karneval u guči

KARNEVAL U GUČI
'cure', at least once a year, unbearable boredom of a sleepy Serbian
small town Guca got the idea to include trumpeters on the
proposal of a journalist Blazo Radivojevic, in the folklore manifestation
which started in 1961. The idea was supported by the
author Branko V. Radicevic who gave big and unselfish media
support to the organizers and who also saw in this idea his already
created world full of Serbian folk, village and military tradition.
The support he gave through the newspapers articles
and over his numerous friends from the field of literature, press
and most importantly bohemian friends created a 'legend' out
of the Trumpeters Festival in Guca.
The popularity brought first problems. The organization of
massive gathering in the country without democracy, which
was socialist Yugoslavia, brought many suspicions. In order to
continue organizing the Festival it was necessary to make a lot
of compromises which meant artificial including of ideological
contexts in the manifestation. In the first three decades of the
Festival, from 1961 to 1990 there was a special kind of competition
between official ideology of communism, partisan movement
and folk-village-Serbian tradition which was the base of
the Festival in Guca. Arguments, interfering, threats with banning
the manifestation, determining the degree of traditionalism
which was allowed, were following this manifestation till
the moment when ex-Yugoslavia fell apart.
The official hymn of the Festival, a folk song 'FROM OVCAR
AND KABLAR' (the names of the mountains dominating the
whole region, was presented for a long time only in the version
which was created after 1945 where the name of Josip Broz Tito
was mentioned. The song itself was created in 1876, and its
main hero was the King of Serbia at that time - Milan Obrenovic,
but during the decades to come many different political
personalities were mentioned in the song. It was not until 1990
that it was officially announced that the song 'From Ovcar and
Kablar" was older than Tito. This composition is the hymn of
the Festival nowadays as well and it is played by all orchestras
- more than 200 trumpeters, before the official part of the contest,
which is the peak of emotional experience of the visitors.
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