on the outskirts...

On the outskirts of Frushka Gora Mountain there is a small Vojvodian village where roads from all directions cross and where Europe and Asia meet, just around the corner at the belly button of the world where everything seems to be very close yet all is distant. In the centre of the village is a white church surrounded by many old houses. One of the most beautiful of these houses had a kachara, a basement where people used to keep wine and brandy. It is now Boris Kovacˇ and La Campanella' s music studio – a sound workshop where, instead of alcoholic beverages, people make music. Sometimes, during the summer, music can be heard from the yard and the dogs begin to wail longingly.

 one night...

One night Boris Kovacˇ woke up and saw a strange god sitting in his room. What the god told him we can't tell but his senses were moved and his feelings aroused. Not knowing what to do he began to play a tune that has haunted him for years, coloured in his imaginings by Spanish guitar and Vojvodian tambura, Pannonian and Mediterranean melancholy thread on the same line. The music exists within a night detached from time and space: wandering, dreaming, howling at the moon, peeking out from the labyrinth of history, from the cry of distressed and deadened voices, blanketed in barbed wire, bombs and engines which saw through the sky... emerging with an art, a love song, an Argentinean dance.

kovac remembers...

Kovac remembers all of his romances, elegies and ballads and then those branchy creepers – dynamic waltz and virtuosic swing. He seems to play effortlessly and, just like a swimmer on the golden sand of the Red Sea, sheltered beneath a rock from the enormous swelter of the summer sun, he can only hear his own breath, remembering the melody that Odysseus fed upon when he awakes, unaware that the rock above him has begun to crack. How does one elicit music from a destructive power and simultaneously play with people's raptures as if fleeing an avalanche to escape over a vast, unknown glacier? How does one embody the metaphysical feeling of easiness and simplicity to weave the absolute kaftan, descend through Tibet and pass through the rivers of forgetting with the speed of a train?

 it's the same...

It's the same meditation in the night that won't allow the conscience of the whole world to be emptied but rather wishes to keep its happy moments. Kovacˇ mumbles a mantra while announcing the next tune, “Uh-Um, all right, the danger is still near, the world is no longer a nice place for living, but it's no good crying and to give in yourself to desperation, and the tragic feeling of life. On the other hand, music is not an analgesic, drowning with alcohol while going with the elevator towards the execution ground. One should play music while the world is collapsing. It is both sad and joyful. Maybe this will last and it will be a mischief to waste time. Maybe this way we will feel better, just like a melody from the other side of the century that suddenly will arrive in the heart of the city.”

this mantra...

This mantra is with him when he takes on the role of the minstrel, the wandering musician, the modern Odysseus...while he looks over his shoulder towards the audience that he will take into his story. It is with him while he is preparing and dressing himself, and with an easy step he joins the carnival of various faces, people and gods. Then he begins to play.