Pit5 Music News Cache

By Ellie Tzortzi Thu Jul 12, 2:36 PM ET

NOVI SAD, Serbia (Reuters) - The Petrovaradin fortress held off the Ottoman empire in 1716, but stood no chance on Thursday against 50,000 partygoers converging on "Exit," one of Europe's biggest music festivals.

The event kicked off in the summer of 2000 as a 100-day parade of defiance against the nationalism that ripped the Balkans apart in the 1990s and made Serbia a pariah state for its role in brutal wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

It has since evolved into the biggest festival in southeast Europe, with acts in this year's four-day event including legendary hip-hop group Beastie Boys, cult dance act The Prodigy and veteran rocker Robert Plant, formerly of Led Zeppelin.

"If you tell anyone you are going to Serbia, they ask if you are taking a bullet-proof vest," said Paul Maynard from London, at Exit for the second time.

"But it's great here. I came back because it's more than a festival, you get a holiday at the same time, whereas in Britain you just roll around in the mud."

Some 400 artists are to perform in the 18th century fortress on the Danube, ranging from big-name DJs like Frankie Knuckles to the eclectic Franco-Algerian band Gnawa Diffusion and the Balkan gypsy jazz-soul fusion of Serbia's Shaban Bajramovic.

"This year for the first time we have a sold-out festival," said Exit spokesman Sagor Meskovic.

"Half the audience is international, some 5,000 from the former Yugoslavia, 10,000 Brits, even Australians, Mexicans, Japanese. Technically we are also better, we have a bigger dance stage, an improved sound and light system, everything is on a higher level, more spectacular."

SPONSORS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

The laid-back, optimistic atmosphere of the festival harks back to the inaugural event in 2000, which wrapped up a few days before the elections that led to the overthrow of Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic in a popular uprising.

Serbia was welcomed back into Europe and Exit was hailed as galvanizing force for liberal and pro-Western Serbs.

"It's great to be in Serbia," said 18-year-old Damir Dejanovic from Bosnia. "I came for the music, of course, but also to meet others with the same ideas, so hopefully we can all create a movement of all young people in the former Yugoslavia."

As well as attracting big corporate sponsors, Exit still serves up large helpings of social awareness, with NGOs given space to promote what organizers call "a break with the traditions that nearly destroyed Serbia in the 1990s."

"We are still continuing our visa abolition campaign, to get Serbia on the European Union's Schengen white list'," said Rajko Bozic of the organizing committee, listing events on the environment and against racism and discrimination.

"The sponsors are necessary to keep the festival as glorious as it is, but we are not compromising on social issues," he said.

"A lot of people come because of the image we have, a place where hedonism meets activism', as one foreign journalist put it. Of course we don't reach everyone who comes to the fortress, but I am sure we are reaching many more people than others working on social campaigns."

Under the summer sun, many of the flip-flopped 19-year-olds lounging on the banks of the Danube seemed to care more about the cheap beer than history or geography.

"We are in Bosnia now," said a British teenager as the Yugoslav-era train chugged along the Pannonian plain from Hungary into Serbia. "No, no," said another, "it's Slovakia."

(Additional reporting by Alexandra Hudson)