I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here

Thirteen years ago, ex-boy band member Ivan Gavrilović was immortalising the joys of fast cars and the first wave of Serbian turbofolk with his cover of 2 Unlimited's No limits, 200 na sat (200 km/h).

Now, via Belgrade 2.0, documentarists Dušan Šaponja and Dušan Čavić have tracked him down to his new life 'killing bugs for a living'.

Eurovision: Picture Worth A Thousand Words

The Serbian broadcaster RTS has come up with its logo for Eurovision, and the word from Belgrade 2.0 is that it's really quite a shocker.

According to RTS, the designers have chosen 'to create a group of different signs which are united by similar symbolism: Music, Serbia, Europe, Love, Youth, Happiness...', and which probably look an awful lot like a purple plum, a yellow trumpet, a green quaver and a pair of pink lips to you and me.

The full set of sixteen symbols (Ireland's RTÉ will be pleased to see one of them resembling a shamrock) can be combined in various ways so that: 'Instead of one sign which is static and always the same, a whole string of dynamic signs have been invented.'

Didn't we go through this with the London Olympic logo?

Eurovision: Two For The Price Of One

Crawling back after an extended summer break, the Gazette can't help opening its autumn season with what must be supposed to be the solution to the east/west impasse at the Eurovision Song Contest: starting '08, the event gets two semi-finals instead of one, with all countries having to go through qualifying except the hosts and the lucky four (Britain, France, Germany and Spain) whose national broadcasters are pretty good at paying higher dues to the European Broadcasting Union than anyone else but not so hot at picking an entry that comes anywhere near the top ten.

How far this will keep the various geo-cultural interest groups happy depends on one of the details still being held back - who precisely ends up in which semi. On previous form, one can expect any of the following:

• A random draw to be made by minor celebrities from the host country and presented as a pointlessly prime-time event, probably as the half-time entertainment at a beauty pageant;


• Some impenetrable UEFA-style coefficient, based on the longitude of the national broadcaster's headquarters, the number of a) Roman divided by b) Byzantine artefacts preserved in the archaeological museum, and per-capita album sales for i) Tarkan ii) Shakira and iii) Gogol Bordello;


• A permanently enshrined line down the map which will be guaranteed to upset at least three states which think they should be more western than that, and two which fancied their chances with the easties, but not the Russians or Ukrainians, who seem to know what they're doing wherever they are.

And who gets to watch which semi? That's the hard part, according to Eurovision executive supervisor Svante Stockselius:

'the proposal; is based on the idea that the two Semi-Finals of the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest will be aired simultaneously on Thursday, 22nd of May from Belgrade, Serbia. [...] Each Semi-Final is only being aired in the countries that are taking part, and only viewers from countries that take part in each respective Semi-Final can vote.'

But nevertheless:

'All participating broadcasters can broadcast the Semi-Final(s) they are not taking part in later as well, and the Semi-Finals will be webcasted live through Eurovision.tv. To serve the fans, both Semi-Finals will also be made available on-demand the next day.'

Oh. It must have taken a lot of work for somebody to make the system that complicated. But that's all right, because: 'To produce the two Semi-Finals live on different nights will result in high extra costs for both the Host Broadcaster and the participating Members.' As opposed to the Host Broadcaster having to kit out two venues for the semis instead of one, then.

It's still not certain where that leaves a Big Four broadcaster like the BBC, which wouldn't have to bother with the semis at all if it didn't want to: going by BBC Sport's usual form at tournaments when none of the home nations are involved, we're either in for full-on coverage of Ireland, or a frantic dash between the two feeds whenether something more interesting happens on the other channel, fireworks go up, or that girl whips her top off.

Oddly, none of this seems to have made the Croatian tabloids yet, although they can usually be guaranteed to leap into this sort of thing with a quick commentary on whether or not it benefits the national interest. But it's probably only a matter of time: the Belgrade-hosted show should make for a packed week of showbusiness ethnopolitics in any case, especially for those participants with more interest than your average state in pulling off a good result on the Serbians' home turf while still remaining true to the cherished traditions of national musical culture. (Here's looking at you, HTV...)

Eurovision 2007: Croatia And The Eastern League

As for the ongoing resonance of this year's Eurovision result in 'the region': East Ethnia reports that at least two political parties in Serbia are trying to claim some of Šerifović's reflected glory: the Roma Union of Serbia (to which her mother and uncle are affiliated, and for whom she campaigned herself), and the Serbian Radical Party (who claim her grandfather's membership).

Heading slightly north-west, the Croatian view of the bloc-voting controversy is oddly distanced from time to time: talking, like one Jutarnji list columnist, about the eastern alliance' and 'the hurricane from the east' begins to suggest that Croatia doesn't quite belong to it. And then there's Milan Jajčinović in Večernji list:

'Politics also used this year's Eurovision for some messages of its own. Just as in last year's voting by the ex-Yugoslav states - when they mutually handed out points to each other - the European nomenklatura emphasised the signs of normalisation in the states [which had] been warring until yesterday, so does the EU see not only the victory of a good singer in the Serbian song's triumph this year but the victory of a new politics!'

If the bloc situation is one theme of Croatian post-Eurovision coverage, the other is the Beautiful Homeland's failure to qualify for the Eurovision final. T-Portal writes that 'despite the winner's sexual orientation, this year's Eurovision result marks a return to normal after last year's freak show', before turning to the collapse of Croatia's own Eurovision effort:

'Sending an ageing rocker and a buxom blonde who can't sing into the company of transvestives, lesbians, monsters and DJ Bobo, with a song that sounds like a reject from the YURM [rock festival] in 1974, didn't prove to be a winning combination. Last year we could at least hope a good result would come as a reward for Severina's acting abilities.

What was going through the head of [head of entertainment] Aleksandar Kostadinov and the HRT team responsible for Eurovision when they put their money on Dado and Dragonfly isn't clear to us. As it is, we came 30th out of 42 countries, far behind the Serbs, Bosnians, Slovenes and Macedonians. Is there anything worse?'

T-Portal's not the only one to ask. Even Kostadinov's deputy Mario Sedmak, a former head of entertainment itself, argued in Jutarnji list's post-semi-final post-mortem that organisers of the national selection in the future should make it clear to songwriters 'what sort of songs do well in Eurovision, and which ones don't. This year's song didn't make an impression and we didn't have any staging.' (Should Kostadinov have to carry the can for non-qualification, Sedmak could well get to put this into practice next year.)

Pop composer Tonči Huljić, who's frequently steered Croatia into the Eurovision top ten, was guarded on that occasion, recommending only that the song selection should be left to 'professionals' rather than the public and/or a HTV jury; last night's Otvoreno talk show (on HTV), however, saw him more critical of Kostadinov. One of the song's performers, Dado Topić, has criticised HTV's organisation of the song (one 27-minute recording session and no promotional video), and Rock and Democracy suggests that he only reluctantly became involved with the performance in the first place.

And what to do about those pesky blocs? Marija Nemčić, head of HTV and Croatia's most important representative at the European Broadcasting Union, has promised that 'we're already beginning to work on a recommendation for a new format which would avoid the problem of neighbouring states' - and which, if it came from Croatia, might at least be sensitive to the problem of defining permanent Easties and Westies. Although, if the EBU ended up enshrining western and eastern leagues which happened to place Croatia on the western side of things, would that necessarily be a disaster from the Croatian state broadcaster's point of view?

Lastly: Radio B92 celebrates its 18th birthday today, but there's less happy cultural news from Zagreb, where the alternative club Močvara may be forced to close after a town hall decision limiting its bar opening hours to midnight.

A European Vote For European Serbia?

Following the line of Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner who hailed Serbia's Eurovision victory as 'a European vote for European Serbia', the symbolic connection between the removal of Serbian Radical Tomislav Nikolić as parliamentary speaker and Serbia's 'acceptance' by the rest of Europe has not been lost on post-Eurovision reporters: The Guardian, for instance, headlines its whole-page article 'From pariah state to kitsch victory: how a Balkan ballad showed Europe a new Serbia'.

Jutarnji list likewise emphasises 'how symbolic that victory was in the week where Serbia on account of Nikolić had again become a country dreaded by Europe', and quotes the Vojvodinan parliamentary deputy Nenad Čanak's statement that (Nikolić having called for closer ties between Serbia and Russia) 'Croatia gave us twelve points, so did Montenegro and Macedonia, and Russia [gave us] five. So Tomislav Nikolić has to be dismissed.'

The Guardian's Ian Traynor also interprets the victory as a blow against the 'ear-splitting melange of Balkan rhythms, electronic pounding, and stridently nationalist lyrics' of turbofolk, although Rock and Democracy is less optimistic regarding the longer-term consequences for popular music in Serbia when Eurovision is hosted there next year:

'A mainly eastern bloc led by Ukraine will push into Serbia and then strengthen a growing domestic fruit, and of course you all know that that fruit is called Turbo-folk.'

There's not so much about cultural politics in Serbian tabloid Kurir, which treats Marija Šerifović's win as a victory for the whole nation, celebrated as publicly as the return of sporting gold medallists. (Though Reluctant Dragon, on Belgrade's Trg Republike after Eurovision, couldn't help thinking that some crowd members who were 'chanting nationalistic slogans were nonetheless 'the same people who would probably beat her up in the street if they suspected she was a Gypsy or if it turned out she actually was gay.')

Vote, Vote, Vote, Vote, Vote For The Winners

Congratulations to Marija Šerifović for winning Eurovision 2007, as predicted and celebrated by the Serbian blogosphere. Šerifović said after the show that she 'hopes that next year in Belgrade it will be a music contest again' although - given the rock-chick and chain-mail aesthetic that dominated Eurovision this year after Lordi's victory in 2006 - don't be surprised if it takes on its own sideshow of a contest in fine tailoring and pseudo-lesbian dance.

Outside 'the region' itself, the prevailing frame for remembering this year's Eurovision is likely to be the east/west problem. The geographical spread of points is made particularly graphic at Diamond Geezer, but it's worth remembering it takes 42 countries to make a board-sweeping on such a scale. True, the Saturday top 10 of Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Belarus, Greece, Armenia, Hungary and Moldova is another all-eastern, all-the-time extravaganza (assuming one is happy to amalgamate such an expanse of overlapping cultural markets and musical influences into one 'east').

If East had really outdone West by sheer weight of bloc-led numbers alone, there might be aerious cause for concern, but it's more than a case of one bloc being structurally empowered to always outvote the other. Of the seven western European finalists, none finished higher than the Finnish hosts at 17th, and few even received significant support from their neighbours: no Belgian votes for France, no Andorran votes for Spain, and outside the transnational schlager union of Scandinavia the majority of western countries voted for a predominantly eastern slate.

What can't be accounted for under any nationally-based voting system is the effect of increased migration from eastern to western Europe: organised diasporic voting campaigns are one possibility, but so is the prospect that Poles, Serbs, Armenians and so forth in (say) the United Kingdom might be more likely to watch the show than the host population. (Or even than their compatriots back home?) Again, though, east/west isn't the only axis where this factor operates (those regular Spanish points to Germany mostly come from somewhere).

Nonetheless, it's perceptions that make policy, and the broadcasters who feel as if they have the most to lose are those from the former western European powerhouses of 1970s and 1980s Eurovision who don't have the Spanish/French/German/British advantage (or disadvantage?) of automatic qualification to rely on. Countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, or Sweden, the home country of Eurovision's current scrutineer Svante Stockselius, whose task before Belgrade 2008 is to balance the demands and sensibilities of the 'Big Four', the not-so-big half a dozen, the enthusiastic newcomers and a band of countries who would be horrified to find themselves on the eastern side of any permanent geographical division.

Given which, one can only wish him the best of Swedish luck...

Balkan Concerts In London

Remarkably like the proverbial buses, you wait ages for Balkan concerts in London and then four turn up at once. So far Ivo Papasov with Stoyan Yankoulov and Elitsa Todorova are at the Carling Academy Islington on 5 May; Neda Ukraden and Preslava at Agenda on 12 May; Tijana Dapčević at the Mean Fiddler on 23 May; and Bajaga at the Mean Fiddler on 10 June.

Any more we ought to know about?

Showbusiness Ethnopolitics (Or Not): Eurovision 2007

From an ex-Yugoslav perspective, the Eurovision Song Contest has come around quietly this year - compared to 2006's ethnomusicological controversies in Croatia and the collapse of the last joint Serbia-Montenegro entry. For a proper Severina-style row over visions of national identity and the right image to present to Europe, one has to turn to Ukraine and drag queen Verka Serdyuchka, whose character of a kitsch village housewife resulted in protests - although further Verkanalysis is the province of the experts.

Potential scandal two involves the Israeli entry, Teapacks' Push the button (another song channelling the overworked spirit of Gogol Bordello), depending on whether it's taken as referring to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinajad or to a generic nuclear madman of one's choice (after all, there are a fair few around): however, the lyrics have been approved by the European Broadcasting Union, despite its rules against 'political propaganda' which caught out Ukraine in 2005 when they entered the anthem of the Orange Revolution.

Climate change being the nuclear disarmament of the noughties, it's no wonder the theme seems to have made its way to Eurovision. Apparently in the green corner: Andorran teen skate-pop band Anonymous (result of a school trip to An Inconvenient Truth?), and possibly Ireland's Dervish (They can't stop the spring), although the Gazette might be thinking of Rachel Carson there. Inadvertently in the other one: the Easyjet-worshipping, innuendo-loving Brits. (Britons who don't agree that Scooch are a perfect snapshot of the national character may have an alternative, for once: Wikipedia currently states that Greek representative Sarbel was brought up in London.)


While Romania has high expectations after several years of showstoppers, Croatia's low-key rock entry by Dragonfly and Dado Topić hasn't attracted the euphoria that surrounded Severina in 2006, but not very much would: indeed, the suspense this time round isn't whether Croatia might win the thing but whether the country will maintain its perfect record of qualifying for every final since its debut as an independent state in 1993. More HTV heads may roll if Vjerujem u ljubav breaks the chain, but otherwise the most newsworthy thing likely to happen in Helsinki from a Croatian point of view would be for the public televote to give maximum points to Serbia again (the Croatian dvanaestica to Željko Joksimović in 2004 made headline news).

This may be immortalising a hideously bad prediction, but the Gazette won't be surprised if the Croatian public develop a sudden affection for Montenegro instead, or rather, for Stevan Faddy's Ajde, kroči. Whatever the European public at large may think of the formula of folk-song-style lyrics plus electric guitar, it's tended to do well in Croatia: ask Siniša Vuco, or Marko Perković Thompson, or for that matter Bijelo Dugme, who started it all in the first place.

Especially after the Severina case, though, it's hard to picture Croatia selecting it for Eurovision...

Irregular Blog Round-Up

Belgrade Blog and Bosnia Vault are supporting Dejan Anastasijević, the Serbian journalist whose home was attacked a few days ago.

And Dumneazu posts on the relationship between Hutsul/Ruthenian music (the source of a certain Ruslana's folkloric identity) and Jewish Klezmer music:

'Perhaps this is why Hutsul identity is so enticing to Ukrainian pop culture - it offers Ukrainian-ness without the Petlura massacres. It juxtaposes Ruthenian partisans fighting a guerilla war into the 1950s as opposed to the Ukrainian Wermacht divisions fighting for the Nazis. Notice: there is a severe historical difference between the Western Ukraine and the Eastern Ukraine, especially as regards violence aginst Jews. Should the inhabitants of the modern Ukraine be held responsible for history? What is Ukrainian history? And what will Ukrainian history become?'

Montenegro Where You Least Expect It

Place one: in flag form, hanging from every other official flagpole in Zagreb (the other 50% are waving Croatian ones), but it turns out it's to do with an upcoming state visit.

Place two: This week's issue of Croatian women's magazine Tena, which would have coincided with the Folk Revija concert if it had actually gone ahead tomorrow, includes a not unsympathetic six-page report on 'Who are the turbo folk queens?': Stoja, Indira Radić, Dragana Mirković, Donna Ares, Goga Sekulić, Olja Karleuša and Maja Marijana. (Wonder if somebody commissioned an article a little bit too early?)

Tena seems to have heard somewhere that Sekulić, a Swiss passport holder, apparently submitted a song to the Swiss Eurovision pre-selection but had it turned down. As a Montenegrin, she might have been better off looking closer to home: TVCG received a total of 16 submissions for the 10 slots in the Montenegrin final, and three of them had to be disqualified anyway because the authors weren't actually Montenegrin.

But not place three: Looking across the Drina, Dado Topić provided the interval entertainment at the Serbian Eurovision pre-selection in the company of Marija Šestić, Alenka Gotar, and Karolina Gocheva - in their capacity as the already-selected Croatian, Bosnian, Slovenian and Macedonian participants. Absent, however, was the Montenegrin representative Stevan Faddy, suggesting that even now the Montenegrins aren't themselves on hand to cause a fuss during Belgrade's final, Belgrade is perfectly capable of making a fuss out of them. Wouldn't it serve all concerned right if Montenegro and Serbia exchanged 12 points in May?

As for the Serbian contestants themselves, Belgrade Blog has been keeping an eye on those: the handful of audience-drawing pop-folk singers, headed by Mira Škorić, dropped out at the semi-final stage (seemingly one thing one can always rely on at Beovizija: even, or perhaps especially, Jelena Karleuša came bottom of the semi in 2004) and the final - ongoing as the Gazette writes - is being contested between various cod-Latino numbers, ambitious ethno (Slobodan Trkulja and Balkanopolis), and the fans' favourite Marija Šerifović with yet another Lane moje rehash. Which is by no means a disadvantage, thinking of the success of Hari Mata Hari's Lejla in 2006.

Although, chances are Šerifović wouldn't make it on to Croatian radio half as often...

UPDATE: Stevan Faddy has joined the interval mini-reunion. Not that the Sava Centar audience seem particularly happy with it, but if they've been patient enough to sit through Mambo jumbo serbiano...

Folk Revija: A View From Tamo Daleko

Four days after the cancellation of the Zagreb Folk Revija has been more than enough time for the Serbian tabloid Kurir to gather half a dozen vox pops from Serbian showbusiness and make it look as if the event's collapse was all the Croats' fault, or in Kurir's words that 'it's been shown for the umpteenth time that our singers are undesirable in Croatia!' - including a particularly nasty rumour, first launched by organiser Braco Zatezalo in yesterday's edition of the paper, that one of the women involved had received a threat of rape.

The quoted singers themselves are a little more understanding, distinguishing between 'lots of people there [who] like our singers and Serbian music' (Sanja Đorđević) and an identifiable group to blame (be it the veterans' association, the Croatian media, or Croats who 'would rather their children listened to Chopin and Mozart').

The story on the Croatian side, meanwhile, is a much more mundane one of unverifiably disappointing ticket sales and an unclear destination for the ticket revenue. (The circus itself has been rescheduled for late April in Ljubljana, perhaps resuming the city's mid-90s function as a performance site for Serbian acts who weren't quite welcome in Croatia yet.)

The observation that whatever happened at Folk Revija would set the agenda for impressions of folk in Croatia applies, with this sort of escalation, as much to Serbia as it does to the host country. Is it really such a good idea for the prevailing Serbian tabloid memory of the case to be that Vukovar veterans threatened Serbian singers so severely that the show had to be called off for their own protection?

The Old Croatian Soap Opera

When a brief article in Kurir at the end of January mentioned plans for BN Televizija from Bijeljina to organise a large-scale concert of Serbian and Bosnian showbusiness folk singers in Zagreb's basketball stadium in late February or early March, the Gazette resolved to believe it when it saw it. (Which, given the Gazette's current on-location status, can be taken quite literally.)

To mangle an English proverb, great showbusiness-ethnopolitical oaks have a habit of growing from little acorns in Kurir; or, at least, that's how we ended up with such a fuss over Severina's 'Moja štikla'.

Now that there are half a dozen posters between my flat and the station for a BN Televizija Folk revija to be held at the Zagrebački velesajam (Zagreb's sprawling trade-fair complex) on 7 March, involving Šerif Konjević, Halid Muslimović, Viki Miljković, Mina Kostić, Goga Sekulić and 8-10 other singers (although neither of Bijeljina's own two contributions to the narodna scene, Lepa Brena or Seka Aleksić), it looks as if Zagreb may be set for the highest-profile pop-folk event since Željko Joksimović played the Dom sportova in November 2004, bucking the usual trend of folk performers appearing in out-of-town nightclubs. (The event's even being trailed on a Slovenian listings site; and yes, Joksimović counted as a folk singer from this end.)

Except, according to the Bosnian edition of Svet, or rather Svijet, there's (not very detailed) word of opposition from the Croatian Musicians' Union (HGU), an organisation once renowned - under its former president - for opposition to Serbian performers (most of all Djordje Balašević) appearing in Croatia. If that's the case, though, the Bosnian media knows more about it than their Croatian counterparts.

There is, in the meantime, news from Večernji list that another Serbian pop-folk singer, Ana 'Romale, romali' Nikolić, has been lined up for a leading role in a new Croatian soap opera, 'Strast koja ubija' (Deadly passion).

(The old Croatian soap opera, Turbofolk, continues.)

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Multi-Channel World

There's unfortunate news for Ceca Ražnatović, whose performances and videos have apparently been dropped from the playlist of the Serbian channel TV Pink after a witness in a court case against the Zemun Clan accused her of suggesting the kidnap of Pink's owner Željko Mitrović. In certain quarters, Pink and Ceca have been all but synonymous, despite Mitrović's attempts to take his station upmarket by cutting back the amount of newly-composed folk music it broadcasts.

Should the collapse of Ceca's relationship with Pink become permanent, it'll be almost as unfortunate news for tabloid picture editors across the ex-Yugoslav region, who like nothing better than to illustrate the briefest mention of Pink with a picture of the woman herself. (Of Ceca, that is. Not of Pink.)

In the long run, however, one wonders if the image of Mitrović and his channel might benefit from 'dececaizacija', if its first associations - according to a Globus journalist who interviewed him in 2005 - remain 'the folk programme, silicone beauties and prettifying the wartime reality of Serbia under sanctions.'

The contemporary TV Pink now uses 12 studios across the ex-Yugoslav region and is broadcast in every ex-Yugoslav state except Croatia (although Croatian viewers with the right satellite or cable connection can pick up the Pink BiH signal). However, Mitrović has shown interest in investing in the 'huge potential of the Croatian media market' (as he told Globus) for some time - whether by buying into its largest record label Croatia Records, building a film-making complex in the country, or becoming involved with one of the private national terrestrial channels, Nova TV.

Turning to some (for now) thoroughly unrelated news: Večernji list reports that multi-channel digital terrestrial television is coming to Croatia, with 32 new channels expected to go live across the country by the end of 2009 and concessions to be awarded in 2008. (If you thought the politics involved where four national channels were concerned were intricate enough, wait until there are 36 of them.) Assuming the Croatian digital landscape evolves in the same way as the UK's, expect the multiplex to be made up of existing channels broadening their portfolios, plus new arrivals taking their first steps into the national media market.

New arrivals like... well, perhaps like Željko Mitrović?

Bora Djordjević on Epicentar: Aftershocks?

Despite threats from a group of Zagreb war veterans that they'd intervene to prevent the transmission of Mirjana Hrga's Epicentar talk show when she interviewed the Serbian rock singer Bora Djordjević, there's been little sign of recriminations after last week's show was successfully broadcast.

The major charge laid against Hrga's Nova TV colleague Petar Vlahov when he went to interview Ceca Ražnatović in January 2005 was that he hadn't asked her the key questions - her attitude to the aggression against Croatia and her response to accusations of involvement in the conspiracy against Zoran Ðinđić - which would have transferred the interview out of the realm of entertainment television and into the field of big-P Politics.

No such allegations could apply to Hrga, who put Djordjević over the political barrel for 25 minutes on last Sunday's show, starting with the question 'Are you a Četnik?' (Djordjević: 'Absolutely', although the two speakers arrived with rather different understandings of četništvo, with Djordjević maintaining that it stood today for 'being proud of what you are'.) Half an hour later, Hrga's audience were well-informed about Djordjević's performances in Serb-occupied Knin and his insistence that conversations about Srebrenica should also remember 'the number of Serbs who died' - and were left under no illusions what Hrga's most vocal guest, HSP (Croatian Party of Right) leader Ante Djapić, thought about it.

(The only shame for viewers who might have liked to know a bit more about the Serbian elections is that Epicentar's other Belgrade guest - Sonja Biserko from the Serbian Helsinki Committee standing in for an unavailable Nataša Kandić - got no more than six or seven minutes of screen time: a quarter of the space allotted to Djordjević.)

Mirjana Hrga, for her part, has been attracting more attention than ever since the interview, at a time when one might expect the press to be focusing on the impending arrival at Nova TV of her old talk-show rival Hloverka Novak-Srzić. Jutarnji list and Globus both carried interviews with Hrga this weekend, in which she explained why she'd invited Djordjević for his first post-war appearance on a Croatian political show:

'Given that there’s radicalisation on the Serbian [srpska] political scene, and surveys are showing that Šešelj’s radicals and Koštunica’s party are getting more and more votes, it was completely logical for me to invite someone on to the show who sang to that same Koštunica for Serbian New Year, and who even without Kostunica fills stadiums and performs in front of 25,000 people. Moreover, he wears Četnik coats of arms on his jackets, he publicly declares himself as a Četnik, he promotes radical ideas… For me that too is Serbia. We in Croatia can’t pretend that Serbia is in Africa. It’s our neighbouring state, and I want to show what’s going on there, I want to say that two Serbias exist.'

As for her guests from the Croatian side - particularly Djapić and veterans' representative Mladen Pavković - Hrga told Globus that:

'I wanted Đapić, as a representative of the Croatian right wing: I wanted to confront him with some, conditionally put, right-wing political option in Serbia, but it turned out those are two [different] worlds, that Ante Đapić is a top European [vrhunski Europejac] for what the other side offers. And I wanted a representative of the branitelji, because they are the people who defended Croatia from just the sort of opinions and plans that Čorba was talking about. I exceptionally respect the branitelji, so I invited them on. I know that for them it was a painful evocation of those memories.'

Folk Sans Frontières?

So that's Vuco in Dora, and now - if one can believe everything one reads in Kurir - a whole crowd of Serbian pop-folk singers are getting ready to play the Dražen Petrović basketball arena in Zagreb, rather than the out-of-town nightclubs and discos they've appeared in until now.

Seka Aleksić, Viki Miljković, Hanka Paldum, Indira Radić, Miroslav Ilić, Šaban Šaulić, Šerif Konjević and various others are among the names very tentatively mentioned by the Serbian tabloid, in an article calmly headlined 'Folk singers are charging towards Zagreb!' - at sufficient pace to arrive by late February or early March, according to Braco Zatezalo from Bijeljina's TV BN, which floated the idea in the first place.

The Gazette will believe it when it happens, though...

Showbusiness Ethnopolitics: Epicentar

Two years ago, Nova TV caused the television scandal of the month when their journalist Petar Vlahov went to Belgrade to interview Ceca Ražnatović for his Drugo lice talk show. Now another Nova TV show, Mirjana Hrga's Epicentar, is proving that the channel is no believer in the law of once bitten, twice shy.

Hrga's show on Sunday evening is scheduled to discuss the Serbian elections, and particularly the popularity of the Radical party. Epicentar's favoured expert to provide the Radical point of view? Serbian rock singer Bora Đorđević from the band Riblja čorba.

Perhaps predictably, Hrga has since received threats from the Society of Zagreb Defenders of Vukovar, a war veterans' group whose president Damir Jašarević told Jutarnji list, using much the same rationale as the protests against Drugo lice in 2005:

'We would accept the programme only if Đorđević would talk about what he knows about the Knin prison, the missing and fallen soldiers [braniteljima]. Everything else is rubbing salt into the wound when one knows that 1,200 Croats are still listed as missing. Therefore we will use all our means to prevent the programme going out. We're not afraid of prison.'

The Ceca Ražnatović Drugo lice never made it on to the air, but Hrga seems to have stronger support from the channel, which has even been rumoured to have hired security guards to ensure that Sunday's show can go ahead.

Women In The Media (And In The Charts)

The official Croatian singles chart, HRtop20, has published its chart of 2006, which actually bears quite a resemblance to any weekly chart from August/September. And isn't it funny how the Bosnian Eurovision entry comes in at no 2 on the zabavna chart, while Croatia's own representative only makes it into no 15?

Moving towards something much more heavyweight: via Bosnia Vault, MediaCentar Sarajevo has published its new book of the representation of women in print media in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania. Look out particularly for Danijela Majstorović and Vladimir Turjačanin's discourse analysis of images of women in Bosnian tabloids; Mima Simić's discussion of Croatian and Serbian teenage girls' magazines and their promotion of 'active heterosexuality', Sanja Sarnavka and Suzana Kunac's in-depth analysis of the Ana Magaš murder case in Zadar; and Ivana Kronja's reflections on 'the link between political extremism and pornography' in Serbia.

Comeback Of The Week: Zdravko Čolić

Via Jugoslavija Yugoslavia Jugoslawien, Tamara Skrozza in Vreme marks the release of Zdravko Čolić's new album Zavičaj with an overview of his career:

'Among the petty Cecas, Leontinas and Joksimovićes, who pride themselves on their voice, build or status, Čola still remains untouchable. There are no music academies or producers who will drag Čola's vocal talents out of them; no evening classes which will teach them how Čola behaved in the age of his greatest fame; no magazine which will ever make a star out of them such as Čola has been and remained...'

And at least Čolić, unlike Seka Aleksić or Jelena Karleuša, has never felt the need to start a fashion line...

Showbusiness Ethnopolitics: Jugoslovenka

In 1987, the emblematic Yugoslav showbusiness-folk singer Lepa Brena expanded her multimedia empire that little bit further by releasing a feature film, Hajde da se volimo (Let's make love). Now eerily reminiscent of the ill-fated SpiceWorld, the film's pantomime-style plot saw Brena pursued by Arab sheiks intent on foiling her rendezvous in Dubrovnik with an English promoter who intended her to star in a thinly-veiled analogue of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Two years later there not unreasonably came Hajde da se volimo 2. Among the musical centrepieces this time was Brena's Jugoslovenka, with guest vocals from three regionally representative male stars (Danijel Popović for Montenegro, Vlado Kalember for Croatia, and Alen Islamović for Bosnia) and a syncretic chorus of:

'Oči su mi more jadransko
Kose su mi klasje panonsko
Sestra mi je duša slovenska
Ja sam Jugoslovenka

('My eyes are the Adriatic Sea
My hair is Pannonian wheat
My sister is the Slavic soul
I am the Yugoslav woman')

Hajde da se volimo 1 has been out on DVD for a while, and indeed last Christmas the Gazette nearly ended up with two copies. This year, the DVD of Hajde da se volimo 2 has sensibly been reissued in its 'original version' - so says its packaging - for the '06 holiday market.

Except, it would seem the time for rewriting musical memory isn't quite over yet: the Serbian tabloid Kurir discovered yesterday, for the Jugoslovenka segment, which has been replaced by a clip of Brena performing in Sofia; the best Kurir has been able to get out of the issuers ZAM is that the segment was excised at the wish of the song's composer, Marija Čavić.

Večernji list in Zagreb has now picked up the story of 'Brena's Yugo-trash trilogy' - basically reprising the Kurir title, but adding (with typical cross-border tabloid chemistry) that 'the song was sung together with Lepa Brena by the Croatian singers Daniel Popović and Vlado Kalember.'

Never fear, though: there's always YouTube for these situations.

Whose Is This Carol?

Via Global Voices Online, there's a festive version of the Whose is that song? phenomenon at Ukraine List: you might have heard of an American carol called Carol of the Bells (this Londoner only knows it as 'that song in the Christmas episode of West Wing season 2'), but not that it's adapted from a Ukrainian folk song Shchedryk. (Anthony Potoczniak, an anthropologist at Rice, is on the case.)

Meanwhile, Bosnia Vault relays this story from B92 on ex-Yugoslav hip hop's 'musical offensive against nationalist politicians, corrupt businessmen and priests meddling in politics', including artists from Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Croatia. Says Serbia's Marčelo:

'What we're offering is an alternative to MTV and to American hip hop. Our fans are not looking for a gold chain and a gold tooth. They already have that in turbo folk, so hip hop is seen as something rebellious outside the slimy mainstream.'

One presumes that the Shorty of Marčelo ft. Shorty's 'Definicija' is a different one from the Shorty of Dođi u Vinkovce...