The popular Brussels festival Balkan Trafik! announced the big news – the 2022 edition will take place outdoors for the first time, at Place De Brouckère! The 16th edition of the festival will be held between 28th April and 1st May 2022.
Balkan Trafik! will hold outdoors in the very heart of Brussels for the first time, as well as in Namur. Over 150 artists will rock the stages in Brussels and Namur over the course of the four-day event to be held next spring. Tickets are now on sale.
Following two editions that were held online due to the health crisis, Balkan Trafik’s festival producer and programmer Nicolas Wieërs wanted to pull out all the stops with the 2022 edition to be held from 28th April to 1st May at Place de Brouckère and Grand Place in Brussels and at Namur’s Delta centre.
Balkan Trafik is not just a music festival. It certainly looks like one and has many of the associated characteristics, but Balkan Trafik has always been a platform for communicating through the arts, and with this in mind, the digital format that the two previous editions took was much more than a fallback solution; on the contrary, it’s enabled us to add a very valuable string to our bow. We’ve developed various strategies for 2022 to give us the best possible chance of organising a ‘real’ festival with an audience, with a real human touch, with smiles and with plenty of opportunities to share our experiences”, Nicolas Wieërs explains.
Over 150 artists, guest stars and creations
The bill for the 2022 edition currently includes Balkan stars like Goran Bregović, who will be bringing us the highlights of his career, the best-known brass bands of Serbia and Northern Macedonia, the gypsy punk of the Bohemians Betyars, the Taraf of Viorica și Ioniță de la Clejani & their guests, up-tempo rock from the founder of the No Smoking Orchestra and singer Amparo Sánchez of Amparanoïa, among others.
Then, of course, there are the Balkan Trafik creations, including Balkan Jazzović bringing back traditional sounds with a jazz, disco and funk groove, and the kings of weddings and funerals join together to bring us The Last Original Balkan All Stars – 35 living gods all taking to the stage, providing a unique opportunity to see, hear and party to the beat. There will also be a stage dedicated to the new generation of ‘Roma’ jazz, with a scintillating encounter between 24 young Serbian, French and Belgian musicians.
Closing the festival will be the 10th edition of the Giant Horo, bringing together traditional groups from all over the Balkans to perform a big dance that will take place, as it does every year, on the Grand Place in Brussels (free of charge), a symbolic and emotional moment in which all of the communities involved join hands and dance together.
Full programme and tickets
The full programme can be found at www.balkantrafik.com/artists
Tickets www.balkantrafik.com/get-your-ticket
A free app is also available https://www.balkantrafik.com/get-the-app/
