Miško Plavi, Ilija Ludvig and Davor Peršić on the Street Musicians Festival!

The accordion that captivated the Japanese, songs against the injustices of this world and the crazy one-man band

This year’s Street Musicians Festival will also host performances from the Belgrade musicians Miško Plavi and Ilija Ludvig and the street performer and entertainer from Zagreb Davor Peršić. Miško is a renowned composer and multi-instrumentalist, who appeared on the music scene back at the beginning of the 80s. Then he played guitar, bass and keyboards in bands VIA Talas, D’Boys, Piloti and EKV. Afterwards he turned to the accordion and made a fantastic career in Japan. Ilija is not as experienced as Miško, but he is becoming more and more popular among the audience in search of excellent underground songwriting, while Davor is a real master of musical-comic street performances.

Miško Plavi’s solo career begins 15 years ago. At that moment he goes to Japan for the first time, but as an accordion player, and begins to compose music for films. “I went to Japan, with the wish to see how it is to play in the street. Until then I was only used to playing with bands and on stadiums and squares in front of ten, fifty and hundreds of thousands of people, but never in the street”, tells us Miško. “While still in Belgrade I made a plan: to show the Japanese what is an accordion! For three months I prepared a 45 minute program intended for the street, and as a result I experienced incredible success.”

After meeting people who connected him to the main men from the music business, he began to play in clubs, in the end arriving to an impressive 200 concerts all across Japan, and in the most exclusive music halls. On this year’s Street Musicians Festival, Miško Plavi will perform part of the program Music Around The World. We will hear his original music through which he weaves musical segments of other authors from the fields of rock, jazz, classical and ethno music.

His younger colleague, the talented singer-songwriter and poet Ilija Ludvig, emerged from musical anonymity in 2007, appearing on the compilation Jutro će promeniti sve? (Morning Will Change Everything?). Today, Ilija is – judging by the announcements for his ever more frequent performances – the underground king of Belgrade! Ilija plays the guitar and sings, and is engaged in a fight against all injustices of this world. You can hear Ilija’s imaginative indie pop-rock songs on il.yillit.com or as part of his bandcamp channel ilijaludvig.bandcamp.com.

As for his official releases, Ilija is represented on the popular compilations Pesme ispod pokrivača (Songs From Under The Covers) (2013) and Jason Molina Tribute: Just Be Simple (2014). To the Street Musicians Festival Ilija will bring his guitar and his loops and beats. The only thing that remains to be seen is will he be dressed as Dionysus or Hermes…

From the capital city of Croatia to this year’s Street Musicians Festival arrives Davor Peršić, an passionate circussologist and experienced street musician. This graduate of sociology inspiration for dance as his life’s motto, but also his calling, found as still only a child, from when his creative work with sound, wood and various other kinds of unusual musical instruments begins.

From 1999 actively performs as a clown and juggler, and then as a street musician as well. In the meantime, he built his own instrument – a modified contrabass, to which he adds various other sound components. In that self-initiated game of rhythms, bass lines and the occasional singing, as he says, he finds complete joy. Peršić thus becomes – under the stage name Magister Crazy Man Band – the one-man band musician who leaves no one feeling unsatisfied.

The 15th jubilee edition of the Street Musicians Festival will be held from 3rd to 5th September 2015, in Novi Sad. In front of the audience in Novi Sad and its guests, the Festival will host performances from: the Californian swing attraction Phat Cat Swinger, the jazzmen Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra and retro pop-rockers VIS Limunada from Belgrade, Novi Sad’s own stand-up comedy duo Daško & Mlađa, the Americana masters from Rijeka My Buddy Moose and 14 other bands, individuals and art troupes (Balkan Weirdos, Don’t Touch Anything, DrvoTruo, Duo Nomadiko, Dušana Stefanović, CHAOS Jugglers, InSession, INTU, Kezz, Kralj Čačka, Lepi Jova, Nylon Club, Vuk Muškinja and Wooden Ambulance) who arrive to the festival program through participation on the open call. The friend of this year’s Open Call was Telekom Serbia. So, continue to visit our festival web page /program/ and be the first to find out what we have in store for you, because by the end of August we will have announced more truly spectacular festival performers!

The Street Musicians Festival is organized by the Art Association Inbox from Novi Sad, with support from the City of Novi Sad and the Provincial Secretary for Culture and Information, Tourist Organization of the City of Novi Sad, the embassy of the United States of America in Belgrade, the Italian Institute for Culture in Belgrade, the Serbian Petroleum Industry, Telekom Serbia and Generali Insurance Serbia.