Surrealist Hit Parade

A heavyweight of retromaniac ex-Yugoslav TV (re)launches tomorrow on Bosnian federal television and Croatian RTL: a revival of the 1980s Sarajevan sketch show Top lista nadrealista (Surrealist Hit Parade), renamed Nadreality show for noughties use. Most of the original nadrealists have been reunited for the thirteen-episode occasion, although the new series is without Branko Djurić (acting in Slovenia) and Nele Karaljić (who moved to Belgrade on the outbreak of war in Bosnia).

However, another Croatian-Bosnian showbusiness axis is a little strained at the moment - specifically, the one relating to Marko Perković Thompson's upcoming concert in Sarajevo, scheduled for 10 May to mark the tenth anniversary of the Papal visit to the Bosnian capital and organised by a Croatian Catholic charity organisation. The Sarajevan Jewish community has protested against the concert on the grounds that Thompson represents fascism and, in the words of Sarajevo Jewish president Boris Kožemjakin:

'Sarajevo and BiH nurture centuries-old religious tolerance, and so we're sure that neither this city nor this state needs a concert like that.'

The concert's organiser, Father Anto Jelić, has replied that he never heard Thompson sing a nationalist song, so Bosnian portal 24sata.info, with the assistance of YouTube, has offered him the opportunity to find out. Indeed, 24sata also reports that the Bosnian Jewish community, the Veterans' Union and the League of Anti-Fascist Combatants are promising an anti-fascist counter-concert if the Thompson event goes ahead.

(In its time Thompson's debut wartime hit, Bojna Čavoglave (Čavoglave Platoon), also acquired a Sarajevo-themed version performed by persons unknown, but that isn't quite the point.)

And lastly, to complicate the transnational web of ex-Yugoslav showbusiness even further: factoring in the Montenegrin side of the polygon is probably overdue. Leo Miler's overview of Montenegrin pop for T-Portal concludes that 'Montenegrin showbusiness is closer to Split than Belgrade', focusing on the ballad-dominated repertoires of Vlado Georgiev, Sergej Cvetković and Bojan Marović:

'Their lyrics and music, arrangements, and the choice of instruments itself, has no folk elements whatsoever. There's no sign of the (folk-style) accordion, let alone the leading instrument, various sorts of pan pipe.

Some people complain they sound too like each other, but one could say the same about, for instance, [Dalmatian singers] Giuliano or [Goran] Karan on first listening.'

Seems Montenegro has coped pretty well with the absence of the doyen of Yugoslav-Mediterranean pop, Oliver Dragojević...