International Bard Music & Fishing Festival

In 2010 a project called Bard Music & Fishing Festival kicked off on the shore of the Chigirinskoye Water Reservoir in Bykhov District, Mogilev Oblast. It took the project just a few years to turn into an international event, the one of the kind in the CIS, or maybe in the entire world.

The Bard Music & Fishing Festival spans several days and is held in the open air. What makes it so special is that it integrates music, sport, ecotourism, and outdoor recreation. Over the first three years alone the attendance made up over 5,000 people. Participants came from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, Italy and other states.

The program of the festival usually features:

• Contest of bard songs "Guitar Rounds" (on the basis of the so-called ‘Hamburg reckoning’ when participants determine winners)
• Fishing contest for fishing lovers and bard singers
• Master classes in fishing
• Belarus’ open fish broth championship "Chigirinskaya Ushitsa"
• Concerts of guitar poetry, instrumental music and classic guitar music

Every year organizers of the festival come up with new projects and events.

For example, in 2013 the festival participants cooked the world’s largest fish broth - about 3,200 liters. This achievement has been recorded in the Guinness Book of records.

In 2013, the Bard Music & Fishing festival debuted such projects as Youth Bard Song Academy, Not Only Jazz, Women’s Fishing with a culinary contest and fashion show, and a beach volleyball tournament.

The Russian sauna day "Lazienki 2013" was held within the framework of the traditional Health Fair for the first time. Best specialists of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine gave master class in venik massage, banya construction technology, technology of making veniks, and various types of massages, aromatherapy and phytotherapy, SPA-technologies, etc.

By tradition, new names are added to the bard-trail every year. Names are written on the boulders with symbolic feet prints and initial letters of the names of the famous people who have made great contributions to the development of bard song and the festival itself. Among them are Galina and Boris Vaikhanskys (Minsk), Boris Burda (Odessa), Victor Bayrak (Voronezh) and others.

The Bard Music & Fishing Festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

Bard Music & Fishing Festival 2022

After a two-year break, the festival returned to the shore of the Chigirinskoye Water Reservoir, but changed its venue. The festival moved to the village of Chechevichi, where the organizers created a very comfortable and relaxing environment. The format of the festival remained unchanged. One of the highlights of the opening ceremony was the laying of name stones of Vyacheslav Malezhik and the brothers Vadim and Valery Mishchuk into the bard path. According to originator and co-organizer of the festival Sergei Kulyagin, the starting point of the path is a large boulder with fish that was made for the festival’s debut in 2010. The whole idea of the bard path is to celebrate people who have made a huge contribution to bard music and the festival itself.

Bard Music & Fishing Festival 2023

This year’s edition of the festival will be held on the premises of the Chechevichi recreation center on the shore of the Chigirinskoye Water Reservoir, Bykhov District, on 28-30 July.  The festival will offer a diverse entertainment program for participants and guests, including music and art events, recreational activities, tourist and sports events.

How to apply for Bard Music & Fishing Festival?

You can send an application to the organizing committee or apply online on the official website of the Bard Music & Fishing Festival.

For accommodation it is possible to stay in a campsite on the shore of the Chigirinskoye water reservoir, and also to rent a room in local recreation centers and agro-tourism farmsteads in the village of Grudichino, Bykhov District.  There will be also a special camp for caravaneers.

Retail outlets operate round-the-clock. For children, there is a playground with a special entertainment program.

Venue of the Bard Music & Fishing Festival: the village of Grudichino, Bykhov District, Mogilev Oblast, and also the agro-tourism farmsteads "Sandy Beach" and "In the Meadows". You can get there by car from Mogilev, Bobruisk, and Bykhov.

Chigirinskoye Water Reservoir

This is one of the most picturesque places in Mogilev Oblast and Belarus. The water reservoir on the border of Bykhov and Kirov districts was established on the Drut River in 1960.

Reservoir area: 21.1km², maximum depth - 8.1m, coastline length – 55km.

There is a Chigirinskoye hydroelectric power station. But the water reservoir has won popularity as a great place for outdoor recreation and good fishing. The reservoir has bream, pike, roach, perch, tench, gudgeon, carp, and catfish.

On the shores of the reservoir there are recreation facilities and agro-tourism farmsteads, where guests are offered fishing, hunting, horseback riding, camping, etc.

There are unique monuments of nature around the Chigirinskoye water reservoir:

• "Cascade of Three Springs" (the village of Gamarnya)
• 400-year-old giant oak (28m tall, 2m in  diameter, 5.2 m around the trunk (the village of Khomichi)
• Giant Pines – 15 thirty-meter tall trees (Novoboyarskoye forestry)
• Staritsa landscape reserve of the national importance

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