Always around this time, in the grey and darkening days of the second half of November, the official procession towards a point in the extreme east of the country begins, a point in the plain near a great river and an irrevocably ruined and destroyed city, in order to mark the date and keep remembrance of the terrible days of almost three decades ago. During these heavy and gloomy autumn days, when a sombre veil hangs over everyone and everything and people fall silent as if according to some unspoken agreement, the same songs are heard on radio stations, songs that remind us of that time, and chief among them is that one song about the plain. Others join it, very similar and written in a collective key, from the position of the victim, just only towards themselves and their side, exclusive. For one day, they remind us of and try to bring back that state which cannot be brought back. They try to bring back the time when conflict, ethnic unity and a unanimous position on the causes of all that happened achieved something else as well \u2013 a complete severance of contacts and communication with the opposing part of the country, which was at the time, at least on paper, still one country. In just a few months, an unknown territory began on the far bank of the Danube, and in the collective consciousness and the public, but also private, consensus of one side everything from the other, erased enemy side vanished. One by one, people, places, notions, geographies, regions and concrete forms became a kind of immaterial, enchanted space that people do not think about, but about which they \u201cknow everything\u201d, they know it is no good. It became an abstract space without memories, as if everything was covered by the same thick and sombre fog and darkness, as if places and buildings on a film strip were erased and retouched one by one, leaving nothing but empty space, regions and paths without people. Or, if there were still people, they went from familiar faces of acquaintances, friends, colleagues and kin to faceless figures with bodies and movements, but with erased personalities.<\/p>\n
The music heard in Croatia every year at the end of November, be it mourning or rousing, marching music or ballads, implies this time and brings back the atmosphere and remembrance of one’s own suffering and the time of complete and permanent severance from and forgetfulness of the other<\/em> side. It is music suggestive of the period of collective suffering, destruction, gunfire, wailing, tears, the hiss of grenades and artillery shots, or that dreadful silence in between. With a few exceptions, lyrically these songs, along with taking the attitude of absolute personal innocence and victimhood, also pretend to be against war.<\/p>\n These songs suggest that there was no one on the other side<\/em> to hear, feel and sing an antiwar song<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But not only that. These songs directly and indirectly suggest something that the media and institutions have claimed for years: that there was no one on the other side, in the circles of singers and authors, representatives of urban and popular music like their authors, and especially in the circles of rock and roll music as the best and most beloved common element and a unifying factor for the whole former country, to hear and feel, if only so, from a privileged \u201csafe\u201d distance. The message was that there was no one on the other side to write an antiwar song and that even those that could and should have, of whom it was expected, did not react. It was expected especially since only until yesterday they had been equally loved here, if not more, and because of that it was their duty to say something symbolically, metaphorically, poetically, through song \u2013 through words with a melody. There was another, moderate, \u201crational\u201d approach, which, with feigned or real effort and a demagogic \u201cgenerosity\u201d, allowed the possibility that the enemy, demonized by the propaganda, does have the human capacity to feel the suffering of the other, until recently close, side. But the conclusion here was the same: these rare ones, who were once the best, also fell silent and said nothing, meaning that they did not clearly and sufficiently<\/em> condemn <\/em>themselves and \u201ctheir side\u201d (even though many did not belong to any side); in other words, they betrayed and disappointed in this sense as well, \u201clike all the others\u201d, like the evil and he worst with whom the bloody battle was fought. Songs in November of every year say that even those who should not have, kept silent.<\/p>\n But was that really so? One could say that at the beginning and during the first, most destructive period, this was true in the most literal sense. But this literal sense tells us nothing. For if nothing was said right away, it was not for the reasons that this side assumed and the other side was reproached for.<\/p>\n Yes, there was silence at first in those who were expected to say something, or rather, sing something, but for other reasons. There was silence due to astonishment, disbelief, shock and the inability to articulate something like that<\/em> at all. There was silence because there was no direct danger and no sense of a fast flow of time, so people could stop for a moment and think that which could not, would not or should not have been thought on this side. There was one question that came up only on one side, and it was the main question without an answer: \u201cWhat is happening? What happened?\u201d Such a question is the privilege of those who still have enough peace to ask it of themselves.<\/p>\n However, after that, when the initial shock settled a little, people started articulating the shock, confusion and fear that all this produced in them. It shook their souls to see, suspect and hear what was going on in their neighbourhood, in places where until recently they had freely walked, played, sang and were loved, places that were equally theirs, a part of the same country.<\/p>\n The question which an ideologised and dogmatic consciousness did not ask itself, but the artistic one did was: is it even possible to write something about events so unfathomable? How do you write about disaster? How do you aestheticise something that raises the deep moral question of whether it should be aestheticised at all? Secondly, even if you attempt to do it, how do you do it justice? How do you avoid falling into the trap of kitsch? How do you avoid devaluing what must not be devalued with tasteless gestures and poor expression?<\/p>\n It was enough to see what the songs of the side that felt like the victim looked like \u2013 almost without exception it was kitsch, sentimentalism, poorly written, shallow lyrics and textual and musical clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n If we look today, it is fascinating how diversely, heterogeneously and in how many poetic variations the authors \u201cfrom the forbidden side\u201d reacted to the horrifying autumn of 1991 and the years after it.<\/p>\n Those whom it most concerned reacted first, and in the following case \u2013 sarcastically. Obojeni program from Novi Sad wrote a song with a deliberately clich\u00e9d title \u2013 \u201cThe Sky Is Blue\u201d, but in the song the author, Branislav \u201cKebra\u201d Babi\u0107<\/strong>, through indirect, hermetic images and recitation \u2013 which is a stylistic feature of an alternative musical style, but is also an imitation of marching and military tempo \u2013 concealed a story about mobilisation:<\/p>\n \u201cThat morning I got upA moment of silence<\/h5>\n
City man under the blue sky<\/h5>\n
\nReceived a strange letter
\nI understood it quickly
\nI kept the secret
\nAlong the way I wondered
\nIf I had brought everything
\nI could not think about
\nWhether I would come back\u201d<\/p>\n