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As my bus rolls through Belgrade’s grey suburbs I’m reminded of how Serbia’s pariah status has punished its public transport network: no air conditioning and shot suspension. Not that I’m surprised, as travelling in the Balkans always involves sacrificing west European comfort zones. In Britain people often express disbelief that I spend so much time in a region noted for its negative headlines, places decimated by war, poverty and brutal government. In reply I can only suggest that much beauty and magic is found here. And then there’s the music.

Music made me get on this sticky, cramped, five-hour-long bus journey. And music has kept me returning to these lands ever since I first arrived in Europe (from New Zealand) in 1991. Back then, with the Berlin Wall having recently crumbled, a huge reservoir of vernacular music had suddenly been made available. Yet Yugoslavia, always the most open and liberal of Balkan communist states, was collapsing into civil war. These days travel throughout former Yugoslavia is easy with borders open – except Serbia/Kosovo – locals welcoming and prices low. And the music … the traditional music forms of this region are richer than those of anywhere else in Europe.

My destination is the small, central Serbian town of Guca (pronounced Goo-cha). As the bus chugs over rolling hills, through thick forest, past sparkling lakes, I’m reminded of Switzerland. And then we arrive in Guca and any notion of Swiss tranquillity is dispelled.

Descending from the bus, Guca’s humid air is thick with the shriek of trumpets while its streets overflow with dancers. It’s mid-afternoon Friday and there will be no let-up until midnight Sunday: one heavy weekend looks set to be served up.

With a resident population of just 2,500, Guca might seem like an unlikely place to host an annual music event that has steadily become one of Europe’s most popular and wildest festivals. Locals describe Guca as “Serbia’s Woodstock”. A more accurate comparison would be with Notting Hill Carnival – Guca is a free festival that attracts over 300,000 people, both Serbs and a growing international crowd who come to hear brass bands battle it out.

Brass bands, wild? You think I’m kidding, right? No chance. Guca runs from 5-9 August and consists of nothing but Balkan brass, a sound forged by the clash of Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires then turbo-charged by the region’s Romany Gypsies. Forget Brassed Off, don’t even mention the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, this is a far more manic, exhilarating experience.

Guca Festival has no curfew, few rules and a real sense of bacchanalia as hundreds of musicians blast exotic eastern funk while everyone dances until they drop. I used to attend illegal raves in the 90s, parties held in open fields or deserted factories, but they were no match for Guca. The energy, the joy, the sheer gonzo exuberance that overtakes this hamlet across the weekend, is incomparable. Dancers leap on tables, jump off statues, bounce off walls, belly dancing to hard zigzagging rhythms, achieving ecstasy via neatly dressed brass orchestras and copious supplies of beer and meat.

Brass bands have long been employed for weddings, funerals and festivities across the southern Balkans. Over the last decade their sound has crept beyond the region as a western audience picked up on musicians can seemingly play tough, organic trance all night long, even inspiring DJs to remix the tracks into Balkan Beats. From Scotland’s Orkestra Del Sol through New Mexico’s indie rockers Beirut to Nigel Kennedy, many are looking towards the Balkans for inspiration. And Guca is the throbbing heart of this raw, unruly sound.

Not that it was always like this. Not that it was ever expected to be like this. Officially called “Dragacevski Sabor Trubaca”, Guca’s festival was created in the late 1960s to keep the brass orchestra tradition alive. Marshall Tito’s Yugoslavia was big on all things folkloric and some sharp-eared apparatchik, noting how the steady flow of population from rural-to-urban locations was depleting the brass band tradition, came up with the idea of an annual festival/competition that would recognise a Best Orchestra and a Golden Trumpet.

Initially low-key – Serbia’s festivals also celebrate flutes, accordions and tambura (a sort of stringed lute) – Guca’s popularity exploded following the huge success of Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica’s 1990s films featuring Balkan brass bands: Time Of The Gypsies, Underground and Arizona Dream.

Entering Guca’s main street feels like stepping onto Kusturica’s film set. Brass bands blast out of tents, bars and alleys, marching in formation, forcing their way through crowds, pumping out the hard, fast dance rhythms that have kept this musical tradition in demand across the southern Balkans for more than a century.

Guca’s official festival is split into three parts: Friday’s opening concert, Saturday’s official celebrations and Sunday’s finals for the Golden Trumpet (heats having been held earlier in the year across Serbia). Friday’s concert features previous winners, each orchestra getting to play three tunes while folk dancers, kitted out in bright knitting patterns, join hands and spin in circles.

I join the crowds as they press forward in expectation of the evening’s headliner: Boban & Marko Markovic Orkestar. Boban Markovic is Guca’s Mohammed Ali, having won the Golden Trumpet more often than any other bandleader. Marko is his teenage son who left school to join his father on the road aged 13. Boban Markovic has won Guca so often he no longer competes. Instead, the king returns to play for his people and when he takes the stage the crowd roars. Boban presses trumpet to lips, hits a long high note, an improbably yearning sound, his orchestra begins to blast and Guca erupts. (For anyone who wants a taste of Guca without leaving the UK Boban and Marko will be touring here early-July – see myspace.com/bobanimarko.)

While the official events attract Serbia’s most celebrated brass bands, it is away from the stages and on the streets where the festival really gets its mojo working. Awnings are rolled out and instant restaurants created where countless musicians compete for tips. Large parties of Serbs are seated at tables where they feast surrounded by competing orchestras, the best of which are rewarded with money pasted onto foreheads and trumpets. When the cash flow dries up the bands march onto the street, still playing, fresh dancers bouncing around them.

Admittedly, the cacophony created by thousands of brass and percussion instruments all throbbing away can exhaust even a diehard Balkan brass nut, and the relentless force field of sound battered my senses. Fortunately, a Serb friend had organised my accommodation (there are few hotels in Guca, camping or home stays are popular alternatives) on the outskirts of town and every few hours I would retreat, wash and rest up. But not for long: the brass’s siren call, like the Pied Piper of legend, kept luring me back again and again into the Balkan trance party.

Vegetarians may not find the festival quite so entrancing: never before have I witnessed so many animals slowly roasting on spits. Lambs, pigs, even a 430kg oxen hissed, popped and were sprayed with beer to douse the flames. Guca’s party people feast on red meat and white bread. Ordering a bowl of boiled cabbage I found it swimming in pork fat and bone fragments.

Serbia’s bad old days are also evident with a select few idiots waving paramilitary flags and wearing T-shirts advertising war criminals as heroes. That said, the vibe here is very positive, much less threatening than Notting Hill Carnival. Over the weekend I witnessed not a single aggressive action, everyone wanting to share a smile.

Guca captures the big, bold Balkan spirit perfectly. No matter your nationality, ethnicity, sex or age, Guca will embrace you. Folkloric in origin but absolutely contemporary in spirit, Guca offers a real sense of collective celebration and reminds you that music was once something tribal, wild, unshackled by industry.

Where Glastonbury involves a corporate pop-rock event that lacks surprises and spontaneity, Guca encourages dancing on the street to organic trance music. Care to guess which festival I choose to ride the bus to this summer?

• Guca (guca.rs) takes place from 5-9 August. British Airways (0844 493 0 787, ba.com) flies Heathrow-Belgrade from £263 rtn inc tax. Lufthansa (0871 945 9747, lufthansa.com) flies to Belgrade, via Munich, Frankfurt or Zurich, from Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow from around £300 rtn. UK world music magazine Songlines (songlines.co.uk/musictravel) offers an all-inclusive Guca tour for £495pp, plus flights from London for £240 rtn. Buses from Belgrade to Guca take five hours for around £10 rtn (best to purchase in advance at the bus station at least a day before travel). Magelan (magelancorp.rs) offers airport-to-Guca transport for €30-35pp (some other sites charge up to €100). Most accommodation is home stays and should be organised beforehand – try Magelan (see above) and backpackserbia.com. Free camping is possible: negotiate with a local to have access to shower/toilets.

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Khamoro, Prague’s annual Roma music and culture festival, is now in its ninth year and stronger than ever. Starting Monday, this year’s edition presents six nights of first-rate Roma musicians from the Czech Republic and around Europe. The lineup includes both traditional groups and more contemporary bands offering refreshing new Roma sounds. There will also be documentary films, art exhibitions, dance workshops and a seminar titled “Roma Culture as a Part of European Culture.”

The music kicks off at Lucerna Music Bar Monday with !DelaDap, a “Nu Gypsy” group from Vienna, led by singer, DJ and producer of the group, Stani Vana, who was born in Prague. In fact, the idea for the band originated in Vani’s studio in Prague, initially as a trio. It’s now a seven-member multinational ensemble that includes fellow Czech vocalists Simona Senkiova and Kristina Gunarova, guitarist Aleksander Stojic from Serbia, accordionist Alen Dzambic from Bosnia, double-bassist Jovan Torbica from “The Balkans,” and violinist Pavel Shalman from Russia. !DelaDap plays a self-described “urban Gypsy sound,” meaning a rich mixture of contemporary ethno-pop, folk and urban sounds, rooted in traditional Gypsy music.

The following night, the Rosenburg Trio plays at Lucerna. These three cousins from the Netherlands are an acoustic trio (Nonnie on double-bass, Nous’che on rhythm guitar and Stochelo on solo guitar) that remarkably recalls the Gypsy jazz guitar wizardry of Django Reinhardt. So much so, in fact, that, when Stephane Grappelli – the eminent jazz violinist who played with Reinhardt for years – first saw the Rosenburg cousins, he invited them to play with him on a European tour, and ultimately to celebrate his 85th birthday at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

On Wednesday at Reduta, still another group strongly influenced by Django Reinhart: Basily Boys, a TV sensation from Holland featuring Zonzo, Noekie, Raklo and Morice, four young acoustic guitarists originally from the group Basily Gypsy Family. Together, the Rosenburg Trio and Basily Boys represent a special part of this year’s festival – Days of Dutch Roma, which also includes documentary film screenings and a photo exhibit at Kino Aero.

More typical Gypsy music starts at noon Thursday, with the traditional musicians’ parade that starts at Můstek and winds through Old Town, ending at Staroměstská. This annual boisterous horse-and-carriage extravaganza includes visiting Roma musicians playing Hungarian czardas on Balkan-sound trumpets, a warm-up for the evening program at Roxy, which features several larger groups: Acquaragia Drom, a traditional Gypsy wedding band from southern Italy; the high-octane Nadara Gypsy Wedding Band, Romanian Gypsies from Tirgu Mures, Transylvania; and headliners Šutka, a formidable Gypsy brass orchestra from the biggest Roma settlement in Europe, Šutka, Macedonia. The Balkan Gypsy brass sound is a sensually overwhelming combination of Turkish and Balkan rhythms and oriental solos that can make musicians and dancers alike frantic – so beware.

The Friday night bill at Roxy includes virtuoso violinist Marek Balog from Lucenec, Slovakia, and the Hungarian band Romengo, featuring soulful Gypsy singer Monika Lakatos. Also on the program are speed-demon accordionist Lelo Nika (from Serbia, though raised in Denmark) with his trio, and Russian diva Leonsia Erdenko, who leads an upbeat “new Gypsy music” group.

On Saturday night, all of the tribes gather for a gala finale at the Congress Centre. While not as intimate as Roxy or the other club venues, it offers plenty of room for a big crowd to sing and dance.

This is a difficult period for Roma throughout Eastern Europe, with unprovoked attacks and neo-fascist marches on the rise. Khamoro gives the Roma community a chance to present a united European front, and share the joys of its music with a wider audience. Particularly if you’ve never seen any of these bands before, it’s a cultural experience not to be missed.

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