Dragacevo trumpet festival in Guca: A place of networking music cultures

A traditional event Dragačevo trumpet festival, which is being held since 1961 in Guča (a small town in Western Serbia), represents the most visited cultural manifestation in Serbia. A growing popularity of the Festival (according to the organizer’s statistics, a number of visitors at the last few festivals was around 800 000) has to do with, among other things, its programme conception whose evolution reflects changes in cultural policies of the organizer. The analysis of a diachronic dimension of the Festival in this paper is aimed at marking main points in several decades of the Festival’s development which contributed to re-positioning and affirmation of brass bands practice in Serbia. The local event evolved into a manifestation of intercultural profile not only by the structure of the audience, but also by the music presented there. Nowadays, the concept is recognized practically in all events of this convocation festival: in competition programmes - at national and, recently introduced, international level, and especially at revue performances of brass bands with free programmes. In specific situations at the Festival, different trumpet practices are manifested predominantly as the products of intercultural relations, implied in this paper as an active coexistence of cultures. A way and a degree of interaction between cultures result in the contents in which „cultures in a dialogue“ can be clearly identified, but also in the hybrids with transcultural characteristics. The exact interactive processes present a paradigmatic value of the whole Dragačevo trumpet festival in Guča - as a meeting point of (music) cultures of the world. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177004: Identiteti srpske muzike od lokalnih do globalnih okvira: tradicije, promene, izazovi