(Da)(Ne)s Festival 2008

KIT, Glavni trg 14, Maribor
30/08 – 20/09/2008
Organiser: KID KIBLA
Selector: Cameron BobroMusic
bands: Atanasovski–Golob–Levačić Trio, Žoambo Žoet Workestrao, Dj
Splinter, Samo Pečar, Duo Amore mio, BVZ trio, Molecatcher
Technical support: Jure Vekjet

Listening to music and watching the musicians is free of charge.
Seats are not reserved.

(Da)(Ne)s Festival
Selector’s words

I will confess a secret: before the first (Da)(Ne)s festival, last year, I told the ,musicians to play whatever the hell they wanted to, with complete disregard for commercial concerns or “popularity”.And several of the groups played their “secret” sets, material they rarely or never play in public.We had hours of music that would never, ever, appear on MTV or pop radio- and it also happened without the protective uniforms of tuxedoed conductors or the shelter of a deliberately outre mis en scene.

The public reaction was excellent. Why? Because it sounded great. Because audiences actually are very open to all kinds of things. Music can clash with expectations established by repetition and ritual and therefore sound odd or funny in a context, but when expectations are not set up and the usual forms are not followed, what do we really have to judge against? Our life experiences, which are all rich and varied enough to share resonating frequencies with a vast variety of music.

Another secret: it is the location, Glavni Trg, that allows this to happen. How? For one thing, it does not have built-in restrictions on what kinds of music are expected.. The performances are not hidden away- the performers are as vulnerable as street musicians. There is no monster stage dictating a heightened state of drama, but at the same time the space itself is huge (and surprisingly good acoustically), so the music can be to whatever scale it needs to be- intimate or bombastic. But Glavni Trg is certainly not a tabula rasa, either. The Plague Memorial for one thing can hardly be ignored, a few meters from the stage. Such a dynamic location must be functioning as a framework for perception, and must be creating some kind of expectations in the audience. Maybe the old buildings say “anything can happen, and it's all right- we were here long ago, and we'll be here long after”.
Cameron Bobro