It's Esma Vs. Borat

Joining the queue of Americans preparing to sue the producers of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie, reports Večernji list, is none other than the Macedonian Roma singer Esma Redžepova.

Redžepova's song Chaje shukarije is used to soundtrack the film's opening sequence, purporting to display the poverty of Borat's home village in Kazakhstan but actually shot in the Romanian village of Glod, largely populated by Roma who have themselves attacked the producers for originally misrepresenting the film as a documentary on the hardship of their village.

Redžepova now claims she was never consulted before the song was included on the soundtrack, which raises the question: who holds the rights to the track and thought that this would be an appropriate project to license them to in the first place?

For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Ederlezi

The Gazette is dragging itself into the blogged-to-death topic of UK comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character, the spoof Kazakh news reporter whose US-travelogue TV sketches have been expanded into the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Baron Cohen's seemingly random choice of Kazakhstan provoked a detailed rebuttal earlier this month from the country's ambassador to London. The recent Kazakh historical epic The Nomad, which retells the national myth of 18th-century proto-Kazakh tribes uniting against the Mongols, has also been interpreted as a reaction to Borat - although Registan.net makes it clear that The Nomad was well in the can before Borat the film appeared.

Today's Večernji list helpfully presents a full tracklist for the Borat film's soundtrack CD, officially titled - deep breath - 'Borat: Stereophonic musical listenings that have been origin in moving film 'Borat: Cultural learinings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan'. Kazakh music is conspicuous by its absence: instead, the soundtrack emphasises Balkan and Roma music, with featured artists including Macedonian Roma singer Esma Redžepova, Macedonian Roma brass band Kočani orkestar, Romanian manele star Stefan de la Barbulesti, Romanian Roma-fusion group Mahala Rai Banda and - a byword for cinematic musical essentialisation - Goran Bregović's Ederlezi.

With a soundscape like this, Baron Cohen's Kazakhstan seems to be an extension of the abstract, orientalised British 'Balkans'
- including various Ruritanias, Herzoslovakias and (I'm afraid) Illyrias.

From which perspective, something like this or that presumably just wasn't sufficiently Kazakh...