Sound of Music Heals Wounds in Former Yugoslavia

“Once a friend, always a friend, and I made friends first and foremost through music,” says Kebra, otherwise known as Branislav Babić, lead singer of the Serbian rockband, Obojeni Program. “Nationality is not important when it comes to that.”

Back in 1991, Kebra found himself in a situation in which nationality, unfortunately, was everything; a Serb, he was doing military service in Vinkovci, in northern Croatia, as hostility engulfed Yugoslavia.

His musical links saved him. Peering out across the barracks fence one day at a crowd of angry Croatian civilians and police, he spotted a friendly face: Goran Bare, fellow rocker from the Croatian band, Majke. Somehow they communicated and the following night, with Bare’s aid, Kebra got hold of civilian clothes, jumped over the fence and escaped on foot to Hungary.

Kebra and his band are now again performing in Croatia. That fact, and the friendly reactions of the audiences, shows that despite the difficulties still plaguing relations between the countries of the former Yugoslavia, its cultural bonds have proven hard to break.

“If matters were left to ordinary people, I think this would function without any problems,” Kebra says, of the renewed exchanges between Serbia and Croatia. “But if ‘culture’ is left to politicians, then it depends on them and they will always find reasons to obstruct things.”

Shortly after Kebra fled Vinkovci, the Yugoslav Army bombed the town, unleashing the war that was to rip through the former Yugoslavia from Croatia to Bosnia and later Serbia, leaving in its wake death, displacement and destruction.

As new state frontiers sprung up within Yugoslavia, so too the cultural scene shattered. But an alternative, pacifist, crowd kept the flame alive, and with time, and since peace has returned, cooperation and exchange have flowered, and not only in the field of so-called “high culture”.

Today, cultural exchange is more and more mainstream, as a common language and interests create opportunities for artists and business alike, whether it’s avant-garde theatre, award-winning film, or turbofolk music.

While increased cultural mobility still faces opposition from those who want to maintain the isolation of the war years, some hope for the recreation of a wider, Balkan culture. For others, the Scandinavian model is more appealing, the separate but closely related states showing how a larger, regional, cultural space can operate.

Free of ideology, they hope a similar kind of community can emerge in the Balkans, increasing artists’ opportunities and profits while at the same time helping to bring about the gradual reconciliation of peoples still traumatised by war.


A “cultural common market” went up in smoke

“It was impossible to stay here and not be a member of the team,” recalls Rajko Grlić, a leading Croatian film maker and one of many of the former Yugoslavia’s artists to suffer the fallout of the cultural collapse brought about by war. Declared persona non grata in Zagreb, having continued to work in the early 1990s with Serbian colleagues on several films – Virdžina, as a producer, and Čaruga, which he directed – Grlić eventually left to study and later teach in the US.

And it wasn’t only because Croatia’s artistic atmosphere changed. “At the same time, many people, mostly in Belgrade, switched overnight from opposing socialism to taking up nationalist positions. My disappointment was immense,” he explains.

The popular Croatian singer and songwriter, Arsen Dedić, a star in Yugoslavia since the early 1960s, felt the same. As wars raged in Croatia and Bosnia, Dedić strove to maintain contacts with colleagues and singers from other former Yugoslav republics. “How could I hate a friend from Belgrade, or Kemal Monteno from Sarajevo or Slavo Dimitrov from Macedonia?” he asks.

When peace came in 1995, these pioneers made the first steps towards re-establishing closer cultural contacts. Matters progressed only slowly, however. Feelings of hatred between the peoples – a legacy of the huge numbers of war victims - constituted a serious obstacle. The process did not gather speed until after 2000, when a new, more tolerant political climate started to replace the nationalist hysteria of the previous decade.

Today, the biggest music stars of the old Yugoslavia, such as Arsen Dedić from Zagreb, Momčilo “Bajaga” Bajagić from Belgrade, Zabranjeno Pušenje from Sarajevo, and Goran Bregović, frontman of Bijelo Dugme, the 1970s rock band from Bosnia, once again perform to packed concert halls throughout the former state. And it’s not just nostalgia for evergreens. Contemporary bands are doing the same, suggesting that apart from a common memory, there exist also common, contemporary interests and tastes.