The Colorfulness of Roma Culture: “Todo Mundo 2024” has concluded
The twelfth “Todo Mundo” festival took place in Belgrade from September 20 to 22, 2024, at several locations. The program was dedicated to the Roma people and music, featuring six concerts, a public interview, mentoring sessions, an award ceremony, and an international conference.
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It cannot be said that such a thing is essential, but it is nice and appealing for a music festival to unite the program of its edition around a specific theme. This is how “Todo Mundo” has, several times, created a “story” that flows through the concerts and other program contents. Experienced Todo Mundo crowd may recall the festival’s focuses on the African (2012), Balkan (2014), and Hungarian (2019) music scenes, as well as on women (2021) and the Roma, which served as the thematic thread of the latest, twelfth edition of the festival.
The program design was facilitated by the fact that our Ring Ring Association has been a partner in the European project “Sounds of Europe” since 2022, so this year we also turned to the portfolios of our partners from different European countries. We selected artists and groups and ultimately created a lineup consisting entirely of Roma music performers: Tcha Limberger, Júlia Kozáková, Romano Drom, and Terne Čhave. After that, we needed to add a fitting “local” concert, and the decision was simple: the Belgrade band Kal, which had never performed at “Todo Mundo” before.
And that’s not all when it comes to the Roma theme – a public discussion with Júlia Kozáková at the Musicology Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) was also focused on the Roma, just like the international conference “Roma People and Music: Freedom, Adaptation, Taking Over”…
EVERYTHING WE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT SLOVAK ROMA
The first event of this year’s festival took place in office 410 of The SASA Institute of Musicology. The public interview with Júlia Kozáková is a continuation of the series of artist conversations that the “Todo Mundo” festival has successfully developed with the idea of offering the ethnomusicological community (with an openness to a wider audience) the opportunity to get closer to a representative of a particular musical tradition or genre through direct contact.
Such conversations have previously been organized at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, in always pleasant cooperation with the Department of Ethnomusicology, and in 2024, we decided to hold it at the Musicology Institute. The conversation with Júlia Kozáková, held on Friday, September 20, in the early afternoon, was led by ethnomusicologist Marija Dumnić Violotijević, Senior Research Associate at the Institute.
The attendees enjoyed a wealth of information and interesting facts both from Júlia Kozáková’s professional life, particularly regarding her love for the Roma heritage of her native Slovakia (Júlia herself is not Roma, but Slovak), as well as data on traditional Roma music and culture in Slovakia and surrounding countries.
The topic titled “Reinterpretation of Traditional Songs of Romani from Central Europe” turned out to be very inspiring for the audience, and as a result, the entire event lasted much longer than originally planned.
A STRONG AND GENTLE EVENING
That evening, we attended the first two concerts of the festival at the Jewish Cultural Center. First, the Belgrade band Kal filled the room with a powerful performance and intense energy, skillfully combining typical rock instruments such as electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums with sound sources characteristic of, among other things, the milieu of folk and Roma music: accordion and violin. The atmosphere was led by the frontman Dragan Ristić (vocals, guitar), always with a strong desire to encourage as many people as possible to dance.
And then – after socializing with cigarettes and beer in the lobby and outside the venue – a complete contrast to the Kal concert took place. The gathered audience was now enchanted by intimacy and warmth. Belgian musician Tcha Limberger, through his playing and voice, weaving threads of emotional tenderness and refined humor, led his Belgian-British-Hungarian-Romanian Kalotaszeg Trio, which also featured Toni Rudi (viola) and Vilmos Csikos (double bass), authentic representatives of the style. This is the sound of Transylvania and the Kalotaszeg region. But it is also about the wonderful, vivid storytelling of Tcha Limberger, through which the audience could gain an even deeper understanding of the music of this unique area.
MENTORING SESSIONS
The sunny Saturday, September 21, gathered us first in the middle of the day at the Hotel “Rex” Garden, where for the first time within the “Todo Mundo” festival, mentoring sessions were held. Our delegates – Martyna Van Nieuwland, (Netherlands/Poland), Ciro De Rosa (Italy), and Christian Pliefke (Germany), experienced professionals in the European world music scene – chatted over coffee and the gentle breeze with interested musicians about their plans, development, careers, and more. With the exception of Júlia Kozáková, the mentoring sessions were attended by local musicians from various genre backgrounds.
HOP, THEN HEAVY
The second evening at the Jewish Cultural Center was marked by two completely different concerts. Júlia Kozáková, an unknown name to the Belgrade audience, surprised them with the attractiveness of her presence and the lightness of her interpretation. Together with the outstanding, authentic sound of her accompanying Roma band Manuša, Júlia delighted the audience. Smiles, clapping, cheers, and those positively charged whistles followed every Roma song and instrumental improvisation on stage. The spirit of the Roma heritage from Central Europe and the vividness of that string tradition illuminated the audience, who, after the break, had to emotionally adjust to a different mood – the performance of Lenhart Tapes and Tijana Stanković.
Before this one non-Roma concert at the 12th “Todo Mundo” festival, we, as representatives of the World Music Association of Serbia, awarded the annual “Vojin Mališa Draškoci” Plaque with a statuette to Vladimir Lenhart for his dedicated artistic work and unique achievements in blending diverse forms of folk and cultural heritage with modern sound tools (walkmans, audio cassettes) and expressions.
Next came the recognizable noise of Lenhart Tapes, woven from beauty, power, suggestiveness, excitement, anger, and many other faces of sound. The “facilitator” of Lenhart’s artistic message – his long-time collaborator, vocalist and violinist Tijana Stanković – skillfully and magically commanded her instrumental and vocal vocabulary.
Their joint performance was predictably convincing, and a new, yet unreleased track “threatens” to become a hit, within the framework of this “industrial sound”, of course.
VIEWS OF THE ROMA
The final day of the 12th festival, Sunday, September 22, featured, as part of the program, the international conference, the fourth organized by the Ring Ring Association within the “Todo Mundo” festival. The theme “Roma People and Music: Freedom, Adaptation, Taking Over” gathered, during two sessions, nine speakers – highly experienced and distinguished individuals and professionals, including musicians, managers, publishers, organizers, ethnologists, ethnomusicologists, and more. Among the participants were representatives of various nations, including Roma.
The speakers came from nine European countries, each with their own specific knowledge and experience. The perspectives were diverse, and each one prompted questions from the audience.
The conference, held at the Jewish Cultural Center, featured the following participants: Ciro De Rosa (Italy), Maša Vukanović (Serbia), Christian Pliefke (Germany), Dragan Ristić (Serbia), Martyna Van Nieuwland (Netherlands/Poland), Tcha Limberger (Belgium), Júlia Kozáková (Slovakia), Dušan Sviba (Czech Republic), Marija Dumnić Vilotijević (Serbia), Anti Kovács (Hungary), and Marija Vitas (moderator/Serbia).
EXPLOSION OF RHYTHM AND JOY
The very end of the festival couldn’t have been more energetic! The concerts held at the Jewish Cultural Center, though vastly different, sparked a similar atmosphere and a lively mood in the audience. And they had one more thing in common: the Roma music of Central Europe, first Hungarian, and then Czech.
Romano Drom is a big name on the Hungarian music scene, one that is not unknown to the Serbian concert audience, although it was certainly necessary to once again “explain” their exceptional talent. However, everything unfolded seamlessly. The sparkling playing and lively voices of the musicians on stage conveyed the spirit of the Vlach Roma heritage from Hungary, with its irresistible mobility of vibrant acoustic music and the striking “crackling” of voices. The joy and excitement of the audience were evident.
Next, with a less traditional and more rock-oriented approach, the Czech band Terne Čhave, also a big name on their country’s scene, got the audience on their feet with even more energy. The reactions were fantastic, despite it being their debut in Serbia, although the leaders of the lively mood in audience came from the Czech Center Belgrade and their friends – Czechs and lovers of Czech culture.
The highlight of the evening and the entire festival was the joint performance of several songs, during which members of Romano Drom joined the Terne Čhave band on stage. An explosion of rhythm and joy!
The “Todo Mundo” festival is organized by the Ring Ring Association in collaboration with the Music Information Centre of Serbia.
The twelfth “Todo Mundo” festival was supported by: “Sounds of Europe” (Creative Europe), the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, Collegium Hungaricum Belgrade, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Czech Center in Belgrade, EFFEA/World Music Festival Bratislava, European Folk Network/European Folk Day, the World Music Association of Serbia, the Jewish Cultural Center “Oneg Shabbat”, and the magazine “Etnoumlje”.
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🔗 Todo Mundo 2024: Report in the magazine Etnoumlje (in Serbian)
