The Festival Order – Music Stages of Power and Pleasure

Abstract

Music festivals consist of a complex of interactions and social and cultural experiences. This paper analyzes mu­sic festivals in SE Europe in their function as a planetary pro­duction, combining regional cross-cultural perspectives and local politics. At the beginning of the 1990s music events in SE Europe (concerts, festivals, cultural happenings) were ei­ther a part of political conflict, antagonisms and economic crises, or they were included in the music world through the cultural contacts of global achievements – the music net and industry. Music festivals become the arena and scene of a contradictory reality in these places, being made up of indi­vidual, group interests, needs, establishment strategy and politics.To illustrate this phenomenon the paper presents the biggest festivals and spectacles in Serbia and SE Europe: EXIT festival (Novi Sad) attracted thousands of techno and rock lovers with the participation of many famous bands; and the folk trumpet playing festival (Guča), which each summer for several decades has been attracting thousands of lovers of ethno sound to a fair-carnival atmosphere. This ethnological research stresses complex property divisions – lifestyle, mu­sic genres, political strategies, scene movements and eco­nomic interests.