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 EXIT AND (OR) GUČAWhen Serbian journalists want to find out about their interolocutors’ personal taste through quick ‘yes or no’ questions, the favourite new millennium question is: “Guča or Exit?” After the year 2000, this dilemma represented a sort of opinion about everything that surrounds us in Serbia, just like certain issues which are now apparently behind us. By Milovan Miličković Serbia had to “choose” between the Karađorđević and Obrenović family, chetniks and partizans, Moscow and Washington, all the way to the perennial choice of FC Red Star or FC Partizan. By choosing one or the other, every Serbian citizen would openly declare what he stood for, what he was advocating or what direction in politics he was taking. Even a harmless question like “what football club do you support?” was hiding a subliminal message. The story goes that the FC Red Star supporters were also representatives of a civil and national option in Serbia, while the FC Partizan supporters were from rural areas, with the roots in the former Yugoslav National Army (JNA). The same is true of Guča and Exit now. Politicians are the favourite to be asked this question. They have learned their lesson that when you publicly chose a football club to support you lose a number of voters. When asked who they supported – Red Star or Partizan – they usually answered “Serbia”. However, they were not that ambiguous in responding to the same question about the two largest Serbian music festivals. At the very beginning of this rivalry, the democratic and pro-European option always voted in favour of Exit, while the pro-Commnunist-Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia has always been in favour of Guča. For some, Guča represented the trumpet, pork, tents, Serbian way of having fun, while Exit was something that was coming from the decaying West which promoted their culture in our Great Serbia. For others, Guča was merely sputum of what was left of Milošević’s regime, while Exit was something fresh, something that would finally bring us closer to and into the family of the European nations. But, just like in love, opposites attract, so during the last few months, as a result of different political options in Serbia getting closer to each other, the answer to the above mentioned question has become more complex. Now, the most frequent answer is “both Exit and Guča” or “Exit and Guča”, depending on your political stance. A high official from the Socialist Party of Serbia, Dušan Bajatović, gave one of the most original replies to this question last month by simply saying “Rock and Roll!”  However, the right answer to this unexpected harmonization on these two events is found in promoting Serbia and, of course, the big money that they both bring. Last month, the www.b92.net/biz portal reported that the money that the organizers, caterers and the city itself earned from the Exit Festival was around 20 million Euros. Last year, the Ekonomist magazine wrote that Guča earned just about the same amount in 2007. This year the profit will probably be even higher. The organizers decided that the entrance fee is going to be 500 dinars, and they estimated that the profit will be higher by several million dinars. Another common trait is a large number of foreign tourists who are becoming regular at these events, and they are growing in numbers each year. Close to 20,000 of them visit Exit, while the organizers of Guča estimate that their number at this festival is even higher. Out of 450,000 of this year’s visitors, 1/5 of them came from abroad. Both Exit and Guča managed something that no politician in this country will ever manage, and that is for Novi Sad, one of the most nationally and culturally diverse towns in Serbia, to assemble around the same idea and to internationally make Guča the first thing that comes to mind when a word trumpet is mentioned. All in all, both Exit and Guča (or Guča and Exit) are definitely the two biggest and the most recognizable products of Serbian tourism. Exit, which originated from insurgence against the dictatorship, is now a large commercial endeavour while Guča accidently grew from the need to eat and drink well and play drums of those citizens who were sorry to see old Yugoslavia go, as well as from the global popularity of Goran Bregović and Boban Marković who put this kind of music on the world music scene and made it a worldwide attraction. To use the language of football, the result of the match between the two festivals is a draw according to the world standards. Last year, for the first time ever, the British organization Festival Awards gave Exit an award as the best continental festival, which led to the renowned The Times including it this year into the list of the best summer festivals. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Guča was named one of the 15 best festivals in Europe. Generally speaking, if these two events were to fuse into one, they would give an excellent picture of the state that the Serbian nation is currently in – desolately Turkish with the touch of a pro-European orientation. Welcome to the “country of true warriors” It is difficult to find an explanation for what happened in Novi Sad at the beginning of July, but a couple of things were decisive in making Exit so huge. Maybe 2006 was the key year for this festival. That year, the famous Glastonbury Festival in England was cancelled, and Exit’s organizers decided to make the line-up a bit better (English icon Morrissey, Scottish attraction Franz Ferdinand, electro-pop legends The Pet Shop Boys...). For the first time ever, a sizeable number of people came from Britain, and the rest is history. This year, the Brits made almost 80% of the total number of foreign guests (unofficially, 10,000 of them bought tickets). The first thing that you are going to hear from a Brit when asked why he came to Novi Sad is because the prices are so low. First of all, the tickets are affordable. This year’s ticket for the Glastonbury festival cost 170 pounds, while the entrance to Exit was around 80 Euros. The price of drinks was also an important factor. Knowing that the price of beer in English pubs ranges from 3 to 5 pounds, 50 dinars for half a litre of our national beer in a plastic cup is more than affordable. The British are also not complaining about the musical side of the festival, and say that although similar line-ups are something that can be seen at other European festivals, the place where Exit is staged is really something special. In comparison to the fields overcrowded with tents, hundreds of thousands of people and the usual mud at English festivals, the Petrovaradin Fortress is a real attraction for the Brits. This year, the organizers of Exit made sure to simplify the directions on how to get here for all guests. At the festival’s official website, foreign guests were able to find information on the city, festival, prices and also could make reservations of the privately owned accommodation. A taxi driver from Novi Sad tells an interesting story – when two English tourists asked him how much was the ride to the Petrovaradin Fortress, he told them 200 dinars. They jumped out of the car and said that they were going to find another taxi because they had read at the website that the fare was only 100 dinars. Even the performers find Novi Sad pleasant. A singer from a not-so-well-known band from England who performed on the last day of the festival at a smaller stage, apologized for his broken voice by saying that drinks and cigarettes were so cheap here that it was no wonder that he couldn’t speak after spending four days at Exit. Even a huge star like the British Paul Weller said, after lighting a cigarette in the middle of his concert on the Main stage, that he was pleased that he finally found a stage on which he could smoke. Despite the fact that the temperatures in Serbia this year were almost unbearable and that the tourists could have experienced things that were unimaginable in certain West European countries, i.e. to haggle with a taxi driver about the ride and its price, to eat the meat which probably was not tested by a health inspection, for certain local punk to stare at them and ask for money, or, God forbid, for them to climb into a bus and drive for a few stops without any air-conditoning, it seems that the British enjoyed themselves. People in the camp say that some of them don’t even go to the Fortress in the evening because the entertainment in the camp was as good as at the festival, with drinks, music, girls and the river to cool off in. The camp opens several days before the festival starts, and closes a few days after the Festival finishes. Citizens of Novi Sad say that the Brits stay in the city until they spend their last penny. Even journalists couldn’t hide the fact that they were thrilled with the festival. The journalist from The Times, Gareth Scurlock described the atmosphere in Belgrade and Novi Sad for The Times Online web portal, focusing on the festival which he rated better than the famous Glastonbury. His perception of Exit is not much different to that of an “ordinary” visitor. The food is good and cheap, drinks are cheap, accommodation is cheap, the atmosphere is great, the colours are extraordinary, Serbs are fantastic and everybody speaks perfect English. These are reasons enough for any Brit to recommend Exit for next year too. According to the organizers, aside from the British, most foreign visitors came from Australia, Canada and Spain, which speaks volumes about the potential for any future Exit festival. It seems that the citizens of Novi Sad have adjusted well to the whole philosophy of the festival. Only those who have to stay in the city do so, while others are leaving town, renting their apartments for a decent amount of money to the festival guests. It is a one big team working on the same assignment – making the guests feel good and making them come next year, too. The festival is viewed as an opportunity to earn extra money and the way for Novi Sad, which is rather small, to become a city in the real sense of the word during the four festival days. Hence, youngsters from Novi Sad say that even their grandmothers talk only about Exit for four days. We could say that the habits we acquired during the 1990s are certainly not dead. Events like Exit and Guča take the best of the Serbian entrepreneurial spirit, and there is no better chance than these two festivals for this ingenuity at making money from virtually nothing to surface. If you set aside the music which is tailor made to an average festival visitor, even the street leading to the Petrovaradin Fortress looks like a typical market day in Serbia. A multitude of stands, enveloped in the thick smoke of the favourite Serbian aromas – a mixutre of sausages and hamburgers, an older lady shouting in many languages that she sells the best burgers, attentive vendors who are virtually forcing you to take a boiled corncob or water or beer, a “good businessman” with only few things left to sell, a classic infringement of copyright through the sale of T-shirts with the Exit logo and, of course, unavoidable “traders” who, bouncing around along to the music of The Chemical Brothers, are asking “Need a ticket, need a ticket...?” It seems that local “entrepreneurs” take to the festival like fish to water. During the four days of the festivals in Guča or Novi Sad, they earn enough money to go on a holiday or an equivalent of a monthly salary or even four pensions, as one old lady, who was selling corncobs at Petrovaradin, bragged. This year, Exit’s musical offerings were somewhat weaker than the last year’s. The critics and journalists say that festival doesn’t have a clearly defined concept, that there is no order to which musicians they invite and that selection is based on the “whatever we can get” principle, especially if we are talking about the Main Stage and the headliners. However, Exit 08 was different, since other stages had a somewhat stronger performer list. The Dance Arena had top DJs, while the Fusion Stage was surprisingly full, and, when certain musicians performed (like the German reggae star Gentleman) you couldn’t move. Some new stages proved to be an absolute hit, like the Vojvodina Stage with tambouritza orchestras playing. This stage was a place where a very special event happened on the first festival day when the lead singer of the famous Croatian punk band, KUD Idijoti, Tusta showed up on the stage. Several hundred people, who were watching this, were really surprised, especially when the tambouritza orchestra starting playing the band’s anthem “O, Bella Ciao”, and the singer took up the microphone to sing it in his own, recognizable style. This is what the true concept of the festival is – to have no concept at all. The flyers containing the festival programme were distributed along the whole Fortress, so every person visiting Exit could create his or her own fun, and make their own, personal concept. Generally speaking, The Sex Pistols were the stars of the festival, the biggest attendance was recorded at the Manu Chao concert and those who visited the festival said that the Main Stage was weaker than some of the previous years. The performers were happy with the way they were received, with their concerts, the audience’s reaction, so statements like the one coming from Pharell Williams that he was pleased to have come to “the land of true warriors” were forgiven. In comparison to what we are used to, the prices of food and drink at the Fortress were high, which was expected, the sale of tokens (the official festival money) was more organized and simplified this time around, the security did their job well, and the special kudos goes to the medical staff at the Fortress, who were quite busy at the camp, just like every year. As during the previous years, many NGOs had their stands at the fortress. They distributed promotion materials, conducted survey, and promoted ongoing campaigns or the ones that are about to start. One of the more interesting stands was that of Group 424. The issue that troubles the youngsters in Serbia the most is the visa regime, which was also one of the leading messages coming from political parties in the pre-election campaign prior to the republic and local elections. This organization used a humorous message – ’Chill out with the visas’ – which was written on the fans that they distributed for free. The visitors were really fond of these kinds of small presents. One of the most frequented stands was that of the Centre for Reproductive Health and their promotion of the 21dan.com website. Although the activists from this organization wanted to relay a message on how important reproductive health was, what drew people to this stand were free whistles, bracelets and frisbees. Exit 08 was marred by an accident which happened in the Exit camp on the last festival day, when a girl was killed, and another one seriously injured by a branch that fell off the tree onto their tent, which is the second case of somebody dying during the festival (the first case happened in 2004 when a young man died from an overdose). However, we should mention that there were no other incidents at the festival, although almost 40,000 people passed through the Petrovaradin fortress each single day. Reporting from Ireland once, a Croatian television journalist, Goran Milić asked a Croatian man working in Ireland what was a secret behind the Irish economic boom in the last five years. When Milić said that what he saw around him was the result of what happened during those past five years, the man said that all of that had started 30 years ago, with an idea that the Irish had, but the results of that idea were only visible and tangible now. We are not comparing Exit to Ireland, but the concept is the same. The idea was the starting point and the people assembled around Exit used their chance and, in only a few years, made something that many national and foreign media outlets considered to be the best summer event in continental Europe. Exit has become a machine, financially benefiting the organizers, the citizens of Novi Sad and the city government. The state of Serbia and the City of Novi Sad have started to provide financial help to the festival, seeing it as a tool to fix the image that Serbia has in the world. The citizens of Serbia, who visit Exit, are given an opportunity to meddle with the young people from Europe and from all over the world and to become a part of the crowd during the four festival days. At least until the world ’chills out with the visas’. Beer, pork, cabbage, beer If your everyday foreigner knew who Milutin Mrkonjić or Velja Ilić were, they would get the whole meaning of Guča. These two politicans opened the festival, one by addressing the crowd and the other by raising the flag. In a carefully thought out dress code, both in LaCosta T-shirts, they hugged, cheered with brandy, had a bit of fun with innuendos about baked pork and strolled down to the town.  The town itself was full of tents, stands, orchestras at every step, Serbian flags, T-shirts bearing the images of Serbian “heroes”, the famous wedding cabbage and a lot of cheerful youths. The place where everything happened wasn’t a large stage, where the orchestras competed and the festival stars played, but a large area around the tents and stands, especially near the Trumpeter Monument which was the focus point for fun during all five days of the festival. It seems like the monument suffered the most, since there were days when you couldn’t even see it for the people who were sitting on or hanging off it. Certain media reported, and this proved to be true later, that the competition part of the festival was totally neglected by many of the visitors. It was interesting to see that most Serbian media reported on how well pork and the wedding cabbage were selling, whether the caterers were happy with how much money they had earned, the foreigners and their thoughts and feelings about Guča who were mostly praising the festival and, of course, the drinking. How much beverage was transported to the festival? What was the most popular drink? How much of it was drunk? What did the festival visitors get up to while intoxicated, while the warnings coming from the police and organizers to watch their health and not to drink and drive were usually written in small print? Various anecdotes were told about how much alcohol was drunk, the drunken youth were reported as being fun loving people, the national humour was glorified, as well as written all over the T-shirts sold in Guča. Bearing all of this in mind, we cannot still conclude why people are going to Guča, except for “letting go”. Experts have been saying for weeks prior to the festival that Guča was losing its original appeal and becoming an event where the trumpet matters the least, which proved to be true in the end. The trance that guests were falling into could be seen only when the brass bands played the favourites like “The Kalashnikov” or “Moonlight” (“Mesečina”), while you could hear the latest Bregović and Severina’s song (“Gas, gas”) coming from most tents, a song which all visitors probably had learned by heart by the end of the festival. There was no interest shown for something new or different, which was also the opinion of the orchestras coming to Guča for the first time. The only time when the crowd got excited was when they played something Serbian. The orchestras walked from tent to tent and were forced to make remakes of music hits in order to make some money. The information that the final evening of the Guča festival, when the festival’s winner was declared, drew only 20,000 people bearing in mind that close to 100,000 people visited the festival each day, speaks volumes about the interest shown by the visitors. Nobody knows how many people exactly visited Guča. The numbers range from 450,000 to 650,000, while the exact number of foreign guests is not known. Before the festival, the organizers announced that there would be around half a million visitors, with every fifth visitor coming from abroad, while the official figures suggested that there were 650,000 visitors with every second coming from abroad (!). Some media broadcasted totally different information, i.e. that there were fewer visitors this year, and that the caterers lost tens of thousands of Euros because of it. Such dilemmas led to important things in Guča being put aside, i.e. Dejan Lazarević being declared the best trumpeter in Guča by the jury and audience alike, while the best orchestra award went to the Bojan Ristić Orchestra from Vladičin Han. The star of this year’s festival was Boban Marković who held a two-hour concert on the second festival day, with the fireworks afterward which seemed to be attended mostly by foreigners!  Year 2010 will have a special meaning both for Exit and Guča. This year, Exit will run into its 10th year, while the officials from Guča are announcing the competition for the best trumpeter in the world, as a special event to mark the jubilee 50th festival. If we take into consideration the current tendencies with both festivals, we can assume that there will be between 200,000 and 250,000 people at Exit, just like every year, with 180,000 coming from abroad (150,000 of them British), the programme will be great, the guests will not be able do decide which stage to go to see, all Exit employees will speak perfect English with the second language being Spanish, taxi fare will go up to 120 dinars and all “caterers” from Petrovaradin will finally get their work permits. Close to a million people will visit the festival in Guča, the accommodation will cost 100 Euros per day, the price of beer will be five times higher than the usual, the roads which the government ministers promised to build will expand the centre of Guča so that those coming to the festival who aren’t too interested in the competition itself will have more room to party, while, several days before the festival opens, a problem with slow delivery of huge quantity of food (pork and cabbage) will arise. We can hardly wait, can we? The Sex Pistols - Stars of Exit Generally speaking, The Sex Pistols were the stars of the festival, the biggest attendance was recorded at the Manu Chao concert and those who visited the festival said that the Main Stage was weaker than some of the previous years. The performers were happy with the way they were received, with their concerts, the audience’s reaction, so statements like the one coming from Pharell Williams that he was pleased to have come to “the land of true warriors” were forgiven. In comparison to what we are used to, the prices of food and drink at the Fortress were high, which was expected, the sale of tokens (the official festival money) was more organized and simplified this time around, the security did their job well, and the special kudos goes to the medical staff at the Fortress, who were quite busy at the camp, just like every year. Rivals At the very beginning of rivalry between Guča and Exit, the democratic and pro-European option always voted in favour of Exit, while the pro-Commnunist-Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia has always been in favour of Guča Politicans If your everyday foreigner knew who Milutin Mrkonjić or Velja Ilić were, they would get the whole meaning of Guča. These two politicans opened the festival, one by addressing the crowd and the other by raising the flag. Europe The citizens of Serbia, who visit Exit, are given an opportunity to meddle with the young people from Europe and from all over the world and to become a part of the crowd during the four festival days. |