Dua Lipa’s Sunny Hill Festival aiming to change Kosovo’s image

Throughout the summer time within the UK there’s a music competition just about each week someplace within the nation.

Highlights embrace the summer time kick off with Radio 1’s Massive Weekend in Could, Glastonbury’s dominance in June, Latitude in July and a Studying and Leeds Financial institution Vacation bonanza in August.

Some may argue British music lovers are spoilt for alternative.

In some components of the world there’s no choice to bop along with your mates in a area whereas holding a lukewarm beer, attending to grips with dry shampoo, shoddy cellphone sign and chants of ‘Oggy, oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi’.

That’s the place Dua Lipa and her dad Dukagjin wished to vary issues by launching Sunny Hill competition within the household’s dwelling metropolis of Pristina, Kosovo – part of the world few worldwide artists toured.

“I wish to change the rhetoric of what folks take into consideration Kosovo and it being war-torn,” Dua defined earlier this yr.

“Once I was residing in Kosovo, not one of the artists I wished to see ever got here down.”

Dua was born within the UK however moved to Pristina as a baby after a conflict within the late Nineteen Nineties left greater than 10,000 useless, as Kosovo fought for independence from Serbia.

It declared it in 2008, though some international locations – together with Serbia – refuse to recognise it.

“Reinstating the nation took extra years than we’d preferred,” Dukagjin says.

He says it was “all the time a dream” to have one thing like Sunny Hill in Pristina, after working within the dwell music occasions trade for years earlier than Dua made it as a global pop star.

In 2018, 10 years after Kosovo declared independence, Sunny Hill launched – headlined by Dua as tens of hundreds celebrated one in every of their very own making the large time.

However it was more durable then to persuade different world artists to play and the next yr the New Guidelines star turned to her buddies Miley Cyrus and Calvin Harris to ask them to high the invoice, who each carried out within the area for the primary time.

That modified how the competition was seen by different acts and their administration groups.

“We actually do punch manner above our weight relating to the line-up,” Dukagjin tells BBC Information.

“Once I speak to the artists about coming I say: ‘Look you may not have the tequila you need in your rider, however belief me you’ll have the perfect sound tools cash should buy’.”

His newest information estimates that about 40% of tourists have been from exterior Kosovo – noting that will probably be strongly influenced by the nation’s diaspora as these with household connections right here convey buddies with them.

Some had travelled as removed from Chicago within the US to see artists like Bebe Rexha, Burna Boy, Stormzy, and DJ Snake headline the primary stage final weekend.

Groove Armada, Black Espresso and Griff have been all additionally on the invoice.

Kosovo is assumed to have Europe’s youngest inhabitants as greater than half are estimated to be beneath the age of 30.

Journey restrictions, until earlier this year, meant native musicians didn’t have the flexibleness to play in different components of the continent.

“It’s not that straightforward to be a musician,” explains singer La Fazani, who’s performed Sunny Hill a number of instances.

“The one manner you’ll be able to really make good revenue is by taking part in nightclubs.”

He lately gained a giant TV present within the nation however says with out Sunny Hill he wouldn’t get to play dwell to a crowd of hundreds, and hopes the Lipa visitor record may enhance his profession.

“Sunny Hill is without doubt one of the biggest mills of a constructive picture of Kosovo,” he says.

“There’s many worldwide label folks right here and I hope I might need caught the attention of somebody who may like what I do.”

Recent from seeing his daughter headline one of many greatest festivals on the planet, Dukagjin says “Glastonbury is one in every of a sort” and is aware of it is going to be laborious for his undertaking Sunny Hill, which came about for the primary time on its new everlasting website to accommodate the rising viewers, to achieve a standing like that.

Though, he says trade buddies like Coachella proprietor Paul Tollett say the undertaking reminds him of Glastonbury within the Eighties, and there are plans to make it greater than a dwell music competition.

“I like artists who spend a day or two longer in Pristina and have an opportunity to satisfy native artists and share concepts.

“And for them to rub shoulders with folks within the music trade, and hopefully subsequent yr we will create a motion with some workshops,” Dukagjin says.

You possibly can be taught extra about Sunny Hill Pageant and the way Kosovo is making an attempt to vary its picture on Business Daily.

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