The Guca Festival, the most noisy and fantastic folklore music festival. Fancy, during three days more than twenty fanfares from about ten brass, each trying to play better and more noisy than the others. In Guca Festival, the rhythm and the feast sound are on the maximum volume! Because Guca, that is not only that brilliant hot music known to all of us in the Kusturica pictures, but it is also a complete art of living and a way of thinking. Firstly this characteristic melodious and rhythmic sound charms you completely and make you tremble. Then entire audience starts to move in the rhythm of this crazed music, each one holding hands and screaming the happiness of being there. In Guca Festival, nobody is thinking of anything else then parting
The feast in Guca is taking place during three days in the first week in August. On Friday you arrive entirely vivacious to the place of crime and at once an impression of festive gaiety and of the rural ambience over comes you. Then the first “shock” on an enormous scene in the middle of the maize fields, about twenty groups are playing in an intact diapason the winning piece of the previous year. You should know that the best brass fanfares from the whole Serbia were selected after competing through all the country during several months. The great parade of the Guca Festival takes place on Saturday, but especially a formidable competition “outside festival” that sees the groups playing in all the streets of Guca. One group answers another and you are bathed in the hell rhythms and in the harmonies of the trumpets. In the evening everyone is dancing on the tables and swinging as they can. On the last day of the Guca Festival the fanfares perform the last battle of honour at the greatest joy if the audience. Guca became during the years the meetin place for those being in love with this so particular kind of music that had converted even the groups in Belgium, in France (with the “Sislav”) and in USA.
From the practical point of view, there is no chance for lodging in Guca except in the overcrowded little motel. You should search for the accomodation in inhabitants’ lodgings in Ivanjica or Lucani. (200 dinars complete pension in Lucani on the Phone 032 854 739) If you have a car you can stay in Cacak, but shouldn't miss your last transportation. Or you can always sleep under the stars!
