The Guča Trumpet Festival, also known as the Dragačevski Sabor, is an annual brass band festival held in the town of Guča in the Dragačevo region of western Serbia. Half million visitors from Serbia and the world come to the town of 2,000 citizens each August. Elimination heats are held earlier in the year and only a few dozen bands qualify to compete. Guča’s official festival has three parts, Friday’s opening concert, Saturday night’s celebrations and Sunday’s competition. The Friday’s concerts are held at the entrance to the official Guča Festival building. This event features previous winners, each band getting to play three tunes while folk dancers, all kitted out in bright knitting patterns, dance kolo and oro in front of a hyped-up audience.
What is kolo?
In Southeastern Europe, the South Slavic people traditionally dance the circle dance, known as kolo, named after the circle formed by the dancers. It is known as horo and oro in Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro. The circle dance is performed amongst groups of people (usually several dozen, at the very least three) holding each other’s hands or having their hands around each other’s waists (ideally in a circle, hence the name). There is almost no movement above the waist. The basic steps are easy to learn, but experienced dancers dance kolo with great virtuosity due to different ornamental elements they add, such as syncopated steps. In my opinion, it’s not easy at all haha. I can never get it right but I wanted to include a video if you’re interested!
The sound of the trumpet traditionally accompanies every major event in Serbia’s rural and small communities’ life: births, baptisms, weddings, Slavas (family patron saint day), farewell parties for those joining military service, state and church festivals, harvesting, reaping, and also funerals. Appropriate music is played on these occasions, thus preserving the spirit of the existing tradition.
The idea for this festival came from one of our reporters, Blagoje Radivojević, who was from Čačak where in 1961 he noticed a band of trumpeters, playing the farewell to the brigade of the Youth work actions at Čačak’s railway station. He suggested to the local administration to add the trumpeters, as the “special musical heritage of this part of Serbia”, to the already existing festival “Dragačevo through sing and dance”. The suggestion evolved into the separate trumpet festival that we now know as The Guča Trumpet Festival!
Here is also a documentary I found about it!
- What do you think about it?
- Does it look interesting to you? Would you go to this festival?
