Pranjani Violin Gathering: Jury Needed a Second Listen
The eighth Serbian Violin Gathering ended at the stadium in Pranjani. Mario Ristic became Serbia's first violin, and the Golden Violin went to David Djordjevic after a tiebreak with Ognjen Babaic.
A stage built on the pitch of the Brezak football club is not where you expect a jury to walk away without a decision, yet that is exactly what happened at the eighth Violin Gathering in Pranjani. Once the regular competitive program was finished, the people who had listened to everything played that night could not separate two competitors, so the festival’s top honor, the Golden Violin of Serbia, had to wait for a tiebreak between David Djordjevic and Ognjen Babaic. Djordjevic came out of that extra round as the winner.
The title of Serbia’s first violin went to Mario Ristic. In the senior category, second place belonged to Djordjevic, third to Danijel Rakic, and Djordjevic was also named best performer of the folk kolo. The award for best performed folk song went to Dunja Majstorovic. Twenty two violinists from Serbia took part in the competition, in front of packed stands.
The junior category produced its own ranking:
- first place, Martina Gojakovic
- second place, Bojan Stanojevic
- third place, David Jovanovic
- best folk song performer, Danijel Gajic
- best folk kolo performer, Nenad Stancic
Who decided the Golden Violin?
The jury was chaired by Momcilo Moma Stanojevic, first violin and longtime concertmaster of the Radio Television of Serbia Folk Orchestra, a man who spent his entire career in an ensemble where folk heritage is played from a written score. Alongside him sat ethnomusicologist Vera Stolic, professor Zeljko Sisic, composer and editor at the RTS record label PGP Dejan Aleksic, and RTS music producer Milos Petrovic.
The panel’s makeup matters because of what happened at the end. A tiebreak is not a formality staged for atmosphere, it is an admission that the criteria set for the competition, however carefully worked out, stopped separating two performers at a certain point. For an instrument that is learned by ear in this region but judged by a standard drawn from orchestral practice, an outcome like that says more about the level of the competition than any line in a press release.
Flag first, then violins
The event was opened on August 15 by Minister of Culture Nikola Selakovic, who raised the gathering’s flag on the slopes of Suvobor. The host of this year’s Gathering spoke about the relationship between written and played heritage.
A nation’s history is written in books, but what makes a people a people is its culture. That’s what you hear in its music, what you see and feel in its tone, that’s what every instrument played by that people says.
The minister placed the Pranjani Gathering in a line with festivals devoted to other traditional instruments, from the Dragacevo Trumpet Gathering to the Prislonica Flute Gathering, and noted that Serbian musicians took up the violin, as they did the trumpet, and made it part of their own tradition, often without knowing musical notation.
A nation remembers what was played and sung more than what was written down. Our nation endured centuries of Ottoman bondage even though it was illiterate, but it knew how to sing, to tell stories, and that is what preserved us.
Selakovic said the event, though young, had taken root faster than expected and was helping revive the area beneath Suvobor and Ravna Gora. “This Gathering, I am certain, will live long, because it brings together good people, pure of heart, because it brings together those for whom art and the violin are life, and because it brings together those who love Serbia, who love and preserve our tradition and culture,” he said.
What the eighth edition actually shows
The Guca trumpet gathering had decades to build its own mythology, and today it is written about as a phenomenon, not a competition. In its eighth edition, Pranjani is still a festival where the result carries weight, where the list of laureates is read to the end, and where a junior who takes first place knows what that means. That is a phase that does not last long, and does not come back.
That is why this year’s tiebreak is the most telling detail. When two competitors in the same category reach a point where a five member jury made up of a concertmaster, an ethnomusicologist, a professor, a composer and a producer needs one more round, it means Pranjani has grown to a level where the award turns on a nuance rather than an obvious gap. The winner’s name is known, what stays with you is that deciding it took hearing it one more time.
