The Slovak word ‘pohoda’ can be loosely translated as ‘chill’ or ‘contentment’ and the very first Pohoda took root already in 1997. What was the impulse that made you go for it?
We had disbanded as a band called Bez ladu a skladu and were wondering what to do with the cultural scene in Slovakia. We have watched with envy many clubs and festivals opening in the Czech Republic and many fitness centres opening in Slovakia. I was complaining about it to a friend and he was like, ‘why don’t you do something about it?’ That was a helpful callout so I talked to people from my underground scene and others from the hardcore scene and we put together a small event – that was the first Pohoda in 1997.
The first Pohoda was supposed to be a kind of counterbalance to mass popular concerts. How did it organically evolve from that initial attitude into the biggest festival in Slovakia?
In the beginning, of course, we had different ideals and ideas about how the event should work. For example, we wanted to be a community festival with no security and no rents for stallholders, with friends working the venue, etc. This was, of course, very different from the reality where friends would let friends and acquaintances into the festival freely and almost no one paid for entry. It was very chaotic and couldn’t be done that way, so we put some rules in place next time. After we got a bit more organised, the festival started to grow organically to what it is today.
On the Pohoda website, you state: ‘We try to do Pohoda with the same attitude as when you invite someone to your home for a visit.’ With such a huge number of visitors and the size of the area, how do you manage to maintain that? What is the main difference in approach from festivals of a similar format?
We like the place where the festival is and we take care of it. We want it to feel like a friendly visit to someone’s house: you prep good food and drinks, tidy up, ready the bathrooms and the toilets, you listen to good music and watch great theatre and films. Regarding ecology, besides reusable cups, compostable plates and cutlery, and above-standard number of chemical toilets with a bio concentrate, we also use mobile solar power stations and solar lighting, offer personal ashtrays, collect raw materials, have a 120-member crew taking care of the upkeep of the venue, and much more.
We also realised early on there’s something we call ‘the festival paradox’ – you have to fence off and enclose an area to herd people in, and only then they are supposed to have freedom and safe space. We actually find that funny, so we don’t close the area for the night. People are free to walk around and hang out there whenever they want, that’s our uniqueness. We’ve also banned the sale of hard alcohol at the festival a few years back, so you can send a small child through the grounds at three in the morning and they won’t encounter drunken ‘zombies’. I can personally attest to this.
Another thing I’d like to mention is that we are not cashless like a lot of current festivals. We take all forms of payment, catering to the mix of generations that come to us. The venue and programme are also very much thinking about people with children – we have a large Family Park so that everyone can really enjoy the event and no one has to stay at home or decide whether or not to go because of the kids.
What most festivals also don’t have is the ability to bring anything in, from drinks and food to other useful stuff, which creates a general sense of well-being. We only do bag check for dangerous items and glass. We also plan the space very carefully and you’ll hardly find any queues for toilets and refreshment stands. There are plenty of places to relax and the advantage of the open airfield area is that you hardly have to squeeze through the crowd when moving through the venue, not counting the crowds in front of the stage or moving between the staging areas for the various headliners, of course.
You are the director, curator and booker of Pohoda. Do you really have the final say in the organisation and especially the lineup or do you have a reliable team to which you can delegate decisions?
We plan pretty much organically, we don’t immediately make precise ‘Excel spreadsheets’ like other festivals. At the moment [May 2024], we’re still sorting out some bookings although I’m already happy with the overall shape and selection. We start looking for new performers for the next edition after the current one is over. We try to invite primarily whom we haven’t had yet or who haven’t performed in Slovakia to date in general because fewer famous artists come here than to Prague or Budapest, for example. Exceptionally, we book someone bigger for the second time, like Skepta, where we made an exception because he contacted us himself and said he wanted to repeat Pohoda.
Sometimes, I hear from my contemporaries that nothing new is being created in music and that everything has been here before, which is what all generations before us have said. I discover something new and great every year so I know that’s not true and that the source is almost inexhaustible, music is an amazing thing. This is what I would like to convey to the Pohoda crowd so that they leave having discovered something new.
How does the lineup process roughly work? Do you have a ‘key’ that you use to choose the genres for each year?
Partially, the stages and genres and a section of the supporting programme have their own curator and a great team I can rely on. I let them pick and recommend things and then we listen to them and talk about them. Even though I have the veto power, I very rarely use it. That would happen if the band was somehow extremist, but that’s hardly possible, given the nature of the curators. I always want to make sure that no matter how randomly a visitor wanders near any stage, they always get a good experience of a good production.
For example, the Pohoda’s smallest Garage Stage is a place of discovery where we predominantly strive to create visibility and opportunities for the upcoming generation of Slovak artists who can join via an open call. After the festival each year, the Garage Stage moves to the Slovak city of Trenčín to create a cultural space for a few more weeks.
Moreover, organically from the beginning, we have been thinking about fair representation of performers and people from the LGBTQAI+ community, even more so given the current events in Slovakia. This puts us in the crosshairs of various right-wing politicians, and populists or extremist figures. This makes us all the more eager to be more vocal about certain issues and to show where we stand in terms of human rights or to respond to the current statements by the Minister of Culture or other politicians from the current Slovak governmental coalition. The festival has always had a strong activist component that we care about and don’t compromise on. It’s built on the shared moral values of the festival team members, which permeate everything from booking to marketing and festival communications.
As someone who was born in 1972, I continually appreciate that I could and can do a ‘free festival’, something that was not possible in my youth.
What is your personal ‘proudest’ booking or a standout performer in the history of Pohoda? Possibly a favourite year and why?
The first act that comes to mind is Prodigy, that was a huge personal joy of mine. From the ‘big names’, I was really happy we had Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Portishead, Lou Reed or Björk. But to me, ‘headliner’ is a term that I use loosely because every band or artist is dear to me and deserves attention. One such example of my personal headliner is the Afghan Women‘s Orchestra, also called Zohra. The country’s first all-female orchestra played Pohoda in 2019 and it was a very touching moment for me due to the situation in Afghanistan where they faced invectives and actual bomb threats when they started out. They now tour the world and live in exile in Portugal.
Another incredible moment was when Kronos Quartet, the renowned string quartet from the USA, collaborated with Slovak composer and saxophonist Miroslav Tóth to create a 10-minute piece that would honour the murdered Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in 2018.
Also, one particular year I would like to mention is 2010, which was the edition after the great 2009 tragedy when the stage tent collapsed due to bad weather. We were worried how this would affect the festival and were considering not going ahead with another year but in 2010, Pohoda got sold out. I’m still grateful for people’s support and trust, it was and still is immensely important to me.
How did dance, theatre, literature and other accompanying programmes start to trickle into the festival programme?
It all kind of came together gradually at the prompting of different people – what if we did classical music, reading, theatre, dance? At first I wasn’t always sure how it would fit into the concept of the festival and whether we had the right facilities and technology for it, but then we figured out the perfect format and time and those elements have remained. For example, people have got used to the fact that the theatre is performed in the morning when it is quiet and there is no music programme, and because we invite great Slovak ensembles, we often sell out.
As far as the visual aspect of Pohoda is concerned, Ilona Nèmeth, who is the curator of visual arts at Pohoda, has the lion’s share in it. She once told me that if we continue like this on the visual side, we will be able to book Elán next year, which hurt but thanks to that, we started working on it together. Visual art is something I really enjoy at Pohoda and since it’s not my field, I’m learning a lot about it. People sometimes wonder why we don’t have ‘attractive’ flashing and glowing installations like other festivals but that would be exactly what Ilona was talking about. Thanks to her, you can find various artworks around the grounds that are either loaned or custom-made. For the latter, we put out an open call for artists each year, called Pohoda Visual Contest.
How do you stay in touch with your audience outside of the festival? How do you make yourselves known and what image does the festival wish to broadcast to the world?
We communicate with the world through classical means and channels, and then through events throughout the year that are strongly tied to expressing our critical views of the government and the current situation in Slovakia, such as the strong restriction of queer rights. Among the events, I would like to mention Slovenská Krčma (transl. Slovak Pub), which was created in response to statements made by the Slovak populist politician Robert Fico who defended the legal conviction of the neo-Nazi politician Mazurek for racist remarks by saying: “If the verdict of the Supreme Court is to be a measure of what constitutes a criminal offence when making statements about the Roma people, [we can] walk into any pub in Slovakia and lock up all the guests, including the dogs.” The successful event involved hundreds of pubs and artists across Slovakia. We wanted to show that most pub-goers in Slovakia are not racist and do not share fascist views.
We also organised various events to honour the memory of the aforementioned Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová or, for example, the Slovenská Tepláreň, which was huge festival with hundreds of events all around Slovakia, which reacted to the atrocious homophobic terrorist attack at the Tepláreň club last year, in which two young people, Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič, were killed in a hate-motivated assault.
Then we made several charity concerts named Pohoda for Ukraine, with proceeds going to the humanitarian aid for war-stricken Ukrainians. It’s thanks to the main Pohoda Festival that we are able to pull all these off because people know us and our ethics and activities and are willing to help us pro bono, and we are always immensely grateful and happy to see that these events attract huge caring crowds.
How would you describe a typical returning visitor to Pohoda? What type of people do you think the festival attracts?
Visually and age-wise, there is no such thing. It’s an internal setting of some sort, and it’s definitely those who align with our values and ideals of freedom that we not only uphold but are also able to put into action. Then there is definitely an open mind and a desire to explore (not only) new music.