Herceg Novi international klapa festival, jubilee, 10th in a row, will be held on September 12 at Music Square, i.e. Mića Pavlović Square in the Old Town, starting at 8 p.m. 10 klapas will perform, among which Kumpanija from Vela Luka, Geta and Nava from Orebić, Jadran from Tivat, Maris from Kotor and the Zagreb klapa Kampanel, which will hold a concert at the end of the festival evening, have confirmed their participation.

Every year, the organizers try to bring bands that have not performed at the Festival so far, so that the audience has the opportunity to hear something new, Igor Jovanović, a member of the Organizing Committee, told RTHN. Igor Jovanović, member of the organizing committee of the Festival – Since it is the jubilee, we planned something so that it might be there, precisely because it is 10 years, 10 years.

In another concept, that would be fine, as far as the duration is concerned, but since this year we have, and this is our practice, which we skipped last year, but this year we are continuing, to have a concert of one of the klapas at the end of the festival evening. This year it is the Kampanel clapper from Zagreb, which did not come to us in previous years – he says.

The idea of the organizers is to organize an educational workshop during this year, where one of the members of established klapas would hold a lecture, all with the aim of preserving klapa songs as an intangible cultural asset. – What is up to us, with that workshop, which the others are already doing, we did not invent anything new here, to help young people get involved in all this.

Because maybe people also like it, but they don’t know how it works, so they have some fear and then they don’t want to get involved so easily, and to get involved so quickly – Jovanović believes. In 2017, the festival was born spontaneously, out of the pure enthusiasm of the members of the Castel Nuovo klapa, and through the nine previous editions, thanks to acquaintances with other members of the klapa, it gained an international reputation. – We try to maintain contacts with all those people, both who were once and who will be.

Precisely because this is not something that happens from year to year, but has a perspective, and I hope, it will have a successful perspective. Maybe one day I won’t be in it, there will be someone else who will inherit. So, all in all, it is a festival with a perspective and we hope that it will also have a tradition. It is already recognized in the region, that’s enough because we don’t have to introduce ourselves additionally to the people we invite to the festival – said Jovanović.

The anniversary edition of the Festival will bring together klapa from Montenegro and Croatia (klapa from Bosnia and Herzegovina have not yet confirmed their participation), confirming the importance of this event for nurturing and promoting klapa song and connecting performers from the region. The tenth edition will be an opportunity for the audience to enjoy the traditional klapa sound, but also to meet new performers through the festival program, while the Kampanel klapa concert will be the finale of the evening.