Open AccessAll Roads Lead to Guča: Modes of Representing Serbia and Serbs during the Guča Trumpet Festival
Author(s) -
Marija Krstić
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
etnoantropološki problemi
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2334-8801
pISSN - 0353-1589
DOI - 10.21301/eap.v7i2.7
Subject(s) - serbian , montenegro , history , representation (politics) , barbarian , folk culture , order (exchange) , folk music , visual arts , art , ancient history , musical , law , political science , philosophy , linguistics , finance , politics , economics
In this paper I research famous Serbian music event, the Dragačevo Trumpet Festival, better known as the Guča festival, by analysing on line photographs about the festival. The Dragačevo Trumpet Festival is one of the most famous music festivals in Serbia and one of the most famous brass band festivals in the world. Since 1961, it is annually held in the village of Guča in western Serbia. From 1962, the participants from other parts of Serbia came to Guča, while in 1963 for the first time the Roma players participated. From that time on, Roma remained among the best trumpeters at the competitions. However, during these fifty years, the festival always demonstrated and was conceptualised as the carrier of the Serbian folk tradition and culture. In my research I use visitors’ photographs available on one of the websites dedicated to Guča, www.guca.rs, in order to question how the festival’s photographs visually represent the Serbs. The main goal of the paper is to explain and show how Guča festival found its place in modern Serbia in spite of its rural, folk, barbarian and sometimes nationalist representation.