The season of big summer festivals is coming to an end. At Superbloom in Munich (September 2nd/3rd), Lollapalloza in the Berlin Olympic Stadium (September 9th/10th) and the Waves Vienna conference festival (September 7th to 9th) you can once again see bands like Imagine Dragons or Peter Experience Fox on a large scale.
But if you want to go on a late-summer adventure tour in connection with a short holiday outside the main travel season, we recommend the European Capital of Culture 2023 Veszprém on Lake Balaton. This is where the free (!) BALKAN:MOST city festival takes place for the first time, which has set itself the task of presenting “world music” with a focus on Southeast Europe in a new, modern setting.
Between September 7th and 9th there will be a wide musical spectrum between “Balkan Beats”, Neo Folklore and Turbo Ska in the middle of the baroque university town, with no national limits whatsoever. Put simply, it’s about sounds outside of the sound spectrum that isn’t shaped by English or American influences.
The Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra, for example, celebrates the international aura of the musical tradition of the Roma. The motto word “Most” (which means bridge) has been lived here for years. A central figure is certainly the sound innovator Manu Chao, who is announced on September 9th at the Castle Stage in Veszprém with a special two-hour acoustic gig.
A goal of the festival BALKANS: MOST is also to convey in the context of an accompanying conference that ingrained clichés of “Balkan music” hardly do justice to the cultural wealth. “The region’s contemporary music is intelligent, critical and has just the right amount of weirdness,” say the organizers from the Hungarian capital Budapest.
New multicultural music scene in focus
The same approach follows Music Conference SoAlive, which will take place for the first time in Sofia from 19 to 21 October 2023. The Bulgarian capital is also looking to shine a spotlight on a new multicultural music scene that by most definitions includes Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey and much of Croatia and Serbia. Around 65 million people live on the Balkan Peninsula, which is roughly the population of Great Britain. A region that, contrary to all old-fashioned opinions, is developing at a rapid pace.
Already since 2016 “Mastering The Music Business” (MMB) in the Romanian capital Bucharest. From September 5th to 7th, on the grounds of the indoor/outclub “Expirat”, bands and soloists from Romania or Greece will be bridging the gap between south-eastern Europe and the established pop and rock scene in the west.
In short, the Balkans in late summer are ideal for a one to two week musical tour.