EXIT and the branding of a nation or, 7 cities, the finale

after an uneventful 8 hour drive back to serbia from macedonia, we arrived in novi sad just in time for the first night of the EXIT music festival. even after nightfall, i could see that EXIT had totally transformed novi sad. normally jovial, self-contained and charmingly provincial, serbia's second city had been descended upon by more than 200,000 festivaliers from all over europe and it had become slick, neon-lit, the place to be. we missed buraka som sistema's performance, but caught the opening fireworks display. or rather, it caught me. or, rather, almost caught me, as i was standing at least 30 feet above ground on a platform at the very top of the VIP section. so close, i thought a spark might float down and do me like pepsi did michael. so close, we all felt the fragile foundation rock. 'if these fireworks can do this', the serb said, 'imagine what it was like with NATO bombing us.'

there it was again. in a time of revelry, serbians were thinking about war. though for most of us, this seems anachronistic, in serbia, the connection is apt.

the exit festival began as a small student protest against slobodan milosevic's regime in july of 1999, just after the NATO attack on serbia ended. three university students, dusan kovacevic, ivan milivojev, and bojan boskovic, gathered local artists, musicians and actors (including my serb) in the petrovaradin fortress for 9 days of drama, music, exhibitions and protest. two of them even got arrested for it. and now, 10 years later, milosevic is long gone, and EXIT has been condensed into 4 days. everything else about the event has expanded like the waistline of a chunky chick living next door to a krispy kreme. the fortress now bulges with about 8 stages of nonstop sound, from rock, rap, and jazz to folk, pop, and traditional serbian music. numbers? well, from great britain, alone, 20,000! everyone from NERD to franz ferdinand has performed on exit's stages. this year's line-up included prodigy, lily allen, arctic monkey, patty smith, and afro punk up and comer, ebony bones.

with the exception of prodigy, moby had the biggest turn out of the festival. and even though the serb and srjdan are convinced that moby didn't actually play one note on that gussied up guitar (fakest performance ever), he did manage to 'apologize for america's actions', citing it 'his duty as a u.s. citizen'. he then left my serbian brethren befuddled by launching into a tirade about george bush, about whom serbians couldn't care less. it was, after all, former president bill clinton who bombed them. and still, somehow, buildings and bridges and the like likely still smoldering from the attacks, 3 students from the university of novi sad marshaled the talents, anger, and passions of their fellow serb youth and created not only a woodstock, but a beast.

case in point: the dance arena, where tens of thousands gather to go tail up over techno. (europe loves her some techno.) we got our chance to partake on the penultimate night, when the serb and i met up with two of the organizers, ivan and (new addition) milosh, who promptly pressed two green sticker passes to our chests and lead us through a dark hallway, up a small flight of stairs and onto a large scaffolding of some kind. i heard a wall of beats and screams, but i couldn't see where it was coming from. there were only about 200 people in there. i turn to milosh.

'where are we?'

'the dance arena. this is backstage.' he takes me by the shoulders and turns me to the right. 'that's the stage.' i see two smallish, swedish men on the turntables. and about 4 dancers in pink sparkly leotards and tutus. huge blonde afro wigs on their heads. milosh takes my shoulders and directs my attention to the left. 'and there's the crowd. wanna see?', he asks. i eye him. 'ok.'

he leads me through the small crowd and to a railing. below it is a massive crowd. the last time i saw this many people, i was onstage at the paris solidays festival, holding a big ass violin bow. except, this crowd looked like about 3 times the size of the one at paris's solidays festival. this is not including another 3 stories of scaffoldings, holding thousands more, all facing the music makers, hands raised in salute like legions of loyal subjects to child kings. all told, the crowd was more than 70,000 strong.

i ask milosh and ivan if they'd envisioned this ten years ago. ivan barely looks up from lighting his cigarette to say, 'this? this is just the beginning.'

decades are deceptive measures of time. long enough to turn a trend (we, in fact, never associate trends with longevity), but too short for a new born, for instance, to even approach adulthood. 'the beginning', indeed. milosevic may be long gone, and the buildings and bridges are no longer on fire, but just a few kilometers on either side of the fortress, what was a bridge in '98, is 6 concrete stubs sadly sticking out of the danube, and a television station sits in rubble. serbia hasn't been rebuilt yet. and just like '99, milosh, ivan and co. ain't leavin' the dirty work of rebuilding and rebranding serbia to the politicians.