From Park Slope to the Dragačevo Assembly

Thursday morning, around 6.30 am I opened the window to greet the city and a smell of fried chicken came through. I’m back home.

My summer can be summarized under the title “from Brooklyn to Guča”.

June: we went to a Balkan music concert at Barbes, in Brooklyn. Quality-wise it was like a garage band concert. Yet the concert was fun and the music galvanizing. We found it amazing that this type of music, successfully exported by Kusturica’s movies during the 1990s, has obtained widespread appreciation to the point that a small band from Brooklyn can fill halls on their own. The adrenalin-rushing rhythms conquered each and every soul at at Barbes, although not everyone was familiar with Balkan music. Like the girl standing next to us who, in the middle of the concert, turned to her boyfriend and asked “this is like reggae, right?”. He smiled kindly at her. After 20 minutes she tries again: “Possibly tango?”. Meanwhile, I decided I wanted the real thing: Guča.

August: Guča, Serbia. The trumpet festival, also known as the Dragačevo Assembly, is the largest trumpet event in the world with 700,000 visitors making their way to a town of 2,000 people every year.

Notes for file from my Guča:

This isn’t Disneyland, dude. Neither Prague -> 98% of the visitors are from within Serbia or neighboring countries. Watch out, in a few years the event will be completely 'gentrified'. Let’s hope the Lonely Planet guidebook keeps ignoring it,

I didn't know you could play trumpet that way (Miles Davis, a Guča Festival visitor) -> the Roma musicians are the best,

Arteriosclerosis anyone? -> entire pigs and lambs rotating on spits above open fires were pretty much the only item on the menu,

I found the perfect Christmas gift for Carla del Ponte -> street side vendors selling T-shirts emblazoned with images of "Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic national heroes".