http://www.time.com/time/europe/eu/daily/0,13716,265501,00.html
TIME, Monday, June 24, 2002
Reinventing Ceca
Serbia's turbofolk diva is making a comeback
BY RICHARD BYRNE/Belgrade
In smoky Belgrade rock clubs, 2002 is already looking like a summer of dub.
Reggae music is playing everywhere as kids sip beers and share joints in the
dim light. The booming reggae bass and slow tempo of dub is strictly
opusteno (or cool) Belgrade. There's another Belgrade as well. It's the
Belgrade of Svetlana Velickovic Raznatovic - better known all over the
Balkans as the turbofolk diva Ceca.
Ceca's three-hour concert at the Red Star Belgrade soccer stadium last week
drew close to 80,000 fans. Her face is ubiquitous - on Serbian TV ads for
coffee and on the magazine covers at every kiosk. Even opusteno Belgrade
gabs about Ceca obsessively, in the way that one might talk about a plague
of locusts.
Ceca's story is an uncanny mix of music, politics and crime in Serbia. A
singer from a South Serbian village, Ceca quickly became a turbofolk icon.
This musical genre - rooted in pop updates of traditional Serbian songs -
quickly morphed into a shrill dance music. Its lyrics opted for shallow
romantic sentiment or the vulgar celebration of Serbia's criminal class (and
its consumer fetishes) during the years of President Slobodan Milosevic's
rule.
Ceca moved from mere celebrity to superstar status in 1995, when she married
the most notorious paramilitary leader and mafia boss of the Croatian and
Bosnian wars, Zeljko Raznatovic - better known by his nickname, Arkan.
Raznatovic was a criminal genius whose Tiger paramilitaries sowed terror,
ethnic cleansing and death throughout the region. The International War
Tribunal at The Hague indicted Arkan in 1999 - but he never made it to
trial. He was gunned down in January 2000 in a Belgrade hotel. His murder
left Ceca a widow and a problematic cult figure.
Yet Ceca seems intent on reinventing herself, and freeing her career from
its political baggage. In this effort, she is helped by her audience. Far
from a gathering of the tribes of Serb nationalism, Ceca's concert at the
Red Star Belgrade stadium on June 15 was an overwhelmingly youthful affair.
Only one or two tables hawking buttons and key chains of indicted Bosnian
Serb war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were tucked in among
the dozens of stands selling cold drinks and nuts.
Belgrade writer Predrag Dragosavec surveyed the thousands of Cecamaniacs as
they filed into the concert. Upwards of 90% of them were under 18 years of
age not even 10 years old when the wars in the Balkans started. "This is the
generation that grew up with this music," Predrag said.
Darkness fell and Ceca finally appeared in a tacky, revealing gold dress.
The stadium erupted. As entertainment, however, the spectacle was a
shambles. Disorganized and under-rehearsed dancers cavorted around a bizarre
stage that married a jungle motif to ancient Egypt hieroglyphics. For most
of the show, Ceca stood rooted to one spot, ending almost every song with
the rote recitation: "Thanks very much. The best thanks. We go on." But the
young Serbian kids pressed up against the security fence were lapping it all
up, singing along lustily to three hours of her hits.
It was a scene that brought to mind Milan Kundera's novel, The Book of
Laughter and Forgetting, and its memorable section on music and politics. In
discussing the sentimental pop of the Czech singer Karel Gott, Kundera
insists that the collaboration between Gott and the oppressive Czechoslovak
regime in the 1970s rendered the pop singer's work as "music without
memory." Ceca's career is hopelessly entangled in the corruption, ethnic
cleansing and soft totalitarianism of the Milosevic era. But the thousands
of young people at the stadium that night were truly in the sway of a music
without such horrific memories.
In fact, it was one of the youngest people in attendance who managed to coax
the nationalist politics from the concert. At the end of the show, Ceca
brought her two young children from the marriage with Arkan - Veljko and
Anastasija - to the stage. Anastasija whirled around in her own little world
as Ceca sang. Veljko, on the other hand, played up to the crowd, throwing up
the three-fingered Serb salute that became notorious during the Balkan wars
with both of his tiny hands. A number of the young people in the crowd
joined in.
It was one of the few memorable moments of an evening that seemed to be
stripped entirely of memory - and the most chilling moment as well.
