Home to small pockets of lively musical communities, Prishtina’s festival scene has had its ups and downs, but most of the festivals were short-lived. This will hopefully be no longer the case, Alush Gashi, the program director of the city’s newest music platform told me. Together with Dardan Islami, Kushtrim Balaj and other music aficionados, Gashi has established No Recess, a music platform that is marking its first major event with the namesake festival to be held this week at Hammam bar.

“No Recess is a music platform aiming to continuously bring interesting alternative musical acts to the Kosovar audiences and promote our artists abroad. We believe that continuity is a virtue,” explained Gashi. “There were numerous efforts in the past to promote such music or other forms of artistic expression and merge those with the Kosovo sub-culture, but those were short lived and the momentum (including patience and enthusiasm) got lost.”

Gashi does not feel comfortable to call the events a festival, but they ran with it for lack of a better word, he said. The program launches on Monday at 8:00 pm with Desert Mountain tribe, a UK-German psychedelic rock band.

Other acts throughout the week include: Amsterdam-based psychedelic trio My Baby, Skopje surf rock group RiB, Tirana-Prishtina duo Bledi Boraku and Dritero Nikqi, Serbian indie band Stray Dogg, UK dance artists Transformer, and Kosovo deep bass act Tetris. All shows will be held at Prishtina’s Hammam Bar.

“We would prefer that people come to the festival for the acts themselves, not just looking for a party (although we don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing). If people are intrigued, surf the net to find more information on the bands or discuss those with their friends, we think our mission would be achieved,” Gashi said.

“The festival is all about the music. If pressed to describe the festival in three short sentences – No red carpet. No bullshit. NO RECESS.”

For the full schedule, see the No Recess Facebook page.