Conceptuación y operacionalización de variables

4.5.1 Narodni radio

In the mid-2000s the most important vehicle for patriotic music was Juraj Hrvacic’s cross­

media platform, particularly Narodni radio — where Thompson had held a 20% share since February 2006 (Feral 2006). Besides NR, the only national station with an entirely

‘domestic’ playlist, Hrvacic owned local/regional stations covering most o f Croatia, a central local-radio news agency, the local Zagreb channel Z1 and (after 2003) his own record label, Hit Records. According to National (2004a), Arena had also been contracted out to Hrvacic for five years in 2004. NR gave Thom pson’s new singles maximum rotation, advertised events such as his Oluja commemoration in Cavoglave and his album signing in Frankfurt (for the benefit o f diaspora audiences listening on the internet), and organised a fundraising concert in January 2006 which assembled Thompson, Skoro and Mate Bulic with Baruni and Zecic to benefit a Croat church in Bosanska Posavina.167

National had argued in the 1990s that Hrvacic’s media network (Narodni radio;

local/regional stations covering most o f Croatia; a central local-radio news agency; he later acquired Z1 and founded his own record label, Hit Records), financed by the businessman Miroslav Kude, had been part o f a plan by Pasalic for H D Z to maintain stealth control o f the media in case it lost an election and would not be able to operate through the powerful

167 Slobodna Dalmacija reported supportively: ‘Marko Perkovic addressed the audience with a message not to fall for the provocation o f equating patriotism with fascism, with which he deserved the excited audience’s loud ovations’ (Marusic 2006).

state broadcaster (Maksimovic 1999). The political scientist Ante Covic termed this an attempt at establishing a ‘para-state’ (Malic 2000). However, it is impossible to tell what became o f this system (if it even existed) after Kutle was imprisoned and Pasalic lost the H D Z leadership election to Sanader. There is no evidence that the Hrvacic network continued to operate for the political ends National alleged, but his media did promote conservative ideological values into which Thompson’s own ideology fitted well. Star images are always the product o f a set o f institutions rather than the individual star (Dyer 1998:152-3): the uncertainty here is whether those institutions included covert party- political actors rather than the usual music industry infrastructure.

The Hrvacic infrastructure was instrumental in promoting the most recent musicians discussed in this chapter, Dalibor Bartulovic Shorty and Tomislav Bralic. Shorty came from Vinkovci in eastern Slavonia, and a song on his 2004 debut album described the effects o f the Homeland War on his hometown. Dodi u Vinkovce (Come to Vinkovce) repackaged many motifs from 1990s music about the war in Slavonia (2.4.1), and sampled an identically-titled tamburica song from Brodfest 1995. Shorty’s version was itself performed there in 2005 and was then taken up by NR, which rarely playlisted hip-hop.

Thanks to NR, D U V crossed over into the repertoire o f patriotic and ‘birthplace’ songs, and was often played on NR shows dedicated to them. Shorty’s crossover as a performer followed.

4.5.2 Shorty and the limits of the ‘alternative’

In 2005, Globus profile included Shorty among the ‘new new wave’ o f alternative musicians in Croatia (Jindra 2005) — yet after D U V and a second album touching on patriotic themes, his membership o f the alternative was called seriously into question. Ilko Culic (2007a) called him ‘the Skoro o f rap’ with regard to an anti-Hague song and questioned whether he should be thought o f as a hip-hop performer at all, since his songs supporting indictees were not compatible with hip-hop’s ethos. In 2007, when Shorty performed at

Thompson’s Oluja commemoration, his crossover seemed complete. Nonetheless, since rap discourse ‘characteristically includes the practice o f representing one’s place’ (Solomon 2005b: 16, emphasis original), it was little wonder that Croatian hip-hop, with its local styles distinguished by regionalisms (Bosanac 2004:115), would come to deal with commonly articulated nationalist political standpoints.

D U V was consistent with existing conventions o f hom e/hom eland imagery and ideological wartime showbusiness. Its three rap verses depicted the narrator’s pleasure in

his immediate home, related it to the region (Slavonia), and presented his Homeland War narrative. It claimed continuity with regional tamburica songs by drawing on the

appropriate regional lexis (tamburasi, becari, hrast, becar, sor, sokak, njiva, sljiva, ravnica, vranci), and in locating the narrator’s home as ‘where that lamp burns’ (‘di gori ona lampa’)

evoked the tamburica standard Gori lampa nasrid Vinkovaca (A lamp bums in the middle of Vinkovci). The former and present texts confirmed each other’s validity (see Zanic 2007:23), and supported the narrator’s self-description as a young man aware and respectful o f his ancestors’ traditions.

The Homeland War verse continued the narrative o f Slavonia as Croatia’s beleaguered but heroically resistant front line, as in wartime/post-war depictions o f Vukovar (2.4).

Shorty’s representation o f the actual conflict was a stark aggressor/defender opposition:

Palili su nase sume, mi smo ih opet zasadili Rusili su nase kuce, mi smo ih opet izgradili Ubijali su moj narod al’ smo ostali na svom

Da branimo svoj dom, jer volimo svoj dom i vjerni domu svom168 Thus ‘our’ forests and houses had been destroyed by the impersonalised enemy but replanted and rebuilt by ‘ourselves’, confirming the group’s rightful possession o f the land

— and the basic object o f defence, as in wartime songs like Cavoglave, remained the home.

Another intertextual reference quoted Miroslav Skoro’s famous Ravnica and even implied that the tamburica itself was a weapon o f resistance (‘when the fingers touch the string, hands o ff my plains’ — ‘kad prsti taknu zicu, ne dirajte mi ravnicu’) — another widely-used discourse in the wartime state media.169

The first verse tied the narrator to his home through ‘my ancestors’ bones sleeping sweet sleep’ (‘kosti mojih predaka sanjaju slatkim snom’), repeating an often-nationalised grave-site discourse where territory is marked as ‘ours’ through the conjunction o f ‘our’

sons and ‘our’ soil (Verdery 1999:98), and said that there candles were lit ‘for the heroes who died for the colours, to the pride and honour o f my Slavonia’s name’ (‘za heroje sto su ginule za boje/na ponos i cast imena Slavonije moje’). The rationale for defiance and sacrifice matched Croatia’s official war aims o f freedom and the desire to be ‘masters on our own land’ (‘svoj na svome’). Gender portrayals were consistent with wartime and

pre-168 ‘They burned down our forests, we planted them again/they tore down our houses, we built them again/they killed my people but we stayed on our own [land]/to defend our home, because we love our home and are faithful to our home.’

169 Mladi sest’s Nije na prodaju (I t’s not fo r sale, 2007) also alluded to Ravnica and war memory while attacking ‘former comrades’ ( ‘bivsi drugovi’) and ex-atheists who were selling o f f ‘our’ islands and waterways.

war imagery o f male friends/soldiers as the sons o f a maternal landscape which can reappear as a fairy, and male comradeship or ‘male hedonism’ (Senjkovic and Dukic 2005:50) cemented by drinking and righteous combat was more important than the company o f women. The song’s only non-mythical woman was the narrator’s mother, praised for raising him as a good Slavonian male.

Shorty’s second album Moj jedini nacin (My only way, 2007), particularly the track Hero/l danas (.Heroes today), built on D U JAs success. Shorty framed Heroji as ‘a song for Blago [Zadro] and the Tanks’ Graveyard [...] this is my way o f remembering the fighters’,170 but dedicated most o f it to condemning Croatian pandering to Europe ‘just so foreigners don’t call us Balkanites’ (‘samo da nas strand ne nazivaju Balkanci’). As Thompson had done in one 2006 song (4.6.1), Shorty discussed his own controversial persona, situated himself as a patriot not a nationalist,171 and argued that his critics misunderstood him because they failed to grasp the authentic values he respected:

N o ako niste, pogledajte krizevi stoje

Nek im je zemlja laka, smrt nikom nije divna A mnogima je moj a Dodi u Vinkovce himna Varna sam samo seljak, dicim se duse proste Ja bar znam ko sam, a vi dal’ znate ko step172

Thompson’s song did not identify the masters o f the servile writers attacking him, but Shorty explicitly located the source in Europe. Dejan Jovic (2006:90) argues that ‘Europe’

replaced Yugoslavia as a fundamental Other during late Tudmanism when the EU began to demand co-operation with The Hague; thereafter the EU delayed Croatia’s accession talks at British and Dutch request because o f the Croatian government’s alleged failure to share intelligence on Gotovina’s whereabouts. Euroscepticism and support for Gotovina were often mutually reinforcing, as when Zadar teenagers burned an EU flag on learning o f Gotovina’s arrest: the group were also heard singing Ante, Ante and Sude mi, as well as JGS (Vucetic 2005).

By rejecting the ‘peasant’ label and mocking his critics’ fear o f the Balkans, Shorty directly confronted ‘anti-nationalist’ discursive practices which associated nationalism with a village mentality. For Shorty, their ‘nationalism’ was his legitimate respect for the war’s

170 ‘[P]jesma za Blagu i Tenskovsko groblje [...] ovo je moj naCin sjecanja na borce’. Zadro, a Croatian commander o f the defence o f Vukovar, died during the siege. At the Tanks’ Graveyard, outside Vukovar, lightly-armed Croatian soldiers had destroyed Yugoslav tanks. The media called Croatian soldiers

‘fighters’ ( ‘borci’) early on, before ‘branitelji’ spread (it was also the usual Titoist term for Partisans).

171 ‘Patriot sam, a idiot me zove nacionalistom’ - ‘I’m a patriot, but an idiot calls me a nationalist’.

172 ‘But look [where] the crosses stand, if you haven’t/let them rest easy, death is wonderful to nobody/but my D odi u Vinkovce is an anthem to many/to you I’m just a peasant, I’m proud o f [my] coarse soul/at least I know who I am, do you know who you are?’

memory, and he not they could claim fully realised selfhood. Like Thompson, he could derive moral authority from his war experience, albeit on different grounds: his opponents

‘have no idea, because they weren’t here’, while ‘I was in Vinkovci in 1991 and I know what I’m talking about’ (Mila 2007). The dominant narrative o f the Homeland War could

accommodate Thompson as a member o f an identifiable group (branitelji). Shorty had been a child in 1991, and thus belonged to another social group equally as important in wartime ideology (ch. 2).

Heroji also alluded to D U ]/, now apparently essential to Shorty’s persona. Integrated into Hrvacic’s promotional system, it had received far more airplay than (e.g.) another rap song about post-conflict Slavonia by General W oo, a teenage refugee from Vukovar who had settled in Zagreb and become a leading MC. 1/ra ti se na Dunav (Come back to the Danube) referred to the date o f the fall o f Vukovar, Vesna Bosanac (a doctor captured during the occupation) and ‘mothers still looking for their sons’ (‘majke jos uvijek traze svoje sinove di su’), but not to ethnicity, heroism/sacrifice, religion or tradition. Its emphasis was on improving young people’s life amind economic uncertainty, a genuine challenge which did not exist in Shorty’s D U \Z idyll. Shorty’s music instead articulated a coherent identity- narrative which unproblematically connected the individual to the perceivable region and the abstract nation through established textual conventions, and claimed the centre much as Skoro had done when he spoke o f the ‘loud minority’ confronting the ‘silent majority’.

4.5.3 Tomislav Bralic

The patriotic hit o f 2006 was Tomislav Bralic’s song Croatyo, duse te ljubim (Croatia, I love you from the soul), the centrepiece o f an ensemble concert by several klapas at Poljud. The

song described the narrator’s patriotic feelings through family relationships, and used the typical conventions o f regional pop to situate itself within Dalmatia’s ‘place-myth’. Its lyrics, in Dalmatian ikavica, featured various images o f coastal life and nature (stone, olives, brush, mandolins), and the klapa backed up Bralic’s vocals — a formula already established by Tomislav Ivcic and Miso Kovac in the 1970s—1980s. Bralic described the narrator’s father inducting him into the nation:

Jos se sicam onih rici sto mi uvik prica caca

[...] Svaku stope ove zemlje jubi kad odrastes, voljeni moj sine173

Only the title line about Croatia identified it as patriotic (national) rather than regional.

173 ‘I still remember those words my dad always tells me [...] love every inch o f this country when you grow up, my beloved son.’

Croatijo had gone more or less unnoticed when first performed in 1997 at Hrvatski pleter, but NR revived it in 2006 to promote the Poljud concert (5.1.2). During the Homeland War Bralic had spent two-and-a-half years in Zadar’s 112 Brigade. He would therefore have been entided to the same authenticity as Thompson in performing as a veteran, but did not engage with the veterans’ movement in the same way. Zadar, the closest city to Ante Gotovina’s birthplace Pakostane, accorded the general particularly heroic status because shelling o f the city had all but ceased after he was named commander for Dalmatia (Hudelist 2005c). However, by 2006 Gotovina campaigning had been folded into the generalised ‘truth about the Homeland War’ initiative and there was less

institutional demand for songs directly commemorating the general. Bralic’s biography might have made him a good choice for a Gotovina song if he had become famous earlier, but nobody’s needs were served by one in 2006—07.

Bralic’s song would not have become a hit without appealing to many listeners, but N R gave it the prominence necessary for it to reach them. His 2006 success enabled him to appear at two important events in 2007 based on patriotic popular music: the reception o f the Croatian waterpolo team and Thompson’s stadium concert. He also sang Croatijo at that year’s HDZ congress and was joined on stage by Ivo Sanader (Rozman 2007b). Bralic might have deserved to be called ‘the Thompson o f the new government’ just as much as Skoro. Both epitomised an ostensibly centrist patriotism which avoided politically divisive topics. Their rise offered a new political and commercial background to Thom pson’s first album since the Index scandal.