Cacak Gets KOMUNA: Two Free Days of Music and Books
The first edition of KOMUNA holds two free days of music and books on September 11 and 12 at the Park of Youth and Disov Amphitheater on the Morava, with Sajsi MC, six bands and two literary talks.
In the evening, the Park of Youth in Cacak looks like any other riverside city park: benches, a path, the shadow of the bridge over the West Morava. This Friday, though, a stage will stand in that same spot, one the city has never had the chance to hear, because it marks the start of the first edition of the KOMUNA festival, two days of music, books and conversation, without a single dinar for admission.
The program runs across two locations, the Disov Amphitheater and the Park of Youth on the Morava riverbank, from 6 p.m. Friday until past midnight on Saturday. The entire two day schedule is free for visitors, with organizers covering the costs through donations rather than ticket sales.
Who is behind Komuna
The festival is run by an informal initiative called Komuna, and the name itself is an acronym built from the Serbian words for Culture, Awareness, Thought, Art, Independence and Alternative. The fundraising campaign ran on the platform Donacije.rs, and according to the initiative itself, it was successfully completed even before the schedule was announced. In the call for the campaign, the organizers wrote:
We transparently invest every donation we collect into providing a free program. Precisely because we work on the basis of enthusiasm, good will and friendship, for the benefit of the whole community, every financial contribution is precious to us.
The same call also announces how the program is split by sound: the first night, they say, is dedicated to rock, the second to hip hop and electronic music, which the published schedule bears out.
Friday belongs to books and noise
The festival opens with a literary program at 6 p.m., a launch of two titles. “Astronaut 15” is signed by Nemanja Velimirovic, a musician, author and producer with roughly 3,000 performances behind him, while “Sis qui videris” is the debut prose collection of Novi Sad singer-songwriter and professor Vedran Ferizovic, built around the motto “be what you seem to be.” Marko Curcic moderates the conversation with both authors.
After the books, the bands take over.
- 7:30 to 8 p.m., Terrachontula (Cacak)
- 8:15 to 9 p.m., Short Reports (Novi Sad)
- 9:15 to 10 p.m., Grizete (Novi Sad)
- 10:15 to 11 p.m., JAL (Novi Sad)
- 11:15 p.m. to midnight, Guzva (Cacak)
- 12:15 to 1 a.m., Midlseks (Cacak)
Saturday, Sajsi MC and a premiere
The second night opens with another literary talk. From 7:30 to 8:40 p.m., Ivana Rasic, better known as Sajsi MC, appears with her debut poetry collection, “Sta zulja zgrade?” Poet Aleksa Krstic talks with her, Isidora Djolovic hosts the program, and after the conversation the audience can buy a signed copy of the book.
From 9 to 9:50 p.m. comes the premiere screening of her new video album, whose release is set for September 25. Cacak becomes, after Belgrade, the second city where audiences hear and see that material before its official release, which gives an unexpected weight to a festival that is only just beginning. The evening then closes with DJ sets, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., featuring Marko DMC of the Belgrade crew Demode DJs and Rade Dzandza from Cacak.
Why Cacak?
Reading the sources on the festival side by side turns up a small discrepancy over exactly which edition this is. The outlet Morava Info announces it as edition zero, while Hedlajner and the outlet Resurs centar write about the first edition of the KOMUNA festival, matching the organizers’ own call for the campaign. The difference is symbolic, but it says something about how much of the festival, at the point it was conceived, was still more an idea than a fixed date on a calendar.
Still, the bigger part of the story is that a program like this rarely comes together outside Belgrade and Novi Sad, let alone for free. Six bands, two books and an album premiere from a regionally known artist are coming to Cacak thanks to a group of people who asked their neighbors for money, not sponsors, and who, judging by the published schedule, spent that money on the program itself rather than on decor around it. In case of rain, the program moves: on Friday to the yard of the local Gimnazija, on Saturday to the Mancula motorcycle club, which means the festival planned ahead on that front too.
