female companion: “Allergic,” he said. The salesman slunk away. This was one of those staccato ripostes that cropped up many times during the week; to one hapless flower salesman, Vlad pointed round to a whole table of us. “Allergic,” he said.

Us honorary pollen intolerants had much to thank him for. Vlad was a man who managed to make things happen. The morning after an amazing gig by Boban Markovic with DJ Shantel from Germany, we spotted Boban sauntering through the town. “Boban! Bobay!” shrieked the crowd around him. Boban sauntered on, in his own bubble. “Songlines!” shouted Vlad. Boban turned on his heels and beamed. Seconds later, all of us are posing with the great man for a photo. A few hours before the Goran Bregovic concert to a crowd numbering tens of thousands, Vlad managed to shepherd us all backstage to natter with the legend about projects past and future.

The highlight of it all, though, was an evening when Vlad told me, in a low voice: “Stay here, in this café, trust me.” Looking out over the town I could see revellers partying in every direction. Shots of rakia being hawked in test tubes by leggy girls and necked by good-natured youngsters, bopping along to hundreds of vein-bursting brassmen. I could see flag-waving from a kid perched on top of the town statue. I’d promised to meet up with a lady photographer I’d met, and somewhere out there was beautiful Maryam, from the Persian section of the BBC. There was a lot tugging my centrifugal nature away from this rather boring café. “Please Joe, trust me. Sit here, at this table,” said Vlad. Moments later, I could see bouncers appear at the doors, keeping newcomers at bay. And then it happened. A Montenegrin millionaire’s party at the table four feet from ours was suddenly joined by the entire Markovic band with Marko leading a three-hour private set into the wee hours, his golden trumpet just an arm’s length from us. Our little Songlines tour group spent the night dancing on the tables – it had to be the most euphoric musical atmosphere I have ever been a part of.

I’m in the film business and my current project, Life in a Day, involves masses of material gathered by amateur filmmakers, so I was inspired to try my hand at documentary camerawork and capture something of the festival. I arrived at Guca tooled up with a little digital camera and a sound recording device. Like the Ancient Mariner, I now corner friends and show them my little shot of Marko Markovic, taken between the bouncing legs of the Serbian giant on the table in front of me, the sound emerging from a poxy, pinhole speaker. How can one capture this way the unbelievable noise of two Gypsy brass bands fighting to be the loudest in one tiny enclosed space? Or the vision of girls dancing on the table as their boyfriends slap spittle-wettened banknotes on horn-players’ foreheads to urge them to play on? If I’ve learnt anything significant from my experience in Guca this August, it was this: put the camera down. Don’t be at any remove from such experiences. Take part!

www.songlines.co.uk/music-travel

Tags: Boban Marcovic, Brass Band, goran bregovic, guca, music, News, Serbia, songlines, songlines music travel, Travel.

As has been widely reported, the Mawazine festival in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, ended with a tragedy after the concert of Abdelaziz Stati at a football stadium. Eleven people died in a stampede when a metal fence collapsed. It’s a terrible tragedy for those who lost their lives and their families. The fact that the casualties included five women, four men and two children show that whole Moroccan families – and groups of young women and groups of men – love to go to these events and socialise. 

Sadly, the tragedy casts a dark shadow over an event where thousands upon thousands of Moroccans – and visitors from overseas – had a fantastic time. I was at Mawazine when the accident occurred, but was unaware of it as I was just leaving the Stevie Wonder concert that had been happening simultaneously at another location. 

By getting there early, we got a fantastic position in the centre just a few metres away from the front of the stage. There I enjoyed the full glory of hearing 70,000 Moroccans singing ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ and waving their arms from side to side. It felt a real privilege to see Stevie so close in such a wonderful location. Surely this is the acceptable face of globalisation. 

As we left the concert I was actually rather impressed by the security barriers and precautions. It took a long time to get out, but there was little pushing and no crush. And throughout the festival, the organisation was impressive. Concerts started pretty much on time, the sound and lighting was good and the range of artists extraordinary. Most of the concerts are free. I was just there for the last four days of the nine-day festival, but it has a line-up unmatched by few festivals anywhere in the world. International artists included Kylie Minogue (no thanks), Sergio Mendes, Solomon Burke, Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder; world music artists included Fanfare Ciocarlia, Amadou & Mariam, Khaled, Eliades Ochoa, Ska Cubano, Faiz Ali Faiz, Buika, Ojos de Brujo, Alim Qasimov and more. It was predictably the Moroccan performers that attracted some of the biggest crowds – the most extraordinary I saw was female chaabi singer Daoudia who played a violin Arabic style, propped on her knee, and sang songs, with a back-line of men on frame drums, that drove her audience into a frenzy. It was these Moroccan gigs that elicited the wildest reaction in the crowds too, and on the final night, Stati’s concert was relocated from the centre of town to the Hay Nahda football stadium because of the huge crowds he was expected to draw. 

Despite the shadow of the tragedy, my overwhelming memory of Mawazine is of thousands of people enjoying music of every kind. I hope the investigation into what went wrong is conclusive and doesn’t dim Mawazine’s ambition to continue producing a world-class festival of astonishing quality. 

If you’re interested in Moroccan music, there’s just time to get on board our Songlines Music Travel trip to the Essaouira Gnawa & World Music Festival departing on June 25 http://www.songlines.co.uk/musictravel/tours-festivals/morocco-essaouira.php 

Simon Broughton

Tags: Mawazine Festival, Simon Broughton, songlines music travel.

Inspired by journalist Garth Cartwright’s book Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With Gypsy Musicians (Serpents Tail), published in 2005, the Princes Amongst Men Gypsy Film Festival takes place at the Ritzy in Brixton on April 24-26 and the Picture House in Greenwich on May 1-3.

The festival includes films, documentaries, live music and DJs alongside a photographic exhibition of an Albanian Roma community by Australian photojournalist Rob Hackman. The films include vintage live footage and footage never before screened in the UK of performers such as Esma Redzepova, Gabby Lunca, Fanfare Ciocarlia and flamboyant Bulgarian Gypsy pop-folk icon Azis and events including Serbia’s legendary Guca Festival where brass bands from across the Balkans vie for top spot in a crescendo of sound.

Following certain screenings there will also be live jazz, blues and Roma songs from French singer-guitarist Florence Joelle with accordionist and keyboard player Lucie Rejchrtova and klezmer music from the Matzoh Boys.

For those inspired by what they see, there is also a Songlines Music Travel trip to the Guca Festival in Serbia on August 6-11 to see the frenzied national competition between top brass players such as Boban Markovic and Ekrem Sajdic. The Songlines Music Travel trip includes three nights of music at the Guca Festival with accommodation in the village itself, plus time to explore Belgrade. The cost is just £495 per person excluding flights to Belgrade. Find more details and a video taster on www.songlines.co.uk/musictravel/tours/serbia-guca.php or call 020 8505 2582

www.picturehouses.co.uk/site/cinemas/ritzy

www.picturehouses.co.uk/site/cinemas/greenwich

Tags: festival, guca, gypsy, princes amongst men, songlines music travel.