Hold my yeni raki, boza, ouzo, airan, tuica, salgam or any other beverage found in the stores of the Balkan peninsula. I'm about to climb a mountain no other moderator will ever dare to admit is worth the climb.
Open your Google Maps, put on the headphones and let's go.
Not while ago my wife invited me to a dinner with her colleagues. In Germany, at a Lebanese restaurant an Italian student was handing out the menus for the evening and we were partaking in a small talk activity.
An excerpt of the conversation:
Participant 1 to me: "And you, what music do you like listening to?"
Me: "I like Serbian music. Dino Merlin especially."
Participant 2: "Dino Merlin is not Serbian, he is Bosnian."
And this will be the topic of our write-cast today. No, not Dino Merlin or his nationality. The topic will be everything we could have discussed with Participant 2, but was reduced to "Oh, sorry.".
Has any of you played any version of Sid Meyer's Civilization? Long story short, it is a turn based strategy game where you build a civilization starting on a random point on a random map. The success and ease of this process was mostly defined by how close your neighbors are to you. The tighter it get, the harder it was to maintain clear borders.
But music knows no borders, neither it succumbs to language differentiation.
A few years ago I was hitch hiking through Turkey with a phone holding 42 (yes, 42) songs of my people (Bulgarian language songs) that were planned as an icebreaker on longer road trips. One of them was Greshnica by Toni Storaro.
https://open.spotify.com/track/6RpQGSSlmKkViRRBLO8HYX?si=cfd01e743a574bfc
The moment it started playing the driver got excited and shouted "I know this song! This is Zalim by Yalin!"
https://open.spotify.com/track/6aEEq4m2qAuRKV8wr3Y40Y?si=10b8db0d719f4ffc
Needless to say the song did its job and broke the ice and we had a fun trip.
But what would happen if you did the same on a hitchhiking road trip in a country 4 countries and 1300 km away from where the above took place? Take a breath - it will happen just the same thing. The country is Albania and the song is Zemer by Rovena Stefa. (Currently not available on Spotify, but some day we will have all the songs available, including this one.)
There were other songs on the phone as well. One of them was picked as a gateway to a strong binding experience once discussions about borders, religion and culture heated up. I knew this song has a version on any of the countries of the Balkans. The reasons for that are religion, culture and history. Long explanation short - it is definitely more probable for people to be happier when spring arrives and to start singing, right?
Another point of view I'd like to share is about music in some way transcending the limitations of "W" questions. A song just is and the singers are its prophets.
This is the 6th of May in a song:
https://open.spotify.com/track/1o1OV9FDx4l4Qri6TldEfL?si=3c159d905b6a4c75
The Bulgarian language version is about the 6th of May and the local holiday of St. George's day.
Another Bulgarian singer has sung this song in a different language. Also about the arrival of spring on the 6th of May, but this time the holiday is Ederlez (Google it).
https://open.spotify.com/track/4H9vyV5bMG58qy9cHa5WT4?si=0363325ace7a4c65
The same song as the one above has been sung in the same language by the orchestra of Goran Bregovich himself. Start of spring, Ederlez.
https://open.spotify.com/track/0iJgOtbNDJg7A7iFfAdd3R?si=309dbe78036f4eb3
My favorite version of this song is by Alen Islamovic - Djurdjevdan, because it sings about the arrival of spring, this time described through the smell of lily-of-the-valley. A flower blooming around the 6th of May.
https://open.spotify.com/track/7BUFD1U7AlKszTQvJzn4Qv?si=88484b5e08bc4291
I bet 5 euros that this song has a Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Croatian, Serbian and Albanian (sorry, if I missed one) language versions. Are you able to find them?
Sometimes when I travel between the Balkan countries I like to imagine I'm crossing into a paralell universe where a single event in history has cascaded in the universe's inhabitants developing a different language, but keeping the same spirit and culture and make it a challenge to find the songs of their people that match the ones from our universe. Do they sing about the same heartbreaking moments, did they visit the same club and saw the same pretty girl worthy of a song? How much does the life story of the person singing the song differ between universes? As strange as this sounds, not understanding the language of the foreign, yet close song helps a lot in finding the answers.
One such favorite is Roza preached by Dimitris Mitropanos:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2uh88Sbc5kFNV8p2cfrFsP?si=ffd24fbe345c41e7
Really, I have no idea what this song is about, but I'm pretty sure it is about a long story ending sadly.
The same song manifested itself in Bulgarian as well. From the voice of another sad-voiced singer, Konstantin - Cherna Roza
https://open.spotify.com/track/2NteSCt9EuC29eNBS7xlBJ?si=bbb0399586cb4920
Sad male voices have something to them, which I'm not able to describe. Could you help me out in the comments?
Mentioning legendary male voices from across the Balkans, Saban Saulic has also helped a song find its way to our world. The song is called Ti Me Varas Najbole:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3E1Wo7jLELumUmNsYmL3Nh?si=5a320393f9614dc3
The same song has been made famous in other parts of the world by Raina - Ti me Lajesh Nai-Dobre. Currently not available on Spotify, but we are working on making all the songs from all the universes available on our platform.
Changing pitch and rhythm we can find different manifestations of this song across the multiverse: Hej, srce by Sandra Afrika
https://open.spotify.com/track/7zVTk8qyYyuLKmQWUMexYZ?si=93cf619d77ea4645
Pey, sartse by Galena (This one is especially close to my heart, because it starts with the name of my wife sang by another musical prophet that helped many songs manifest themselves in our world):
https://open.spotify.com/track/7KCXvA8KUEIjN3kiaGRyIh?si=cd28f8fa6d464375
Keeping the party rhythm, we can find another border crossing song, Zek Zek by Gagi Band and Vlez by Tsvetelina Yaneva
Gagi Band letting Zek Zek in our world:
https://open.spotify.com/track/37KImoz77MkBexfzUXHrwA?si=2d0b25b1ff754326
Tsvetelina Yaneva popularizing it across borders:
https://open.spotify.com/track/168z8Lrpy2oOrYSgrK6C2v?si=b12d0f52e8e24830
Once in a decade a song is born in such a way that all imaginary geographical constructs are erased from the map. This one broke all the Balkan border checkpoints:
"Dyavolat me kara" sung by Galena:
https://open.spotify.com/track/6B1sSiiIbF0AAYSNQ7zkbu?si=f191888c87ff4a72
"Zadnja sansa" by Amra Halebic:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3xl78QbiugYv4SMsp3B3fP?si=9fa21cf4c5e24391
"10 Poze am cu tine" by Adrian Minune himself:
https://open.spotify.com/track/07B86MinPo0Zl8gHohU2r2?si=05480a89292c4c60
"O shpirt" by Bashkim Spahiu (will be available on Spotify some day, we will continue to strive towards this goal)
"Dqvola para izkara" by Mom4eto
https://open.spotify.com/track/5UnA7doBvFDdpKs90fp8dE?si=3296a055e10740c1
Some songs are so hard hitting that the universe can't handle the state multiplicity and is unable to go wider than two. When the voice of the singers and the rhythm of the song match the Balkan spirit in such a way that changing the language of the song is unneccesary for it to become an instant hit.
"Sen Trope" by Florin Salam:
https://open.spotify.com/track/5L3dE30wwebKXn4lwUQkoC?si=b762f897a5154276
And at last, the King himself:
"Sen Trope" by Azis:
https://open.spotify.com/track/11ELEGzmuK6ENekjKFai3e?si=b14dfe2ad2ec4d2a
Are you able to find border crossing manifestations in your part of the globe? Post them in the comments so they can be sung in all the universes.
