Nišville
| Nisville Jazz Festival | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Genre | Jazz, Soul, World music, Blues, Funk |
| Dates | Four days, starting on the middle of August |
| Location(s) | Ancient Fortress, Niš, Serbia |
| Years active | 1995 - present |
| Founded by | Ivan Blagojević |
| Website | |
| [www.nisville.com] | |
Nišville (Serbian: Нишвил, Nišvil) is an annual summer music festival in the Ancient Fortress of Niš, Serbia.
From the festival’s very beginning, its concept has been based on presenting the ‘traditional’ jazz forms together with their fusion with the ethnic tradition from the different parts of the world, especially from the Balkans.
The jazz festival tradition in Niš, initiated in 1981, and terminated in 1991, was renewed at the end of 1994 thanks to the producer and economist who specializes in cultural management, Ivan Blagojević, theatre director by vocation. The first manifestation, entitled “International Nišville Jazz Festival” was held in January 1995. From the very beginning, in addition to the “more traditional” forms of jazz, the concept of the festival has primarily been founded on the fusion of this genre with ethnic traditions of various parts of the world, especially the Balkans, and the venue, with the exception of two editions, (owing to space rental issues) was the large hall of “Klub Vojske” (Army Club), with the capacity of 800 seats.
Ever since the start, the Festival has established cooperation with cultural centers and embassies of the United States of America, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Germany, whose musicians have significantly participated at this manifestation and the names of the participants increasingly became greater: Reggie Workmen, Jimmy Cobb, Philip Catherine, Aria Hendricks, Miles Griffith, Denise Jannah, Bemshie Shearer etc. Based on the ideas of Ivan Blagojević, Nišville has frequently had programs involving different musicians (who had often not been acquainted with one another by that time) forming the same bands, including the performance by Šaban Bajramović with jazz musicians from Serbia, Bulgaria and Germany, followed by the “ad hoc” ensemble whose main lineup was made up of musicians from the “triangle” of Serbia – Bulgaria – Macedonia: Vasil Hadžimanov, Teodosi Spasov and Toni Kitanovski (band which continued working after Nišville), and a special exclusive involved the only joint performance by the Queen and King of Romani music – Esma Redžepova and Šaban Bajramović.
In addition to the large hall of the “Army Club”, the Programs at the “Army Club” (which included a minimum of five bands per night of the festival) were also held on another stage (while the main stage was being prepared for the next band), in the hall of the Club, and the socializing between the audience and the musicians continued up to the early morning at jam sessions in Nišville Jazz Club.
The last edition in a closed area (and the late November term) proved that Nišville had fully completed their mission, as it had created (and, to a certain extent, educated) a very large audience, so the largest concert hall in Nis became too small to house all the interested parties, which was reflected in the fact that there was a lot of standing in a great number of programs, i.e. that the festival might have been attended by more than a thousand people per night.
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Wikipedia