Bombalkanica Festival

Bombalkanica was born in January 2022 as the effect of long collaboration between various musicians from Porto and Lisbon who are in love with the Balkan traditional or Balkan inspired music and would like to spread it more among the Portuguese public. In collaboration with the Porto based DJ project Balskandal, which promotes the Balkan originated music since 2016, the festival was created, using various venues around the city. Due to the pandemical restrictions, the first edition was limited to five concerts, two workshops, two nights with DJ sets, two jam sessions and the final event with the Balkan inspired dinner and a surprise concert. The festival was organized by two people (with the help of many other friends), and the first edition surprised with the amount of participants- in the public we welcomed over 100 people, coming not only from Portugal, but also from Spain and France. Since the festival worked very well, we would like to extend the second edition, offering more activities, more venues and being able to invite bands from the Balkans. We are a group of musicians and culture managers fascinated with the Balkan culture and especially its music, part of us has lived in Croatia and from there travelled the whole Balkan Peninsula, getting to know amazing bands and musicians. Our goal is to promote this culture here in Portugal, where it is still not very known and be able to invite the wonderful music projects from the Balkan region to play and give workshops at Bombalkanica. Therefore, networking with the people who live there and stay in close touch with the reality of working with music and organizing cultural events on the Balkans will be an amazing opportunity for us to learn and exchange our knowledge.