Marching to a Common Beat

By Ksenija Komljenovic
Illinois State University 2010-2011

This story begins about a year ago. I was fortunate enough to spend the 2010/2011 school year at Illinois State University (ISU). ISU is one of the most fantastic places I have ever been. During my stay, I had the incredible opportunity to get acquainted with a completely different culture, meet many wonderful people, and see places I never thought I would.

Half-way through my school year, I had a strong feeling that I needed to bring a piece of the U.S. home to Serbia. I absolutely had to share this “amazingness” with my people. Being a musician myself, it only made sense for me to bring home something musically authentic from the United States.

Since 2007, I have been a member of the Stankovic Percussion Ensemble (SPE), the only drumline in Serbia. Marching bands are a common cultural phenomenon on American soil, but not in my home country. At SPE, we used to spend all our time emulating what the drum lines in the United States do. It all basically came down to our two percussion professors (Prof. Jovic and Prof. Marjanovic) spending days watching YouTube videos of drumline performances and figuring stuff out on their own. This with many other factors (like the poor conditions we work in) led to SPE developing a unique style of playing – a little bit different from what is popular in the U.S nowadays.

After spending a year at ISU and meeting professionals in the area of marching percussion, I decided to organize a project that would be a connecting bridge between our two cultures. The U.S. Drummer’s Collective (a group of U.S. collegiate marching percussionists from ISU and Missouri Southern State University) and I came up with the idea to introduce them to my drumline back home – the Stankovic Percussion Ensemble. This way, we thought, SPE would finally get a chance to work with experts in that area. The U.S. Drummer’s Collective, on the other hand, would get a chance to see how it all developed somewhere outside their culture. We put in a few months of designing, organizing, calculating (miscalculating and calculating again), communicating, finding funds, and doing everything else for this project to succeed. It was tough, but it paid off.

The US–Serbian Drumline Exchange project was designed as a cultural exchange between the U.S. Drummer’s Collective and the Stankovic Percussion Ensemble. The U.S Embassy in Belgrade provided support for the U.S. Drummer’s Collective to travel to Serbia, and was an integral part of the success of the event. During the month of July, we had the chance to host five amazing musicians, instructors, and professionals – Matt Brusca, Josh Zimmer, Greg Walker, Kevin Ranney, and Arthur Johnson.

The exchange saw the fruition of two successful performances as well as five days of clinics on marching percussion. The U.S. Drummer’s Collective performed at the EXIT festival. They also performed with the Stankovic Percussion Ensemble in a parade to open BELEF (Belgrade Summer Festival) and at Ada Ciganlija for a sea-side performance for BELEF.

Our exchange didn’t stop there of course. After spending mornings learning from each other in clinics, we would spend rest of the days exploring Belgrade and introducing our guests to Serbia.

Many new friendships and professional connections have been made. The exchange exceeded all our expectations, and it turned into something that made us all think of how we would love to make a tradition out of it. We hope to make this happen again in the summer of 2012. The possibilities seem endless now. We feel ambitious and we want to include more people in this opportunity and bring it to an entire new level. We would love to organize more open clinics, so we could learn more from each other, create a true bombastic show and implement many more ideas that we won’t reveal just yet.

The Stankovic Percussion Ensemble (and my little self) would like thank the wonderful guys from U.S. Drummer’s Collective for coming over and sharing their knowledge and experience with us. We are counting on you guys and we hope to see you again soon!

We would also like to thank the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, the EXIT festival, and BELEF. Without them, this exchange experience would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank the Forecast Exchange Program for giving me the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study in the U.S. After all, that was the #1 catalyst to having us all meet in the first place. Thank you!