Yugoslavia is dancing Rock’nRoll
everything around you is straightening and bendingElektrikni Orgazam
I arrived in Nikola Tesla airport five summers ago to visit my fiance’s family in their home below the Romanija mountains in Bosnia. We set out for Sarajevo across vast reaches of Serbian plains and farmland, not a hill in sight until we finally arrived at the Bosnian border where towering limestone karsts loomed before us. As we entered this new territory the landscape’s geography gave way from the endless empty plains of flatlands into winding mountain highways and through needle peaks amidst Bosnia’s craggy pine topped alpine ridges. I found the landscape was startling in its familiarity, yet instantly disorienting in its difference, simultaneously recalling national parks of the American West and the forests of European folktales, haunted throughout by the vestigial reminders of the long defunct national machine of Yugoslavian communism. There were moments where it felt as if I could have been in Colorado, but after driving past the startling monolith of the Sutjeska Partisan monument, rising like weathered wings of granite to form a gateway into the mountains where Yugoslavian partisans had fought and won to wrest their country from fascism, I was reminded of the weight of history borne by this small country torn between great powers.
As we drove deeper through the cliffsides, Marina’s father began to adjust the dials of the car radio, crackling through the airwaves to land on the syncopated percussion, snarling vocals and distorted guitars. I leaned into Marina and asked, “What do they call this?” and she answered “Oh this? This is novi val. Our new wave”
KAMIKAZA 