POHODA: The World’s Greatest Music Festival
After a two hour train ride outside Bratislava, I arrived in Trencín for the annual Pohoda (relax) music festival. Pohoda was founded in 1997 by two friends who were in a hardcore band under communist rule. They initially hoped to compensate for the slashed cultural budget following Slovakia’s independence. The festival has since grown to a weekend-long event for 30,000.
Since its inception Pohoda has targeted every age demographic. Strollers and grandmothers populated the repurposed airport. The festival featured an entire children’s zone complete with bouncy castles, puppet shows, a Christian orchestra, and even a man-powered basket merry-go-round.
Other Pohoda activites? Free canvas and paint. Literary readings. NGO-hosted panels. A foosball tournament (Slovaks are very good at foosball.) Human foosball. Air hockey. Plastic ice hockey I haven’t seen since Lazer Park birthdays.
Dance Class
My favorite tent was dedicated entirely to teaching people dance steps.
Each day they featured a “Clip Dance,” where a dance-leader would teach the crowd a few moves from one of that night’s headliner’s singles. The festival’s organizers pick twenty good dancers from the crowd, and with the band’s management’s nod, surprise the singers onstage with a whole troupe of backup dancers. Two Door Cinema Club was reportedly stupefied.
The Romanian dance group got the most love. After teaching a crowd of over five hundred ranging from tweens to grandparents how to circle dance. One set piece featured a ‘Coke and Pepsi’ Bar Mitzvah split of the room between boys and girls, where each side took turns showing off their moves in a back and forth that tugged the dancers across the floor. After they went off stage, the crowd began stamping out the rhythm we had been listening to for the past hour — the calls for an encore dance number were the loudest I heard all weekend.
I’m conflicted whether or not this could ever fly in the states. On the east coast at least, I think people would be too self-conscious to generate the critical mass required for everyone to feel ok.
I asked a few people why they were so comfortable looking uncoordinated in front of strangers. Familiarity with traditional dancing, a progressive audience, racial and religious uniformity I suggested? Maybe, but also, “We’re just drunk.”
Performances
A Curacao-based band (Kuenta I Tambu) had another great set. With male and female lead singers, a dj playing dance beats and two drummers rocking African drums, they played an fusion of edm, trap, and island music.
One of their riffs was how no one in Slovakia had heard of Curacao but after tonight they’ll never forget it. “I love the flag-waving!” said the lead singer. Someone in the crowd passed her a Czech flag that she displayed with abandon. A roadie quickly took it out of her hands.
The water the festival staff handed out at the front of the EDM sets was sparkling. Food options ranged from Hungarian langos (sort of gross fried dough with cheese) to potato pancakes as big as your head served up by grandmas.
I tweeted at RL Grime to play a song I wanted, saying I was the only America at the festival. He favorited and did.
Welcoming the Sun
Slovakia is the whitest country I’ve ever visited. I guess given other opportunities in Europe, Slovakia doesn’t compare well for African, Middle Eastern, and Asian immigrants. But unlike in South Korea, even Slovakia has a ‘racial underclass’ of sorts. Most construction workers were ethnic Roma. A friend who had thrown music events in the past noted that whenever they book Roma acts, a big sticking point was always having to provide full transportation, housing, and meals .And I did not see one Roma out of the tens of thousands of attendees.
Yet a Roma band made the most magical moment of the weekend. Starting at 5am ‘Sendreiovci Le Orchestroha’ came on stage for a “welcoming of the sun” concert. The vibe of the two thousand who had stayed up all night wasn’t drugged but just completely blissed out. I’ve never been around in a group of people all so exhausted, mellow, and in their own way ecstatic.
By 7:30am the Sunday morning ecumenical service on the festival stage that RL Grime and Hudson Mohawke had rocked only 24hrs before had started. Over five hundred of all ages attended.
Said one friend, “Pohoda is how I wish Slovakia would be.”
