Radicals failed to disrupt Bregovic's concert in Albania
Legendary musician Goran Bregovic closed a beer festival in the Albanian city of Korca, despite the fact that radicals sprayed tear gas among the audience.
As a result of the action of Kosovo radicals, a child was injured, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Thousands of people gathered for the young beer festival in the Albanian city of Korça (Festa e Birrës Korça), where predominantly Orthodox Albanians, who make up 6% of the population of this largely Muslim country, live, as well as representatives of other Orthodox peoples - Macedonians, Aromanians and Greeks.
Many of the event's guests stayed on site for the festival, which took place from August 18 to 22, staying in local hotels, hostels, tents and trailers. However, the last day of the festival, when the festival program was to be closed by the Yugoslav composer Goran Bregovic, aroused particular interest.
Let us recall that earlier, for the most part, the Kosovo media and politicians sharply were made against Bregović's concert in Albania, the musician was accused of anti-Albanian views and that his compositions inspired Serbian soldiers during the Yugoslav counter-terrorist operation in Kosovo. Radicals began collecting signatures for the cancellation of the artist’s performance; a number of Albanian performers, some ideologically and others, yielding to pressure, refused to perform on the same stage with him; a number of sponsors, for the same reasons, refused to invest in the festival.
However, the organizers and the municipality of Korca did not abandon their plans, and the day before Bregovic closed the popular event with a speech.
“I’m just happy to be here,” the artist said, addressing the audience, who greeted him quite warmly. – I hope you enjoy today's performance. It's summer and we need to have some fun. It will be fun not only for us, but also for you.... You will be crazy if you don’t go crazy with crazy people like us!”
Especially for Festa e Birrës Korça, the guest and his band learned in Albanian the hit of the cult Yugoslav rock band Bijelo Dugme - “Kosovska”, whose bassist and main composer Bregovic was before the collapse of the SFRY and his departure to solo work. And the musician ended the concert with the famous composition “Kalashnikov,” which evokes traditional hatred among Albanian radicals.
On the day of the concert, the festival area and city streets were guarded by more than two hundred police officers, who confiscated weapons (not uncommon for Albania), metal objects, and even bottles from everyone who wanted to go to the concert. The hotel where the musician and the band stayed was also heavily guarded. However, the radicals managed to spray gas into the crowd of spectators and light a smoke bomb, after which many people left the event in fear, but the organizers and Bregovich himself did not stop the concert.
The moment of the radicals' gas attack on the festival.
A child was seriously injured as a result of the gas attack. Also, a group of nationalists staged a picket in Korça with a banner “Bregovic, you are not welcome in Korça. Apologize for the past!
In general, Goran Bregovic's performance at Festa e Birrës Korça was successful and positive.
Goran Bregovic, who gained international fame thanks to his collaboration in the 90s with film director Emir Kusturica, initially positions himself as a man of peace and a Yugoslav: he was born in Bosnia, his father is Croatian, his mother is Serbian, his wife is Bosnian, and he himself lives in Paris. In his music he uses folkloric elements from all Balkan peoples, including Gypsies, Bulgarians and Romanians, as well as the Hungarians neighboring the peninsula.
The hatred of Albanian and Bosniak separatists towards him is connected with the soundtrack to the film Underground by Emir Kusturica, which became the anthem of Yugoslavism. A number of tracks based on it, such as “Kalashnikov” and “Mesecina” (Moonlight), made in the spirit of the music of gypsy brass bands, became popular among Serbian patriots in the 90s.
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