High Heels And Falcons

Might the Štikla momentum die down after Severina's undignified Eurovision experience? Perhaps; or perhaps not. Severina's forthcoming album will continue the collaboration with Goran Bregović which arose from Štikla, suggesting a change of tone from her 2004 comeback CD, the R&B-influenced Severgreen.

More immediately, Štikla is finding an afterlife or two - in a club remix that was completed too late to be sent to Eurovision, and in its first version with patriotically-themed lyrics which were rejected when the song was rearranged in February. (And given the potential for politicised readings of an entry like that, it might have been just as well.)

News of the first version, then called Hrvatski sokole (Croatian falcon), first broke around the time of Dora, but the song was only played today on Zlatko Turkalj's Turki party radio show - with Turkalj considering that Moj sokole (My falcon) would have the potential to be a hit in its own right.

In the meantime, Jurica Pavičić in Jutarnji list reflects on the significance of Štikla itself, reaching the conclusion that 'tonight in Athens one epoch for Croatian culture is coming to an end, and another is beginning.'

Not only was Severina's song 'the most commented-on and disputed song in the whole history of Croatian pop music' (and the Gazette doesn't need much convincing of that), but it would be hard to overstate its importance in a redefinition of Croatian culture:

'A song which in its first line contains a motif of trade (a high-heeled shoe), and then immediately a rustic-peasant motif of grass and a lawn, served as a collective catalyst which enabled the vast majority of Croats to let out their own cultural traumas. To all those who have suppressed the Balkans into themselves for 15 years, who took care not to be heard listening to narodnjaci, for their neighbours not to see them coming back from the village, to all those who suppressed their štokavski accent and tried to speak the city way, Štikla brought them all collective therapy. Thanks to Štikla, Croats could finally - to use gay vocabulary - "out" themselves: for the first time, they could admit to themselves and others that they were from the Balkans.'

How Štikla might be (re)assessed after its result in Athens remains to be seen. As Pavičić pointed out in his article published on Saturday itself: 'If it does badly, conservative Croatia will say "We told you so". If it does well, the same "common sense" will say "Look what Europe wants from us, folklore and folk singers [cajke].'

And if it finishes slap in the middle of the scoreboad? Wait and see.