On 14 – 17 August the second International Music and Art Festival “Be2gether” took place in Vilnius, Lithuania in a place called Narvelishkis. The main stage of the Festival was 50 metres away from the Belarusian border.

The Festival was organized for the first time last year and was a purely music festival. Last year around 40 bands from all over the world took part in the Festival, including Morcheeba, Therapy (UK), Bloodhound Gang,  (USA), Leaves (Island), Datarock (Norway), Andrus Mamantavas (Lithuania), “Liapis Trubetskoy”, Drum Extasy, IQ-48 from Belarus.

Around 70 bands performed at the second International Festival. First of all that included famous German group Fools Garden. Tricky, Groove Armada, LTJ Bukem feat, MC Conrad, Fishbone, Infected Mushroom from Israel performed on three different stages. An extremely popular Lithuanian group “Skyle” met a storm of applause. Among Belarusian groups N.R.M., OSIMIRA, Mauzer were invited to “Be2gether” this year.

“Be2gether”, “Drum2gether, “Georgia2gether”

While the last year’s fest was a purely music event, this year it became a real celebration of arts and sports. Various events were organized in the course of these days: a fiesta with participation of 300 drummers, solidarity actions with Georgia, extreme races on rovers in a swimming pool full of foam-rubber, artists and sculptor’s craft shows, sports competitions…

The Festival opened on 14 August on Ratush Square in Vilnius with the performance of drummers in support of Georgia “Georgia2gether”. A Lithuanian businessman, Gedrius Klimkiavichus, the organizer of the Festival “Be2gether” said: “We planned that the Festival will start with the largest fiesta ever organized before with participation of 300 drummers: “Drum2gether”. In a while the drum fiesta transformed into “Georgia2gether”, that was our way to show support to the Georgian population, via music and arts we expressed our attitude towards Georgia, showed that we were together with them”.

On 15 August the gates of Narvelishsky Castle opened right at the border between Lithuania and Belarus. In addition to concerts there were lots of performances: extreme races on rovers in a swimming pool full of foam-rubber, Dancing Academy teaching how to dance lindi-hope, break, salsa and traditional Indian dances, as well as football and rope pulling competitions. The Festival started a tradition of a “ Park of Playing Sculptures”, created by artists from Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia and Moldova. There were sculptures looking like harps and gramophones that were making sounds when the wind was blowing.  

NRM performed under pouring rain

Music part of the Fest was opened with the performance of a Belarusian group NRM. However the weather came with surprises: a fascinating storm with thunder and lightning raged all the way during NRM performance. However that did not scare the people away, they were dancing in the mud under the downpour. A girl with a white-red-white flag says: “That was NRM performing, there is no rain that could stop us from walking to the stage and dancing in the mud and listen to NRM. After there was water, rain, we could all have a wash. Sun came our later on and all our stuff dried out fast so it was not a barrier”.

Liavon Volsky was cheering the public from the stage all the time, he ordered to dance fast to dry out in a couple of songs. The rock-singer joked about the performance in the downpour, “surprisingly, everything was clean and the sun was shining in Belarus. However here literally within hundred metres, we have both rain and thunder storm. You can see what governmental regime wins. Belarus is a country of stability and sun, while here you see all this trouble in this terrible capitalism. Being serious though, I would roll around in the mud with my band with extreme pleasure. That would be great! That only inspires young people!”.

German “ Fools Garden” and Lithuanian “Skyle” competed in popularity

On the second day of the Festival, Belarusian bands “Mauzer” and “OSIMIRA were performing. The public was also extremely cheerful received the hosts of the Festival, a Lithuanian band “Skyle”. The soloist of the “Skyle”, charming Aiste Smilgivichute admitted that “I myself did not expect such warm reception, I am extremely pleased with how we were received. I am also impressed by the performance a lot. The public, the atmosphere was wonderful, just as well as the idea of the Festival itself: ‘be together’, is fantastic”.

The major event of the second day of the International festival of music and arts ‘Be2gether’ was a performance of a band Fools Garden, extremely popular in the 1990s.

The public met the German musicians extremely warm and would not let them off the state for a while. A single ‘Lemon Tree’ of Fools Garden, won first places in the charts of the major radio stations in the world.

Why there are no International music festivals organized in Belarus?

A Belarusian music promoter and one of the oganizers of the festival “Be Free”, which took place in Lviv the past week-end, Aleksey Lukashevich, regretted that “It is extremely hard to organize similar festivals in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities grant permission for holding mass gatherings several days before the date of the event and it is not possible to organize something being under such serious time pressure”. Therefore all the music fans from Belarus have to overcome visa issues in order to listen to the world famous bands, just as well as their own national groups.

With great pleasure the Belarusian Diaspora welcomed the release of a political prisoner, Aleksandr Kazulin, this good news reached Lithuania immediately.

Giedrus Klimkiavichus: «This kind of Festivals unite not musicians only»

There are no doubts that “Be2gether” will become a traditional international festival. Organizers of the second fest already start preparations for the third International Festival of Music and Arts. They also dream to set up one of the stages right at the state border: one half would be on the Lithuanian side, and the other half on the Belarusian. The owner of the Narvelisky Castle, the organizer of the Festival, Giedrus Klimkiavichus is convinced that “Music has really opened borders and improved trust and understanding between the countries. What happened in the course of the festival this year has definitely been distributed at all levels: between musicians, common people and I believe politicians as well. We all understand that we have common interests, while closed borders and people separated from one another is something negative. The fact that we united for these days, perhaps could unite politicians. I am not talking here about relations with Belarus only. I refer to all problems in global politics that we would like to discuss openly and out-loud”.

Liudmila Korsak

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