Glembays And Vampires Revived (But Not Kasandra)

While Severina herself is starring in Rijeka's much-publicised production of Gospodini Glembajevi (where her co-star, Galliano Pahor, was half of a duet competing in Dora this year), Croatian musicians - at least the ones Jutarnji list spoke to this week - have been assessing Dado Topić's chances for Eurovision in terms which aren't particularly favourable to Moja štikla.

Mišo Kovac is expecting a top ten or even top five finish for Topić on the grounds that 'all in all, we've got good-quality assets up our sleeve, unlike last year when we sent turbo-folk into the world', and Vladimir Kociš Zec, late of Novi fosili, is inclined to agree: 'Last year Croatia sent a folk song [narodnjak] into the world wrapped up as fake pop-etno, and this year it's playing fair.'

Returning to Gospodini Glembajevi, it's no ordinary production of the Miroslav Krleža classic, which begins to answer the question of what Severina's doing there. The play's turned into a semi-musical, Severina and Pahor swap roles for some of the action, and Baroness Castelli's death is staged in a way apparently recalling actress Ena Begović's fatal car accident. However, Severina's theatrical engagement has been controversial enough to be the subject of Mirjana Hrga's talk show Epicentar at the weekend. After coming in for severe criticism from musicologist Jagoda Martinčević, Severina acquitted herself rather more honourably than, say, Bora Dordevic (a previous recipient of the Epicentar treatment) - telephoning the studio to challenge Martinčević.

Leave it to the Swiss, meanwhile, to take the task of succeeding last year's horror-costumed Eurovision winners Lordi as literally as they could: summer hit merchant DJ Bobo will be presenting Vampires are alive, with the usual Colonia-type dance beat and also, one morosely supposes, the predictable staging. At least one of the Gazette's family is likely to pedantically point out that vampires are disqualified from being alive by virtue of having already been rendered undead, or to ask whether [insert name of teenage female contestant from Estonia, Moldova etc.] is supposed to be Buffy.

Any obvious connection between Severina and Vampires (alive or undead)? No; but that might be different if early-1990s dance star Kasandra hadn't abruptly vanished from the Croatian scene with several of her contemporaries. While Severina was still being marketed as the brunette Tajči, her then rival Kasandra was playing the sex symbol card, dressing up as things (including the vampire-themed video of I've Got A Feeling, post-Thriller but pre-Backstreet Boys), and celebrating the 1994 launch of the Croatian currency, the kuna, by posing for the centre spread of Globus draped in nothing but pine martens (kune in Croatian).

Wonder who'd do that sort of thing today?

Retromanija Miscellany

First up, Jugoslavija Druga mentions that Bajadera chocolates (that iconic product of Croatian confectionery) are 50 today. Viki Miljković would no doubt like to celebrate the fact.

The eminent Croatian film director Lordan Zafranović's new project, according to Večernji list, is something of a departure - a pop music show devised by veteran zabavna (light-entertainment) singer Duško Lokin and featuring other performers of his generation. Evergreen club, produced for the satellite Croatian Music Channel, will be offered to other Yugoslav television stations, and might help to allay zabavna musicians' fears that there's never enough space for Croatian music on TV.

Meanwhile, it's time for the annual obsession of Croatian showbusiness reporters: who's going to earn how much for their New Year's Eve concerts. Halfway through Jutarnji list's latest set of figures comes the seemingly no longer controversial information that Doris Dragović will be entertaining the Montenegrin town of Kotor for Silvestrovo (elsewhere in Crnoj Gori, Nikšić gets a cut-price Boris Novković and Budva gets top-dollar Dino Merlin). It's all a long way from 1999, when Dragović's icebreaking NYE performance in Igal kicked off a controversy from which her career arguably never recovered.

Lastly, since we're talking transnational misadventures, it seems that Severina's US tour-that-wasn't from November picked up coverage on Bruce Sterling's blog at Wired as an example of 'cruelly postponed globalizatsiya'. Here's hoping it won't be indefinitely so - and that she finds her way to London in the process...

Severina's Rainbow Tour: A Croatian Story

Ask showbusiness manager Zoran Škugor, as Večernji list did on Monday, and he'll tell you that Severina's flop in the diaspora is due to her lack of a 'Croatian story' compared to Miroslav Škoro and Marko Perković Thompson, who literally and metaphorically perform their ethnicity at every opportunity:

'She doesn't number herself with the schlager singers [zabavnjaci] nor among the representatives of Dalmatia, but she has more and more of a pop-folk accent [na narodnjak]. [...] I'm sure that now she'll turn towards Serbia as much as she can and it's no wonder she chose Goran Bregović to write songs for her.'

(And look what happened when he was only her arranger.)

Severina's successfully toured Australia in the company of other Croatian singers, though (usually involving fetching pictures of Seve cradling a koala) - and the complaint that Croatia (diaspora included) is too small a market for Croatian singers is hardly new to autumn 2006. Indeed, two weeks ago Severina's manager Tomislav Petrović depicted the tour's national neutrality as an advantage:

'Unlike performances organised by Croatian parishes where musicians usually play two or three sets during the evening which also includes dinner, this time it's a real concert tour. We don't think that [church-organised] type of performance is bad, but Severina has outgrown it.

'[...] I didn't ask whether they [Arx International] are Croats, Serbs, Slovenes... Kazakhs. Their nationality really isn't essential to the job, and so far they've fulfilled all the conditions we agreed. Personally I don't have a problem on that question, and I even see that Croats are already working with Serbia in a big way. It's ultimately out of place to talk about the nationality of the people organising the tour, just as it's out of place to talk about whether Severina will be singing in America to Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks... or Kazakhs again? Severina will sing to everyone who goes to her concert.'

It's been clear for some time that Severina also belongs to Serbian showbusiness as far as the media there are concerned: add up her invitations to TV Pink awards shows and the extent of her coverage in Serbian tabloids like Svet. As a 'regional' star, she's surrounded by yet more sets of people and firms looking to promote, represent and generally make money out of her image.

Throughout spring, Severina was receiving (and taking part in) the musical version of the debate: if it's Croatian, can it be anything else ex-Yugoslav? And if it includes anything else ex-Yugoslav, can it be Croatian at all? The collapse of her American tour perhaps reflects the offstage version of the same problem (and in fact, there are a few hints that 'Štikla' didn't help Severina's standing with the Croatian diaspora). Can a Croatian singer have another ex-Yugoslav audience? And if she has another ex-Yugoslav audience, can she be Croatian at all?

Political circumstances and the structure of the media have changed since Doris Dragović fell foul of the same questions in 1999 with her (in)famous performance in Montenegro for New Year's Eve. (At the invitation, it tends to be forgotten, of a Croatian priest.) Nonetheless, the answer to whether Severina is just a Croatian star continues to be summed up by the British comedy catchphrase: 'Yeah but, no but'...

Showbusiness Ethnopolitics: Severina's Rainbow Tour

When I heard Severina was off on a tour of North America this November, I wondered briefly whether the schedule would touch down in Washington DC, where I spent most of last week at a not unrelated conference.

No such luck, and while I was in Washington, it turned out that the entire tour had been called off, ostensibly due to incredibly poor ticket sales - only several dozen at each venue, and as little as 20 tickets (or even just 8?) in LA.

Croatian tabloid 24 sata has been almost gleeful about the whole thing, reporting Severina's landing in Atlanta, bomb threats to the venues in Vancouver and Los Angeles and the eventual cancellation of the whole schedule through a reporter already accompanying Seve on her rainbow tour.

Now she's back in Zagreb, the root of the problem seems to be resistance from the Croatian diaspora towards her performing in larger concert venues (the Atlanta concert was booked for the CBS Center) rather than diaspora clubs owned and operated by Croatian emigres - and/or a semi-organised campaign against a Croatian singer's tour being operated by a Serb-American firm Arx International. (Arx's upcoming attractions include concerts by Indira Radić, Kemal Monteno, Zdravko Čolić, Bijelo Dugme and Rade Šerbedžija - hardly a narrowly Serb line-up, although there's of course no sign of the usual Croatian-club diaspora performers, who operate through other channels.)

Arx's Miloš Marić has since told the Serb-American magazine Objektiv that he believed sections of the diaspora sabotaged the LA and Vancouver legs in particular by refusing to accept advertising or posters, as did a Serb radio station in LA 'which did not want to run the ad because Severina is a Croat'. However, he praised the Croatian Chronicle newspaper for prominently advertising the tour, and emphasised that:

'Of course I can't talk about a boycott from the entire Croatian community, because I don't believe the people who work in those media have that much influence over the whole community or that the entire community in those cities is homogeneously negative.

Marić's colleague Žana Jovanović Savić has also blamed the diaspora, including a Croat radio station in New York whose editor 'openly boycotted us, describing our collaboration as unnatural.'

The same line, perhaps unsurprisingly, comes from Serbian tabloid Blic - although no mention there, or in the dependably outraged Kurir, of the Serb radio station in LA.

Continued

Severina On Schedule

Yet another Večernji list interview for Severina, who's had a busy week - in between performing Moja štikla in a rock arrangement during a big Boris Novković concert in Zagreb, and rehearsing her role as Baroness Castelli in a new production of the classic Croatian play Glembajevi.

Next she'll be off on a tour of North America, where the Congress Theatre in Chicago is apparently billing her as the 'Croatian Madonna.' (That's the 21st-century singing one, not the 1st-century praying one, whose Croatian incarnation is already quite well spoken for by a certain Tatjana Matejaš.)

Otherwise, Severina has little to add to last week's interview with VL which finally indicated the contents of her made-in-Belgrade album. As she says this time:

'The new songs shouldn't be compared with 'Štikla' [...] Maybe what the album does have in common with 'Štikla' is that those little amateur orchestras from Županja, Daruvar, Solin, and Kaštel will perform on it, like the ojka singers from Sinj and the Matić brothers performed on Štikla. And on one lovely tamburica song Zlatni dukati are also appearing for me.'

Severina: Tamburica and Mandolin

The Gazette goes away for the weekend, and Severina decides to tell Večernji list what's on her long-awaited post-Štikla album, about to be recorded in Belgrade with Goran Bregović and the Serbian folk/pop lyricist Marina Tucaković.

Neretva River and SeveFanClub are already on the story - in fact, if the link to the original interview with VL isn't working, SFC carries the full text as well.

After dismissing various rumours that she's married/pregnant/moving to Belgrade (which have mainly come from the direction of tabloid 24 sata - the newspaper which did the most to start the Štikla scandal in the first place back in February), Severina gets around to explaining how the still untitled album is shaping up musically: Bregović is currently 'writing the melodies and notes for those brass, tin, tamburica and mandolin orchestras from Županja, Daruvar, Solin and Kaštel' (two inland-Croatian and two coastal towns). Moreover, whether disappointingly or not:

'The new album won't be anything like Štikla at all. Although, alongside two of Bregović's songs from his version of Carmen, there'll be the tamburica and authentic [izvornih] sounds of Croatian amateur orchestras from Županja, Daruvar, Solin and Kaštel, I wouldn't call that ethno.'

(Which makes a change from the Štikla period itself, when she'd much rather have had the song called ethno than something else.)

In fact, it looks less like a different approach, more like a difference in content. Štikla involved various folk song/dance forms from Dalmatia and the Dinaric Dalmatian hinterland (Lika, Zagora, Herzegovina); the album as a whole might have more in common with the time-honoured, uncontroversial Croatian formula of tamburica and mandolin (wasn't that a Zlatko Pejaković song?), 'Pannonian' and 'Adriatic' symbols which ethnomusicologist Svanibor Pettan argues tend to (be made to?) 'appear [...] more refined, more modern, and more Western' in comparison to Dinaric heritage.

Rather than following in the, errr, footsteps of Štikla, one or two songs might actually be more in the style of one of Štikla's only serious rivals during Dora, Ivana Banfić's tamburica-pop Kad se sklope kazaljke - and indeed, we're promised one of the tracks will be arranged by Stanko Šarić from the most famous tamburica-revival band Zlatni dukati/Najbolji hrvatski tamburaši.

So far, so 1990s, perhaps. But what's that, tucked away at the end of the interview, about covering a song Bregović first wrote for the Turkish pop diva Sezen Aksu?

Ništa Kontra Seve

The Zagreb suburb of Zaprešić isn't the happiest place for Severina at the moment, according to the SeveFanClub blog: after postponing a concert there due to food poisoning, the rescheduled concert was interrupted by Dinamo Zagreb fans throwing lighters at the stage when Severina began to sing...

...Nista kontra Splita (Nothing against Split), Dino Dvornik's smash hit from 1995 which quickly became an anthem for Dinamo's biggest rivals, Hajduk Split.

That'll be the problem, then.

(The extensive Hajduk songbook also includes: Mišo Kovač's Dalmacija u mom oku, a Hajdukised version of Magazin's Tri sam ti zime šaptala ime, a certainly unsanctioned version of Novi fosili's Za dobra stara vremena, and a version of the Ustaša anthem Evo zore, evo dana rewritten for the splitski huligani.)

Readers of SFC and Jutarnji list, which picked up the story today, largely seem to be asking what Severina was doing transgressing Croatia's north-south divide in the first place, although expecting Severina not to be provocative these days is a tall order.

The Gazette wonders whether this qualifies Severina, in the footsteps of Doris Dragović (but not quite Seka Aleksić), as the new Kraljica Torcide...?

Severina: It's A Matter Of Time

Today's Večernji list is announcing an unauthorised biography of Severina, to be written by tabloid journalist Vedran Strukar. Interestingly, the news has actually come via Serbian tabloid Blic (link for today only), which also reports that Severina's post-Štikla album - music by Goran Bregović and lyrics by Marina Tucaković - should be due out in December. (Probably not one for Lidija Bajuk's Christmas list.)

Blic says that unnamed 'friends of Severina' in Croatia have (very apparently) heard the new songs and said that they 'have stayed faithful to the style of music which shocked Croatian music critics on "Moja štikla"':

'Asked whether the album was ethno, our source smiled: "What you call ethno over there in Serbia, for us, that's turbofolk!"'

Tucaković's involvement with the album was first quietly announced at the end of July, although nobody seemed to notice at the time, or make what would be, for a populist tabloid, the obvious connection to Tucaković's client Ceca Ražnatović. Večernji list, however, has finally noticed that:

'Brega, who worked on 'Štikla', will continue in a similar tone, and Marina, who otherwise also works with Ceca, is responsible for the lyrics.'

Didn't it all start last time around with Croatian and Serbian tabloids swapping throwaway comments like that?

Just wait until Blic/Svet/Kurir/Press/etc happens to transcribe lyrics from the album into ekavica....

Let's Take It From The Top

The Zagreb summer-break spirit seems to have infected the Gazette, which is slowly rediscovering its work ethic just as Catherine starts to wind down hers and think about spending a few days looking around castles in the Zagorje.

In approximately chronological order, these would probably have been full-length posts, if I'd had my act together.

Severina performed her summer season with her leg in plaster after an accident roller-skating in the dark, and revealed quite in passing to Jutarnji list that the team for her new album, due out at the end of the year, consists of Moja štikla's arranger Goran Bregović alongside Marina Tucaković, one of Serbia's most prolific pop/folk lyricists. Even more in passing, she described her 2000 hit Ajde, ajde, zlato moje as 'on the borders of turbofolk', although somehow that's less of a surprise than the Tucaković link-up.

Severina's pre-Bregović version of Štikla, the less comically folkloric Moj sokole, has had the sort of airplay one would expect from a summer hit by one of the most famous women in Croatia. Štikla, on the other hand, has not. Hari Mata Hari's Lejla, on the... third?... hand, has had more airplay than both songs put together. Which of the three would a visiting Martian think had been Croatia's Eurovision entry?

The fifteenth anniversary of Operation Oluja and the end of the Homeland War was marked by an official ceremony in Knin, and an all-day celebration in Čavoglave culminating in a concert by the village's most famous branitelj, Marko Perković Thompson. Thompson's own album, due late last year, may be delayed again now that he and his wife are expecting their third child - to be called Jelena if a girl (after the queen?), and Ilija for a boy (after the saint?).

The onset of Bosnian elections nautrally meant a race for the Croat parties to sign up famous musical names from the domovina. As of Večernji list's article in late August, Hrvatska koalicija (the Croatian Coalition) was counting on three acts who had all, in their time, been the biggest name in Croatian showbusiness ethnopolitics: Thompson, Miroslav Škoro and Prljavo kazalište. HDZ-BiH scooped up most of the other Herzegovinan pop singers of the moment, among them Mate Bulić, Ivan Mikulić, and girlband Feminnem.

Back in May, the Gazette's eye was caught by the line-up for Croatian singer Zorica Andrijašević's forthcoming album, namely, the Serbian folk songwriting team of Zoran Lesendrić-Kiki and Marina Tucaković (again). Andrijašević has now gone one better, according to this week's Arena magazine, and signed for the Serbian folk label Grand Productions - only the second Croatian singer to do so, says Arena, with the first being Siniša Vuco.

As East Ethnia reported at the time, three of Croatia's best-regarded alternative acts - TBF, Let 3, and Damir Urban - withdrew from Zadar's planned new rock festival Ups! when it turned out that the show would be sponsored by the Foundation for the Truth about the Homeland War, the lobby group founded in January with the aim of promoting... well, what else would it promote. The Foundation, apparently, got involved with Ups! 'to show that the historical truth about the Homeland War is not only supported by people who go to Thompson and Mate Bulić concerts', but may instead have helped to suggest the opposite.

The Gazette's more intrigued by who in the first place could have thought it was a good idea to invite the Letovci - whose current album deals with 'the collective memory, collective romances and irritations of the peoples who live in the states of former Yugoslavia', mainly by rearranging old newly-composed folk songs, adding swear words and wearing false moustaches - to a festival sponsored by an Ante Gotovina defence fund. (At least Gotovina never wore a moustache.)

Allowing me a brief trip into Glory of Carniola territory, the Slovenian singer Saša Lendero - who specialises in translating her Eurovision pre-selection entries into Croatian and re-entering them in Budva Festival or HRF - presented her summer hit Ne grem na kolena, currently available at her official site. It seems it isn't just turbo folk - Slovenian turbo polka - which has made it across from the Serbian and Bosnian markets: the trend for covering Greek pop songs has headed west as well. On the way, it's dropped Despina Vandi's Simera off in Croatia as Lana Jurčević's Odlaziš - but this does seem to be a year when Croatian music realised it had a little to catch up on.

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...

Two For The Price Of One

Anyone who had already had enough of Severina's Moja štikla ought to look away now: the song's first version, Moj sokole (My falcon), has been accepted for the Splitski festival competition and will appear in the second semi-final.

Moj sokole is better known as the first version of Moja štikla, produced before Goran Bregović became involved. It's still not quite clear why Sokole's patriotically-themed lyrics (mountains, wheat, olives, heroes, homeland: present and correct) were exchanged for Štikla's folk-music parody, except that they apparently didn't fit the rhythm once Bregović had done his thing.

According to Severina's manager, Tomislav Petrović:

'She'll appear in the second semi-final of Splitski festival, the song ought to be premiered on Croatian Radio, and we're not intending to make a video for the moment. Although this was the first attempt at Štikla, it's actually unbeliavable how different the arrangements are. Otherwise, Severina's working on her new album now, and soon she's off to Germany for the World Cup.'

There's no response, as yet, from any of Splitski festival's other 31 contestants (in fact, the festival organisers still haven't announced who they are), but one can easily imagine that some performers might not feel too welcoming towards a song with the greatest head start possible in publicity terms. (See: most editions of the Gazette this year to date.)

There's the question, too, of whether the whole of the audience will take Moj sokole as appropriate for Splitski festival's well-known Dalmatian character - although the song's musical origins in inner-Dalmatian folklore were frequently emphasised (and debated) during the Štikla case.

Meanwhile, very efficient readers should be able to hear the song played on Zlatko Turkalj-Turki's HR2 radio show (link via Seve Fan Club) - or, no doubt, at every opportunity in the Croatian media for the next month and a half.

High Heels And Falcons

Might the Štikla momentum die down after Severina's undignified Eurovision experience? Perhaps; or perhaps not. Severina's forthcoming album will continue the collaboration with Goran Bregović which arose from Štikla, suggesting a change of tone from her 2004 comeback CD, the R&B-influenced Severgreen.

More immediately, Štikla is finding an afterlife or two - in a club remix that was completed too late to be sent to Eurovision, and in its first version with patriotically-themed lyrics which were rejected when the song was rearranged in February. (And given the potential for politicised readings of an entry like that, it might have been just as well.)

News of the first version, then called Hrvatski sokole (Croatian falcon), first broke around the time of Dora, but the song was only played today on Zlatko Turkalj's Turki party radio show - with Turkalj considering that Moj sokole (My falcon) would have the potential to be a hit in its own right.

In the meantime, Jurica Pavičić in Jutarnji list reflects on the significance of Štikla itself, reaching the conclusion that 'tonight in Athens one epoch for Croatian culture is coming to an end, and another is beginning.'

Not only was Severina's song 'the most commented-on and disputed song in the whole history of Croatian pop music' (and the Gazette doesn't need much convincing of that), but it would be hard to overstate its importance in a redefinition of Croatian culture:

'A song which in its first line contains a motif of trade (a high-heeled shoe), and then immediately a rustic-peasant motif of grass and a lawn, served as a collective catalyst which enabled the vast majority of Croats to let out their own cultural traumas. To all those who have suppressed the Balkans into themselves for 15 years, who took care not to be heard listening to narodnjaci, for their neighbours not to see them coming back from the village, to all those who suppressed their štokavski accent and tried to speak the city way, Štikla brought them all collective therapy. Thanks to Štikla, Croats could finally - to use gay vocabulary - "out" themselves: for the first time, they could admit to themselves and others that they were from the Balkans.'

How Štikla might be (re)assessed after its result in Athens remains to be seen. As Pavičić pointed out in his article published on Saturday itself: 'If it does badly, conservative Croatia will say "We told you so". If it does well, the same "common sense" will say "Look what Europe wants from us, folklore and folk singers [cajke].'

And if it finishes slap in the middle of the scoreboad? Wait and see.

Moja Štikla: Let The Hindsight Begin

Severina's štikla may have come to a disappointing halt on Saturday, but now anyone who had an opinion on the song first time around gets to make sense of its thirteenth place.

There'll likely be more of this in mid-week once the showbusiness supplements come out, but for now the commentaries and excuses mainly centre around the prominence of ever more extreme spectacle at Eurovision - to the extent, claims Merita Arslani in Jutarnji list, that the Finnish winners Lordi were in 'complete opposition and mismatch to Eurovision'.

The music critic Zlatko Gall, meanwhile, feels that Štikla was ultimately too specific to its own region to capture the pan-European audience:

'Perhaps Štikla and Severina are an ideal product for us and our neighbours, but not for something else. If Štikla is a reflection of Croats' taste, then hard rock is Scandinavian heritage. [...] Europe can swallow something like Štikla once or twice, but not forever. However high Severina's Štikla was, it isn't the standard of Europe..'

Gall is typically no fan of Severina, but Severina's team seemed to have anticipated these reservations themselves when they introduced a dance routine into her choreography for Eurovision, as if admitting that simply relying on national costume from Lika and Dalmatinska zagora - as provocative as it was in the context of Dora - wouldn't itself have the same impact on Eurovision viewers as a whole. (Not least because Albania's Luiz Ejlli had attempted much the same thing in the Eurovision semi-final: for ganga and rera, read four-part southern Albanian Lab iso-polyphony.)

Štikla's domestic connotations, then, failed to be transferred into what Dragan Jurak, also in Jutarnji list, sums up as 'the deconstructive trend of the 51st Eurovision', which has begun to ironise the showbusiness kitsch of the event - be it 'the classic Abba kitsch of Eurovision, standard Irish Johnny Logan kitsch, unexpected sevdalinka kitsch a la Seid Memić Vajta, and the usual variants of dance kitsch, Cher kitsch, urban hip hop kitsch, reggae kitsch or ethno boy band kitsch'.

Indeed, Severina herself was apparently a target of the Icelandic comedian Silvía Night - who opened her song Congratulations by sliding down a giant pink štikla.

And judging by the result, it seems one did have to be an ex-Yugoslav - or Monégasque - to understand that Moja štikla was about more than taking off your skirt while shouting 'Afrika, paprika'.

For my part, it took a conversation with a taxi driver on the subject of 'that woman from Poland or somewhere' to realise that what Severina, Novković, Bregović, Kostadinov, Dora voters, Dora viewers and the Gazette itself all think of as ganga, rera, linđo and so on and so forth could just as easily have been interpreted as 'singing out of tune'...

Tamo Gdje Je Stala Njena Štikla...: The Weekday After

High heels, an 'Afrika, paprika' striptease, and excerpts of linđo and kolo dancing were clearly no match in the spectacle stakes for Lordi, whose monster outfits and Hard rock hallelujah brought Finland their first victory at Eurovision. While Hari Mata Hari achieved third place for Bosnia-Herzegovina with Lejla (and applause from the audience after each of his longest notes), Severina finished only 13th with 56 points - two places down from her composer Boris Novković's effort last year, and no better than Ivan Mikulić's placing in 2004.

More revealingly, the breakdown of her score shows the high points coming exclusively from the ex-Yugoslav successor states: 12 from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 10 each from Slovenia, Macedonia, and Serbia-Montenegro. German and Turkish viewers accounted for another 6 between them, while the only indication of any wider appeal came from Monaco, whose jury awarded Severina an unexpected quatre. (Anything to do with the fact that the Monégasque representative was herself called Séverine?)

There's every chance that the media attention attracted by Lordi's stage presentation - itself indebted to the US band GWAR? - brought one-off viewers to the event who might not have considered voting for any other song; at the same time, take away the costumes and the rock guitars, and what you're left with - according to the Swedish schlager composer Thomas G:son - still resembles the schlager pattern of far more inoffensive Eurovision entries, ensuring its acceptability for a more 'traditional' Eurovision audience.

Dragan Antulov's commentary in Index points to the strength of 'the northern and post-Soviet voting blocs', with first place going to Finland and second to the Russian entrant Dima Bilan. With the debut of Armenia, a post-Soviet factor did seem that more apparent in this year's event (would an independent Montenegro redress the balance?); more significantly for Severina's chances, Andre's song and staging, likewise based on various 'ethnic elements', is likely to have competed directly, and more successfully, with Štikla.

It won't be much consolation to Seve and her team, who were expecting to win the thing last week, but the Norwegian application of the same 'essentialised folklore' principle, Christine Gulbrandsen's Alvedansen (The elves' dance) finished directly below Štikla, even though this too had been tipped as a pre-contest favourite. If Armenia's Andre called to mind Toše Proeski, Christine's performance was - even visually - definitely reminiscent of Tonči Huljić's Dora work with Andrea Šušnjara. (How about a Scandinavian candidate to be the next lead singer of Magazin?)

A final thought: if Štikla really was as close to turbofolk as the domestic consensus on the song seemed to think, surely it should have been much better received in the wider Balkans?

Knowing Your Audience

The Gazette signed up for Google Analytics recently, and guess what most of its incoming visitors seem to have googled for. Yes. Well, it's that time of year.

In the same spirit, then, the news from Jutarnji list that Severina has thrown elements of 'linđo, and vrličko and bunjevačko kolo' into the mix for her choreography on stage in Athens, which will also require slightly flatter štikle than the infamous Dora pair. (Anyone who hasn't seen their particular regional musical marker referenced in Štikla by the time this is over will have the right to feel affronted.)

Her latest comments on the song suggest that Severina, at least, is very much enjoying all this:

'I went to Dora with a song I liked and which was done according to my taste. I'm going to Eurovision with that song as well, and I hope it'll also be to Europe's taste. My song is distinct from the others, and the fact that I'll be bringing šijavica to the capital of European culture and civilisation strikes me as the peak of conceptual art!'

Far more importantly, though, Denis Latin, the editor and presenter of the Latinica talk show, is to leave HTV at some point in the next six months, ending the show's 13-year run. No wonder that he's dissatisfied with the broadcaster, after the reception of his edition on 'Tudjman's Heritage' last December (which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the ex-president's death): HTV responded by placing his show under special supervision.

But you haven't come here to read about that, have you? There are 130,000 results on Google for 'moja štikla'. This surely doesn't still deserve to be the top one...?

Quick Štikla Soundbites

Back in Štiklandija, today's Jutarnji list asks various showbusiness personalities what they think of Severina's chances at Eurovision in a little less than two weeks. (Nobody dared ask Vlatka Pokos, after last time.)

Sanja Doležal (ex-Fosil turned talk-show host) sees her in the top ten, showbusiness manager Zoran Škugor worries that the song will get lost 'in a sea of various folklore', and Mišo Kovač thinks that after Severina's extracurricular activities turned up in Bild, 'everyone will expect a call girl to turn up on stage, and instead they'll get an attractive girl with a happy, extreme song.'

Alka Vuica, who must be wishing she'd thought of Štikla first, thinks that Severina will 'either come back with her shield, or on it'. She's off to Athens, not Sparta, but we take the point.

Moja Štikla: Seve International

At the very first hint that Severina might represent Croatia internationally, a friend who's surprisingly well-acquainted with German showbusiness commented that it would only be a matter of time until her... out-of-hours... career came to the attention of the German tabloid Bild.

Dating from the very first appearance of Štikla-to-be in the Croatian media (when the only scandalous thing about it was that it was alleged to be a copy of Ruslana's Eurovision-winning Wild Dances), the Gazette can conclude that 'a matter of time' now stands for 'more or less 90 days'.

The Bild article - the first and last time Severina will be described as a 'Schlager-Star'? - has quickly found its way into the Croatian press, complete with the comments from Nicole, the German winner of Eurovision in 1982:

'The Grand Prix, or the Eurovision Song Contest as it is called today, is not a sex contest, but a serious musical presentation! And this sort of affair damages the seriousness of the contest. The people responsible for Eurovision ought to review whether Severina is allowed to participate in it at all under such circumstances.'

'Afrika paprika' to you too, Nicole...

Even Less To Do With Belgrade

Estavisti wants a new post, and I have been back for a week, so here's a quick miscellany. One might have thought that Belgrade should have provided as many opportunities for a post as the Gazette's trip to Ljubljana last year did: and it did, but most of them were of the 'Arrange in ascending likelihood of a secret affair: Rebeka Dremelj, Željko Joksimović, Toše Proeski, and Anna Vissi' variety, and other Svet-type snippets.

Flamingosi, the Serbian Eurovision-representatives-who-weren't following the collapse of Evropesma, continue to be ubiquitous (a new B-side version of the song replaces its list of European capitals with cities in Serbia and Montenegro: 'Šabac, Kotor, Novi Sad / Podgorica, Beograd'), despite the fact that - political significance aside - Ludi letnji ples is what people who don't watch Eurovision think Eurovision is like.

That would be unlike the British chav anthem, the fake German country band, or the Finnish metal band in monster masks then, Catherine?

Point taken. So, continuing the Gazette's main theme for spring, the Severina/Let 3 Moja štikla video has been around for a while, in case you want to watch her chasing them around Zagreb with her štiklama. The Letovci had their own moment in the spotlight last weekend at the annual Porin award ceremony, winning two awards for the best rock album and the best video, and performing Ero s onoga svijeta wearing even higher-cut versions of Severina's Štikla dress. (Continuing their parody of showbusiness folk music and hypermasculinity, the song's their version of the final kolo from Jakov Gotovac's Dinaric opera which was also adapted by Marko Perković Thompson into the middle eight of his Geni kameni.)

Ivan Mikulić, meanwhile, attempted to outdo the lot of them by appearing on Melodije Mostara with fifty dancers in folkloric costumes to accompany him on Igraj, igraj, nemoj stat' (Dance, dance, don't stop). Večernji list comments that 'he did it in the style of Severina, using mainly elements of ethno-music and the rich choreography of numerous backing vocalists in national costumes.'

Some day soon, there'll be a point where even the Gazette is asking how much more ethno-choreography it can take...

Moja Štikla: Nothing To See Here

Non-Gotovina-related Severina news includes the fact that she is, as reported, filming the video for Štikla with the similarly-inclined rock group from Rijeka, Let 3.

Večernji list has photos from the set, but there's little to see other than the Letovci striking the same pose as Severina's backing vocalists from the Lado ensemble, and a green screen.

That's because post-production will turn the video into Severina dominating Zagreb with her štikla. Really.

Some incidental Gazette housekeeping at this point: I'm shortly off to Belgrade for three weeks, so I would say posts might be a little less regular than usual, but 'usual' and 'regular' are rather meaningless terms around here of late...