GORAN BREGOVIC Wedding & Funeral Band

Rockhal in collaboration with CinEast Film Festival presents. Goran Bregović Wedding & Funeral Band.

The Balkan Legend and his brass band will heat up the Rockhal club for a generous concert with a breathtaking energy on the 17^th of October.

Since 2008, the CinEast festival presents in Luxembourg some of the best films and culture from Central and Eastern European countries.

Since its first edition, the festival has grown considerably in its scope and diversity with the audience number reaching 11 200 festival-goers in 2019.

During the 18 festival days, CinEast’s programme features over 100 screenings of feature and short films of all genres from 20 former communist countries. Besides movies, the festival also offers a wide range of special events, bringing together different forms of art (music, photography, literature, etc.) and promoting cultural exchange.

Among the special guests present at CinEast in the past: Agnieszka Holland, Jacques Doillon, Radu Jude, Sergei Loznitsa, Krystyna Janda, Anne Fontaine, Mirjana Karanović or Milko Lazarov.

Among the invited musicians: Tomasz Stańko, Kult, Džambo Aguševi Orchestra, Fanfara Transilvania, Flying Orkestar, Laco Déczi or Włodek Pawlik.

For its 2022 edition the festival is proud to collaborate with Rockhal and host one of the most famous and talented musicians from the Balkans.

Contemporary composer, traditional musician or rock star, Goran Bregovic did not have to choose – he just had to live and mix all these experiences to invent a music that is both universal and very personal.

Rock Star in Yugoslavia during the Tito years, with his group Bijelo Dugme (12 albums in 14 years and millions of albums sold), he decided in 1989 to dissolve the group (which has since been reformed on the occasion of the 40th anniversary for gigantic concerts around the world).

At the end of the eighties, the filmmaker Emir Kusturica convinced Bregović to participate in the creation of the music for “Time of the Gypsies” which allowed Goran to refine his sense of musical dramaturgy and to work around theGypsy music who fascinates him.

Will follow “Arizona dream”, where Bregović invites the Godfather of punk rock, Iggy Pop on some songs from the soundtrack including the hit “In the Death Car”. In 1994, Patrice Chéreau  entrusted Goran the composition of the music of “La Reine Margot” which ignited the destiny of Isabelle Adjani, but also resonated like the echo of the ongoing siege in Sarajevo.

While the war ravaged their country, Bregović and Kusturica collaborated one last time on “Underground”, the film that was awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1995.

Goran Bregović then decided to hit the road again and created his Wedding & Funeral Band Orchestra. With this ensemble, he associates Gypsy musicians/brass with oriental percussion, mixes Bulgarian female polyphony with a classical male choir, mixes string sections with electronic programming. Dressed in white, seated between his amplifier and his computer, an electric guitar slung over his shoulder, Bregović leads this motley crew of variable geometry every evening (from 9 to 19 musicians, and even up to 60 sometimes).

For more than twenty years, Goran Bregović and his Orchestra of Weddings and Funerals have traveled all the continents of the known world on an endless tour.

In his latest album “Three Letters from Sarajevo”, he draws inspiration from the history of Sarajevo, his city, and its multiple beliefs, identities, mixtures and paradoxes.

He uses the violin as a metaphorical instrument that brings together klezmer, classical and oriental styles, on three instrumental pieces for soloists from the Balkans, the Maghreb and Israel. These three letters also evoke and reconcile, allegorically, the three religions: Christian, Jewish and Muslim for a message of peace and reconciliation.

On stage, with his brass band and the Bulgarian singers, he offers a generous concert, breathtaking energy and freedom that no one can resist…

As he himself says in a shout on stage “Who doesn’t go crazy, isn’t normal…!