IN MEMORIAM: 1984 and Bora's Fear of Pristina

Written for Kosovo Online by: Muharem Bazdulj

We have already written here about the topic of Kosovo in Yugoslav popular music in the mid-1980s. In 1984, Zabranjeno pusenje released the song “The Cheyennes Are Leaving,” and two years later Bajaga released “The Romans,” followed by “The Land” by Ekatarina Velika, “The Migrations” by Kerber, and Balasevic’s “The Acacias.” Even earlier, Goran Bregovic first made a song in the Albanian language (“Kosovska”) and placed Predic's “Kosovo Maiden” on the album cover.

In the context of Bora Djordjevic's death, I think about how the public doesn’t seem to grasp how much the “Kosovo topic” affected him in the mid-1980s. That was the peak of Riblja Corba's fame. On one level, it’s reasonable to postulate that the famous song “Look at Your Home, Angel” may have its origins in the news from Kosovo at that time, although the lyrics are so universal that the potential cause loses significance.

Following this line of thought, I flip through Bora’s 1984 book Indifferent to Crying to find explicit Kosovo motives. Soon, I find them. On page 79 of the Knjizevne novine edition, there is a poem titled I’m Afraid, with the following two stanzas:

I’m afraid of the Ustashe, I’m afraid of the Chetniks,
Of the Non-Aligned, and the Blocs,
I’m afraid of righteous avengers,
Madness and electroshocks.

I’m afraid of corporals and generals,
And of Khomeini and Pristina,
I’m very afraid of powerful fools,
Less of lies, more of the truth.

From the perspective of Bora's recent reputation, this poem is unusually politically correct for the time it was written. Firstly, it explicitly maintains equal distance from both the Ustashe and the Chetniks. Furthermore, placing Khomeini and Pristina in the same line doesn’t necessarily mean what it might seem to today. Within the same line, Bora juxtaposes opposites: Ustashe – Chetniks, Non-Aligned – Blocs, lies – truth, corporals – generals, and finally Khomeini – Pristina. In later propaganda, these two concepts wouldn’t necessarily be seen as opposites. However, at that time, the only city that invoked fear in Djordjevic was – Pristina.

Exactly ten pages later, there is the poem Brotherhood and Unity. When read, it doesn’t seem entirely illogical that it might have served as a distant inspiration for Bora’s favorite "frenemy" Balašević and his much more famous The High-rise. Here’s how Bora’s poem goes:

Kalabic proves he's a partisan

Mate smuggles foreign cigarettes

Djurovic got his cousin an apartment

Trajkovski lends money with interest.

Janez loves strong rakija

Popovics threaten the Horvats

Ibrahimbegovic sharpens his knife

Krasniqi awaits his 17th child.

Here, Bora is clearly less politically correct, mocking all Yugoslav constituent nations and a few national minorities. Considering the eight verses, it's not far-fetched to suggest that each one targets a republic or an autonomous province. What I mean is, Kalabic from the first verse is undoubtedly Serbian, while Mate from the second is undoubtedly Croatian. The first verse is a variation on the theme “Comrade Tito, the Serbs are lying to you, they love General Draža,” while the second refers to collateral elements of the migrant-worker fate that Croats in the second Yugoslavia often lived. Montenegrin Đurović, as in today's stereotypes, sticks with other Montenegrins, doing each other eternal favors. The Macedonian stereotype, however, from a typically Belgrade perspective, is intertwined with the Cincar one (“Cincars, bankers, money-lenders”).

Janez is the Slovenian from the Serbian projection who especially loves – like that nomen est omen France – to “Drink.” The Popovics who threaten the Horvats are, of course, Serbs, while the Horvats can be both Croatians and Hungarians. Ibrahimbegovic is a Muslim, in today's terminology a Bosniak, sharpening his "knife" after Sarajevo already rhymed Hakija with čakija. (Bora writes “ćakija,” although the correct spelling is “čakija”; this softening of the affricate to depict typical Sarajevo speech isn't Bora's invention, as it has existed in literature from Dragoslav Mihailović and Momo Kapor onward.) The last verse combines stereotype with hyperbole: no matter how proverbial the size of Albanian families from Kosovo was in the 1970s and 1980s, seventeen children is still an exception. Because of that last verse, many would criticize Bora today, forgetting the intent of the entire poem, which both highlights and mocks others’ stereotypes (Serbs lie and threaten, Croats smuggle, etc.).

Whether by coincidence or not, the next poem in the book is entirely “demographic.” It’s called Song of the Local Community Serbia, and it goes like this:

The birth rate is falling,

So Serbia is failing,

I don’t like that at all.

Four decades later, the only question that remains is: Was Bora a prophetic poet, or does nothing really change here?