Aggression by Memories

To the estimated 4500 (according to security) to 7000 ("Republika" daily in Ljubljana) people who managed to crowd into Ljubljana's Tivoli concert hall, their homeland was in the nuances of Balasevic's songs.

"I, who have lost my homeland," Balasevic told the crowd, "want to congratulate everyone who has realized their heavenly, thousand year old dream and gained a homeland. I find my homeland in bits in certain cities and by the end of my life I'll probably patch a homeland together. It won't be much of a homeland and it won't be the one I grew up in and loved, but what can you do..."

The Ljubljana concert showed that sometimes you don't have to go to cities, since people came from Croatia, Bosnia, Italy... Present were three special buses from Zagreb, cars from Zadar, Opatija, Ogulin, Karlovac and Split, the Croatian checkerboard flag on Vukovar plates, the Bosnian Muslim fleurs de lis on Tuzla plates, Sarajevo's five point red star.

Many travelled far and spent the afternoon waiting for Tivoli to open its doors or trying to buy tickets from scalpers. The box office sold out quickly, although at 23 DEM and 28 DEM the tickets were not cheap. Even though the Croatian media are banned from reporting concerts by Serbian musicians, the border crossing from Croatia into Slovenia was packed.

"Please let me see Djordje," a desperate woman pleaded with security officers: "I've come all the way from Opatija with two daughters, I don't care what the tickets cost..."

She later managed to buy tickets from scalpers at the fantastic amount of 215 DEM each!

Balasevic certainly never expected that he would get the same kind of reception and close contact with the audience that he got at his concerts in Belgrade's Sava Center. He was never that popular in Slovenia while the former Yugoslavia was still intact. "I had my first and only concert in Ljubljana in 1979. There were more than four people in the audience. The junior team hockey game next door had a bigger audience. So I, ahem, steered clear of Ljubljana," Balasevic said before the concert. He also came to Ljubljana alone. He left his family behind in Novi Sad because Slovenians have a complicated visa procedure. The band also only received five-day visas; the overall we-don't-want-you-foreigners-here treatment so disturbed the Vojvodina musicians that even a healthy dose of cynicism didn't help: "they took a blood sample and were kind enough not to force me to wear a yellow band on my arm on stage... but there are some nice things here..."

The nice things started happening just hours before the concert. A TV Sarajevo crew appeared, as well as reporters from Zagreb's daily "Vecernji List" and "Feral Tribune" weekly from Split... There wasn't time for separate interviews, so something like a press conference was organized and an emotional monologue from Balasevic was heard, including unavoidable digressions into the past and political stings...

The concert showed that everything is unavoidably political in this region. Poet Djordje Balasevic couldn't escape from politics, just as Ivan Zvonimir Cicak (Chairman of the Helsinki Committee for Croatia) couldn't escape the music he said he had come to hear. There wasn't any infantile nostalgia for former Yugoslavia as the infantile commentators on state media would have you believe. It was simply a group of people settling accounts within themselves while listening to the old ballads and new requiems for the new superman "with the moonlight in his eyes" and rejoicing in memories.

The concert hall was full; every stairwell was jam-packed. Some of the more resourceful in the crowd even hung from chandeliers and the stairs leading up to balconies.

Balasevic's songs were accompanied by lit candles and matches and he managed to steer clear of collective suicide even though he was on the brink of tears at times. There was sorrow and laughter and dancing and it seemed Balasevic would stay on stage for the three days remaining on his visa because the crowd refused to let him go.

When last I saw him in his hometown of Novi Sad, Balasevic said he would like to perform a concert in Ljubljana after Skoplje. Ljubljana's "Mladina" magazine conveyed that wish to Slovenia in an interview titled "We're to Blame" late in May. Bearing mind his sad experience the last time he was in the Slovenian capital, he said he wished at least 100 Slovenians would come this time, not just his countrymen living in Slovenia who would see him as a replacement for some of the new folk-pop stars. His fears turned out to be exaggerated. The concert was attended by people aged 5 to 75 but the national principle was not present.

In the last hour and a half on stage, Balasevic was saying goodbye to the crowd which refused to let him go. They shouted his name, yelled for more and screamed the names of songs they wanted to hear.

The crowd also threw candy and biscuits on stage with a "political connotation". "Are we breaking the embargo now," he asked with a grin when a girl handed him a box of Croatian biscuits.

"Slovenia really isn't a part of my homeland any more, but no one can take my memories away," Balasevic said finally.

No doubt this concert was one of the most important in his career, as Balasevic himself confided just before it began. He also voiced fears of incidents and bad language and couldn't believe the hall would be full. Four and a half hours later it became a night to remember.