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• 1 2019-05-06T20:11:03-07:00 The Victimhood of Ceca Raznatovic 36 plain 2020-05-31T12:38:30-07:00

        In conversation, she likes to characterise herself as a tragic icon of Serbian womanhood - a God-fearing Christian who loves her children above all else,    struggling bravely against injustice. 'I am fragile and emotional,' she tells me. And, 'What doesn't kill me makes me stronger'. I ask Ceca what people in Serbia think of her now. 'That I'm a victim,' she says. 'A victim of my name and my huge popularity, and of my great love... that I was married to Zeljko. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a Mafioso. I'm just a woman who's fighting her way through life.’ - Higginbotham, 2

            Svetlana Vetlickovic, or simply Ceca, is a turbo-folk icon, known for both her revolutionary music and her infamous marriage to Zeljko Raznatovic. Originating as an ambitious kafana singer, Ceca rose to fame as part of the ethno-nationalist campaign waged by Slobodan Milosevic during the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. Milosevic used the hyper-sexual, materialistic ideals espoused by turbo-folk as a cultural escapism from the depressing realities of Yugoslavia in the 80s and 90s (Cvoro 7). Because Milosevic used turbo-folk for this purpose, it’s clear that Ceca has a right to see herself as a victim. At the same time, Ceca’s role in defining nationalist Serbia throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s is unquestionably important. Through careful examination and analysis of her music and the ethnopolitical climate of Yugoslavia in the 90s, this paper will show Ceca was a victim of the politicization of turbo-folk, rather than an aggressor of Serbian ethnonationalism.
  
            Turbo-folk itself has an interesting history, especially when its role in propagating ethnonationalism is taken into account. As Yugoslavia became more and more industrialized, folk music made its way into the mainstream, urban culture. As time went by and the genre evolved, it eventually reached a point where it became the dominant music archetype of Yugoslavia (Beronja). In many ways the evolution of folk into popular music can be thought of as a rags-to-riches story. From its rural and provincial beginnings, folk became popularized and modernized, evolving into the luxurious, sexual, almost gluttonous genre of turbo-folk. Ceca’s personal history is not too much different from this narrative.
  
           Ceca grew up in a small Serbian village, where as a young girl she performed in the various kafanas. Incredibly enough, her big break came for her at thirteen years of age, when her talent caught the attention of Mirko Kodic, an acclaimed singer/accordian player. Kodic opened the doors for her. By age fifteen, Ceca debuted her first album, Cvetak Zanovetak, and went on to win at the Ilidza Folk Music Festival for the record’s eponymous track. Over the next few years, Ceca continued to rise in popularity and released new records as she moved from her village folk roots into the luxurious lifestyle and sound of turbo-folk. Part of her success was due to financing from her husband Zeljko Raznatovic, better known to many as the career criminal Arkan. Arkan provided Ceca with the means to launch her career to the next level, allowing her to become the super star diva she is today (upclosed.com, 1-3).
  
            To understand why Raznatovic had the means to provide for Ceca’s success, it is important to understand the events in his life leading up to meeting her.  Raznatovic was a career criminal throughout Europe, committing bank robberies and jewelry theft. After escaping from multiple prisons across Western Europe, Arkan returned to Yugoslavia and began organizing the Serbian Volunteer Guard (SDG) paramilitary group, known also as Arkan’s Tigers. The Tigers were responsible for many wartime atrocities, but were mainly motivated by criminal exploits. They murdered, raped, and pillaged throughout Yugoslavia, yet Arkan was widely celebrated in Serbia for his patriotism. As a result, he was very successful in politics; he was elected to parliament in 1992 and within a year had formed his own ultranationalist party, the Serbian Unity Party (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 1).
      
            Despite having been elected to parliament, Arkan was still on the frontlines of the war in 1993. It was then that Ceca and Arkan met, when Ceca performed for Arkan’s Tigers on the front lines. According to her, “He was very cute, very handsome and very masculine. I fell in love with him instantly. I respect people who are fighters, who succeed in life, who don't give up - because life is a constant struggle” (Higginbotham 4). To Ceca, it did not matter whether Arkan was a criminal; he was a strong, handsome man with plenty of drive and ambition. They were married in 1995 in a wedding that reeked of Serbian kitsch and turbo-folk luxury.
  
            Comprising of many changes in outfit, including traditional Serbian garbs for Arkan, the wedding was kitsch at its finest. For many, it was an overt breaking of the separation of church and state, the literal marriage a symbolic marriage of popular culture and the state. For Ceca, though, marrying Arkan was personal. For Ceca, the nineteenth of February 1995 was the day she married her love. Ceca famously proclaimed, “The only difference between us [Arkan and Ceca] and the royal couple is we love each other and are faithful to one another (Silber 1)." While her comment could be taken as nationalist pride, it is more indicative of a deep love and trust for her beloved.
  
            While we could sit idly and condemn Ceca just for falling in love with a war criminal, it is clear that doing so would just continue to ignore the fact Ceca was a victim of ethnonationalism in the 90s. Did her music contribute to the raging ethnonationalism of the time? Undoubtedly. Kad Bi Bio Ranjen is just one example of how Ceca’s love for Arkan can be misconstrued as ethnonationalism.
  
                      If you were [wounded] I would give you my blood
                      both my eyes if you were blind
                      but in vain, for you are beautiful without a soul (Goldyloxx 1).
                
            Her lyrics can be taken two ways; first, in the sense she is speaking to the soldiers of the Yugoslav civil wars, many of whom did lose their lives or return home wounded. However, I would proffer she is speaking to her husband, a man who did fight in the war. She worries for her beloved, and while the time in which the song was released did mean Kad Bi Bio Ranjen would be associated with war, the song is far more a love song than a war cry.
  
          We can look to another song of Ceca’s to find her love for Arkan. Through the lenses of the turbo-folk desire, Ceca’s hit song Nije Monotonija, or It’s Not Monotony, can be interpreted as a just another kitschy, mass-produced-by-the-Milosevic-regime song, yet the song is more than that.
  
  
            The symbolism in the video is clear; the tiger is a reference to Arkan’s Tigers, and the key line in the song, “Where are you in all of this?” (Adrienne 1) solidifies the point. Nije Monotonija is not just another turbo-folk song; it is a cry to Arkan. The longing the song expresses is not for a change in pace, but for her beloved.
  
            Regardless of interpretation, Ceca's lyrics seem to be less motivated by ethnonationalism than her deep love for Zeljko Raznatovic. Yet, the most important evidence in this case remains: Ceca was and still is widely popular across the former Yugoslavia. Volcic and Erjavec point out Ceca was not only popular, but her name was the most popular search term on Google in Croatia in 2008 (2). Her music, while it may have originally been taken in the ethnonationalist sense before, has acquired a new meaning of pan-Balkanism. Volcic and Erjavec posit that this is because of the break from the social sphere Ceca took after the death of Zeljko Raznatovic (6).  It was here that Ceca defined herself as a victim of Serbian ethnonationalism, while doubling down on this narrative, claiming she never sang the soundtrack of the Milosevic regime. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t sing songs about nationalism. I only sing about love. And besides, Milosevic has been gone for four years, and I’m still here” (6). While Ceca could very easily be lying in order to preserve her fame, it is far more likely she speaks truthfully about her music, especially considering the deep love she clearly held for Arkan, both before and after his murder.
  
            Following Arkan’s murder, Ceca took a break from public life. Even the most supportive critics like Volcic and Erjavec argue Ceca’s absence from public life was for publicity. Yet nearly twenty years following the murder of Zeljko Raznatovic, Ceca still has not remarried. The narrative of Arkan as her one true love seems to hold true today as a result. Taking this into account, perhaps the Ceca narrative should be altered from the nationalist puppet to that of a more caring, loving wife and singer who was unjustly taken advantage of by the time in which she became popular.
  
            Ceca’s music was, without question, funded by the Serbian ethnonationalist machine of the 90s, and it was thanks to key figures like Zeljko Raznatovic and Slobodan Milosevic that Ceca was able to rise to such heights in the popular culture. It’s important to take away, though, that while Ceca is a self-proclaimed patriot, “I am a huge patriot, and no one has the right to take it away from me. I love my nation, and my country” (Volcic & Erjavec 6), Ceca sang about love. Her patriotism should not color the interpretation of her songs. Ceca sang not about love of country but love of her husband who provided the inspiration for her many hit songs and records. Did all of this occur when Serbian ethno-nationalism was at an all time high? Was her music funded by the same machine that propagated rape and deaths camps only thirty years ago? Did her music have an impact on increasing the ethnonationalism of the time? A simple yes would answer all these questions. Yet did she fall in love with a man, and then sing about him and her love for him? Did Slobodan Milosevic use her love and her lyrics as analogue to the Serbian motherland to promote ethnonationalism? Following that, was Ceca used like a puppet by the Milosevic regime? The same answer applies to these questions:

                                  yes.

         Svetlana Ceca Vetlickovic was without question a victim of the Milosevic regime.

   

• 1 media/Old Balkan photo.jpg 2019-05-06T20:31:32-07:00 Orientalizing Turbofolk 18 image_header 2019-05-08T19:38:51-07:00 Orientalizing Turbofolk: Balkan Hybrid Identity and Responses to Ottoman Heritage
  
  In the thick of the Yugoslav wars, a spectacular wedding was unfolding: the turbofolk diva Ceca was marrying the notorious gangster and war profiteer Arkan. This highly televised ceremony was broadcast on one of Serbia’s biggest networks; although disparaged by the intelligentsia, it captured much of the country’s imagination. But Ceca and Arkan’s wedding carried symbolic weight as well. It cemented the association between turbofolk -- a genre melding Balkan folk influences, oriental instrumentation, and modern pop-rock music -- with Serbian nationalist ideology (Volčič and Erjavec). Turbofolk had emerged in the 1980s as an antithesis of then-globalized Yugoslav pop and rock music, turning the western focus of the music scene back inwards. Despite the former regime’s condemnation of Turbofolk for its sappy lyrics and bad taste, the genre conquered the airwaves of Serbia by the 90’s and become the soundtrack to civil war.
  
  
  On its surface, Turbofolk music seems to promote pre-communist values: traditional gender roles, Serbian nationhood, and so on. However, the issues in Turbofolk are not as clear-cut as they might seem. One of the most paradoxical elements of Turbofolk is its tendency towards “orientalization.” As a genre that allegedly promotes Serbian nationhood, one would expect the folk influences to be limited to Serbian folk music in contrast to the Muslim and Croatian enemy. However, Turbofolk often employs an array of elements that characterize “oriental” musical traditions: eastern scales, abundant vocal trills, and use of Bulgarian/Turkish instruments such as the tanbur and zurna. These elements go beyond the Ottoman influences on Balkan folk music; Turbofolk will consciously add additional oriental influence or even go as far as to plagiarize Greek, Turkish, Israeli, and Arab music. This essay will explore the identity crisis at the heart of turbofolk: while on the one hand it is a genre closely tied to Serbian nationalism, it nevertheless takes much of its appeal from a foreign “oriental” melos. To understand this paradox, we must understand the role of the Ottoman past in Serbia’s history.
  
  
  As the Ottoman Empire advanced into the Balkans, subsuming the Christian principalities into its domain, it did more than take political control over the region. The Ottomans brought in their culture: Balkan towns gained čarsije (Ottoman business districts), ćuprije (bridges) and pazars (bazaars). Balkan kitchens gained burek (phyllo pastries), ćevap (kebab), and sarma (stuffed cabbage). Shepherds dressed themselves in šalvare (pants) while noblemen slept on dušeks (mattresses). The Ottoman legacy in the Balkans was so pervasive it became veined into the language, the urban landscape, and everyday rituals of eating and sleeping. It also became a formative influence on the region’s musical traditions: many of the regions instruments and scales are derived from the Ottoman music tradition.
  
  However, with the 19th century national independence movements, the Ottoman legacy was seen as an alien culture imposed from above. The new independent Balkan states began using the west as a model for their new political systems, architecture, fashion, and literature. Orientalist stereotypes from the West influenced the intelligentsia, and Ottoman culture became viewed as backwards. (Čvoro) But despite this surface modernization, the old patterns of Ottoman-era life remained in the clothing, speech, food, and buildings of the lower classes, inseparable with indigenous traditions. And with the advent of modernization and westernization, the folk costumes and music of the “old times” became celebrated for their “authenticity” and “traditions.”
  
  On the one hand, the Ottoman past was imposed and foreign; on the other hand, it was an integral influence on the “traditional” culture of the Balkans, a tradition that nationalism glorifies. This complicated position of the Ottoman past in Serbian history has led to an identity crisis of sorts, and caused complex responses to emerge. The first response is a complete rejection of the Ottoman cultural influence. In the popular historical imagination, Ottoman times were seen as an era of stagnation; therefore, most modern architecture either emphasizes European models or pre-Ottoman styles (such as the avalanche of neo-Byzantine churches built in Serbia in recent years).
  
  The second reaction is a more complex erasure of the Ottoman past through cultural appropriation. In nationalist narratives, the culture of the Ottoman Balkans simply becomes seen as something traditionally Bulgarian, Serbian, or Bosnian with minimal acknowledgement of influence or cultural continuity. For example, several Serbian cities have major surviving examples of Ottoman architecture. However, in discourse about national heritage, the background of these houses is decontextualized and they are merely labeled “traditional Serbian houses (Marinov).” There are even narratives that aim to place the origins of pan-Ottoman culture with the christian Byzantine Empire. This narrative seeks to legitimize the influence of the muslim Ottoman Empire by claiming that its cultural origins are ultimately Christian. For example, Ottoman music has recognizable “eastern” scales, which are prevalent in other Balkan traditions due to shared culture. However, some Christian nations (especially Greeks) try justifying this similarity by claiming that Ottoman music is mainly derived from secular Byzantine music, signifying its ultimately authentic “Greek” origin (Pennanen).
  
  The third response is a subtle nostalgia of sorts, which is observable even in countries like Serbia, and especially with regards to the culinary arts. There is a certain kind of refinement and artisanal skill associated with the Ottomans, and the expectation is that the closer one is to the Ottoman past, the finer this artisanal skill is. Popular Turkish-origin food such as ćevap (kebab) or ratluk (lokum/turkish delight) is often marketed as being “Sarajevan,” since Sarajevo is perceived as a city close to its Ottoman legacy.
  
  These reactions to the Ottoman heritage is what drives this modern appropriation of  “eastern” musical elements (which goes as far as even direct plagiarism of Middle Eastern music).  Plagiarism was not a phenomenon unique to Turbofolk; music produced in the former Yugoslavia often stole music from both western and eastern countries. The band Bijelo Dugme infamously stole melodies and motifs from western rock songs, Greek ballads, and even Russian folk music. The extent of plagiarism of a certain musical genre can reveal which musical tradition is most influential; in the case of Bijelo Dugme and early Yugoslav rock/pop, this was Western pop and rock. As for Serbian turbofolk, many songs exhibit what could be dubbed as 'oriental influences' -- eastern scales, Turkish instrumentation, and intensive vocal trills -- which begs the question of how original some of these songs truly are.
  
  Examining Serbian turbofolk, it becomes clear that the main source for plagiarized songs is Greek music. Much of the Greek musical tradition is inseparable from the Ottoman musical tradition; Greek music features “eastern” scales, trilled singing styles, and Ottoman-style instrumentation and percussion. By the 1960s, several Greek genres (such as Laiko) developed that melded traditional Greek folk with modern pop-rock; by the 1980s and 90s, Laiko came to strongly influence the genre of turbofolk in Serbia. (Pennanen) The more “oriental” sounds of many Laiko songs were highly appealing to turbofolk fans because they drew on the Ottoman musical traditions firmly embedded in Balkan sound. However, as Greece was a friendly Christian nation (as opposed to a nation like Turkey), Greek music has been deemed “safe” to plagiarize. This has engendered the paradox where turbofolk stars associated with Serbian nationalism (such as Aca Lukas and the aforementioned Ceca Ražnjatović) use heavily “oriental” sounds derived specifically through Greek rebetiko.
  
  In 1997, the Cypriot singer Anna Vissi released the song “Trauma,” which is a ballad about heartbreak set to clearly Ottoman-derived instrumentation. The song features scales clearly based on Ottoman makam scales and instruments such as the oud, ney, and qanun. The Serbian singer Aca Lukas took the instrumentation, structure, and scales for his song Licna Karta from whole cloth from Vissi’s song. Although Lukas is usually associated with nationalism, his song is immensely popular and is viewed more as “traditional Serbian” than something stolen.
  
  Even the aforementioned Ceca Ražnatović, who has ties to extreme expressions of nationalism and war crimes, plagiarized the highly oriental-sounding song Antidoto from Vissi. Both Vissi’s Antidoto and Ceca’s Oproštajna Večera are based on Ottoman scales and feature a variety of Ottoman instrumentation.
  
  However, at other times turbofolk artists have directly decided to plagiarize Turkish music. These plagarizers are often more ambiguous figures that are not as associated with nationalism in the same way Lukas and Ceca are. The singer Jovana Karleusa, who is famous for her controversial support of LGBT rights, had no nationalist hang-ups about stealing a song from the Turkish singer Tarkan.
  
  
  
  
  Another route of “orientalization” of turbofolk comes through the umbrella genre of “world music.” Many Balkan artists openly look to other musical traditions for inspiration. The aforementioned band Bijelo Dugme was led by the songwriter Goran Bregovic; beyond his work for the ex-yu band, Bregović has become a successful solo musician famous for melding numerous world genres, such as Italian and Latin music. However, his most famous work has been based on the genres from the broader Ottoman context, especially Romani music. The song he wrote for the famous pop singer Zdravko Čolić (who normally sings western-style ballads) strongly illustrates this. In this case, Bregović lifted the melody and instrumentation for his song directly from the Algerian song Ya Rayah, most famously covered by the artist Rachid Taha.
  
  
  Unlike the other example songs (which at least retain the general theme of love, hardbreak, and hardship) Bregović has completely changed the lyrics of the Algerian song. Whereas the original song is about the struggles of Algerian immigrants in a foreign land, Colic’s song is about the temptations of love. This shows that the true appeal of this music is not derived from lyrical content but truly from the more “oriental” instrumentation and the appeals of the middle eastern musical tradition.
  
  As these songs demonstrate, Serbia has cultural identity crisis. On the one hand, music with Turkish and “Middle Eastern” influences is highly appealing; on the other hand, this appeal goes against the Serbian nationalist narrative. This dilemma has never been fully acknowledged; instead it has either been circumvented through borrowings of Greek music or explained away through bogus theories about Byzantine music. But whenever Ceca Raznatović belts out a ballad with an oriental scale, it becomes apparent that turbofolk still bears the paradoxes within Balkan culture. As much as the genre wants to reject Serbia’s multicultural past, its hybrid influences showcase the fluid identity of this fascinating region.
  
  
  Bibliography:
  
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