|
In Serbia trumpets
play when children are born. They are also played for their baptism,
when boys leave for the military service, when they come back, when
they get married and when they move to their new house. They are played
in the popular feasts where people dance and sing, but they also play
also in funerals: trumpet music accompanies the deceased also in his
last trip. Not surprisingly, the trumpet became an emotional part of
the life of Serbian people.
The trumpet festival
Guca, a village of 5.000 inhabitants in Central Serbia at some 150 km
from Belgrade, enjoys an extreme popularity in the Balkans. In a weekend
of August since 1961 a festival has been held: the Sabor Trubaca, a
competition for Brass Orchestras.
In the last 150 years Serbia has faced various wars confronting different
invaders. It is one of the reasons why here brass orchestras have a
military origin. The Serbian army was mainly formed by peasants and
hence becoming popular in nature. When, at the end of XIX century, soldiers
were demobilised, they took their trumpets in the bands of their villages
were they would continue playing.
Present day Serbia
Trumpets’ Republic describes also the times Serbia is
going through. The country was trying to get out of the spiral of violence
from the 1990s, the long international embargo and NATO’s bombing
and the economic depression, in March, 2003 a new, tragic happening
took place: the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. With
the help of Radio B92, historical radio that opposed Milosevic, we follow
step by step this last dramatic event and its influence on the people:
two months after the murder of the Prime Minister a silent procession
of citizens still flows to his grave.
Also because the long international ostracism only ended with Milosevic’s
fall in October 2000, it is only now that Western Europe is rediscovering
Serbia.
Guca and the trumpet symbolise at some extent a reaction to all adversities
this country has always faced.
|