Comeback Of The Week: Tajči

Yes, the Gazette's fallen back on recycling old headlines, but Tatjana Matejaš Tajči is starting to make a habit of this.

Jutarnji list has the not entirely surprising story that Zagreb's all-things-to-all-people mayor Milan Bandić has associated himself with a Herzegovinan peace marathon from Grude to the Marian shrine of Medjugorje (there's a shorter Ljubuški-Medjugorje leg for the less athletic) under the title of 'Trčimo Gospi' (Race you to the Lady'). Having raced each other to the Lady, runners will be rewarded with a post-marathon concert featuring Herzegovina's biggest star Mate Bulić, his brother-in-musical-arms Marko Perković Thompson and - rather than, say, Miroslav Škoro, who's usually the other member of that trio - former teen-pop star Tajči.

After leaving the heights of late-Yugoslav showbusiness for America in 1991, Tajči got into the Ohio/Illinois Christian music scene under her married name of Tatjana Cameron (with a year-round repertoire of musical spectacles for churches) and dropped back to the old country last summer to perform at - where else - Medjugorje. It can't have escaped her attention that, while she's been away, patriotic showbusiness with a side order of charismatic Christianity has become big business in her domovina, with the same Thompson at its vanguard.

On the other hand, it's quite literally a band of brothers as things stand: Croatia's been without a female religious-patriotic headliner since Vera Svoboda faded from the spotlight along with the rest of the tamburica scene (although Doris Dragović made quite a claim to the position in the early 90s). Gap in the market, anyone?