Sound of Music Heals Wounds in Former Yugoslavia
Pragmatic interests are replacing the old ideology of ‘brotherhood and unity’ as a motor for renewed artistic cooperation.
By Davor Konjikušić in Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Strasbourg, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki
For years, following the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, a few singers, filmmakers and other artists kept alive the flame of cultural cooperation with former colleagues, stranded on the other sides of new state borders.
Often they endured unpopularity at the hands of unforgiving publics and hostile governments, being branded as traitors to their respective nations.
But in recent years the mood has changed and, as the region’s nationalist demons subside, artists throughout the former Yugoslavia are working fruitfully together. Films like Rajko Grlić’s 2006 comedy, Karaula [Border Watchtower], a co-production involving five of the six former Yugoslav republics, set on a pre-war Yugoslav Army base on the border with Albania, have proven smash-hits.
But it is not simply a matter of an older generation’s nostalgia for better days. As the popularity of the annual EXIT pop festival in northern Serbia demonstrates, a new generation that barely remembers the existence of a Yugoslav state is discovering it has much in common with its peers across the border.
The question is what this phenomenon adds up to and where it is leading. Many hope towards a “Scandinavian” model, whereby separate but closely related states operate a larger, regional, cultural space, 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.
“If matters were left to ordinary people, I think this would function without any problems,” says Kebra, a veteran rocker from Zagreb, of 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.”
