28 January 2009 | Moby is the newest confirmed act in the line-up of this summer’s B’Estfest music festival, which also includes The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Manowar and Motörhead.

The festival will take place between July 1 and 5 in Romania’s capital, Bucharest. It is divided into three parts - Day Zero (July 1), The Festival (July 2-4) and the Aftershock (July 5).

B’Estfest, which will have its third edition this year, was recently declared “The Romanian tourism event of 2008,” during The superlatives of Romanian tourism gala, organized by the County Counsel of Suceava, Vacante and Calatorii magazine and the Amphiteatre Foundation, in collaboration with The Ministry of Tourism.

This music event in Romania is one of several relatively new such festivals on the Balkans that are gaining popularity and managing to bring world-class music acts to the region, after decades of communism and the subsequent transition period kept it largely outside the international music scene.

Another such festival is EXIT, which has taken place in Serbia’s Novi Sad each summer since 2000. This year, it is scheduled for July 9 to 12, but its line-up has not been announced yet.

While such large-scale festivals are still not commonplace in all the Balkan countries, more spring up each year, bringing world-class musicians to the region. Beside the practical benefits of this development – music lovers no longer have to travel thousands of kilometres in order to see their favourite musicians perform, the trend seems like a positive sign of the region’s broader development and growing stability, as well as its increased belonging to Europe.

For more news and information about the B’Estfest music festival, visit its official website.
For more news and information about the EXIT festival, visit its official website.

Read more about Romania on BalkanTravellers.com
Use BalkanTravellers.com's tips to organize your trip to Romania