Temporary Change Of Scene

The Gazette is now in Zagreb for the next couple of months or so, and therefore deserves to be a little more active than of late. (Serendipitously, it arrived just as Zagreb's annual International Folklore Festival is getting under way, which might itself be good for a post or two.)

In the meantime, a couple of regular Gazette characters have been fetching up elsewhere: here are East Ethnia on Severina, and a relaunched Hej, pane diskžokej on one of her Slovenian counterparts, Rebeka Dremelj.

Moj Sokole Again

You wait.. not very long... for a Severina scandal, and then two come along at once. With essentially the same song, no less.

Jutarnji list is reporting that Severina has decided to withdraw Moj sokole from Splitski festival after all - the result, according to JL, of negative publicity caused by Jasmin Stavros's earlier withrawal (on the grounds that Sokole, alias the demo version of Štikla, would have an unfair advantage over the rest of the line-up), and by recent allegations that Sokole had been copied from Toma Bebić's 1980s song Oja noja. (Back in March, Oja-noja was in fact being given as another alternative title for the demo.)

The festival director, Tomislav Mrduljaš, told a press conference yesterday that Severina was all the more upset to withdraw because of her own connections with Split, but still felt under too much pressure to be able to continue in the festival.

Večernji list, meanwhile, has the news that Danijela Martinović is bringing out an album with Latino vesions of some of her old hits under the title Cante i baile con Danijela (Sing and dance with Danijela). (Shakira surely has a lot to answer for.)

The Gazette's favourite story of the day, though: Henry Jenkins's discussion on his new-ish blog of the upcoming Bollywood take on Superman...