Accordioning

Politicians are people. As such, they bring their personality to their function. And thus the musical taste. It used to be a private matter. It hasn't been for a long time. Since the private has become a political category, which is dealt with on all channels, especially on social networks, it is obvious that the political staging is inseparable from the music, rhythm and text that accompany it.

Californian scientists found that the type of instrumental music used in the same movie scene leads to a completely different, physically measurable reaction, which remains at an unconscious level.

In addition, the choice of place for the song is important. Singing in the shower is not the same as singing at a reception for the Turkish president. It is not the same to sing in Munich, Vojvodina, Šumadija and Kosovo. It is not the same to sing in the presidency of a divided country or at the wedding of a village godfather. But staging the private as political is a skill.

Germany boredom

In Germany, the conservatives once celebrated their victory with the song of the most famous German punk band. Although the band leader rebelled, because his song was the choice of the victorious Christian Democrats, but they were not his political choice, this development of events shows us that the old divisions from the last century are no longer valid. The youth who rebelled against the war in Vietnam more than half a century ago were at the same time inclined to rock as a platform for provocation and revolt. Now things are different. Capitalism turns opposition into market innovation, then into the mainstream.

Saying goodbye to her old position as Minister of Defense, one of the leading politicians of the German conservatives, Ursula von der Leyen, in 2019 wanted the military orchestra to play the famous "Wind of Change" by the Scorpions, then some Mozart and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" in the program. Future German Chancellor Olaf Scholz listed Fleetwood Mac as his favorite band. Two thirds of German politicians have a strong preference for music that could be classified under Pop&Rock.

The German political class is integrated into the world music mainstream. This makes her somewhat boring and predictable.

Here goes Mile, a lola from Laktas

Mile Dodik also opted for the mainstream, but that of Serbian-Balkan provenance. What Tom Waits was to Green politician Anelena Berbok, who will play one of the key roles in the new German government, in her puberty, Indira Radić is to the mature Dodik.

Mile knows that his electorate is like that, and he doesn't hate being like that. The musical taste of the singer from Sarajevo's cabinet and the taste of his followers who sit on the steps of some crumbling house of culture or crouch in front of a store and sip beer coincide to such an extent that the understanding is tacit and complete: this unenlightened, cheerful model is not only the dominant present but also all-consuming the future. In this century, the cesspool of the Balkan tavern has overflowed into the cesspool of social networks, and they intensify the situation to the point of paroxysm.

"Music is a weapon"

Dodik has probably never heard of the West Berlin underground, let alone the magazine there from the seventies These. In one of the issues in 1970, an article appeared: "Music is a weapon". It was a kind of manifesto of a later legendary German band Clay stones shards. I won't repeat the text, the title is enough. Mile intuitively understood and accepted it without ever having read it. Because Mile thinks so. He knows what the German band's drummer also knew: "A song only becomes political in the listener's head."

Therefore, it is not only important what we sing, where we sing, to whom we sing, but it is decisive - how we are heard. If you can predict it, you've done half the work. Dodik's performance at the State Presidency in Sarajevo, with an accordionist and the singing of a song by folk singer Indira Radić, had several targeted political messages, which, judging by the reactions on both sides of the Drina, were understood exactly as Mile wanted.

A message to them

Let's be clear, I'm not interested in what the Serbian member of the BiH presidency does in his private time. Everyone has the right to their own shund. Since Milorad Dodik and I do not have the same musical taste, and I would say not even the same experiential horizon to understand the concept of beauty in music in the same way, it is a waste of time to spend on some aesthetic analysis.

However, accordion and song are given meaning by context. And he is political.

The message to Željko Komšić and Šefik Džaferović reads: "A Serbian mother gave birth to me", and I am blocking the work of the Presidency and threatening secession.

A message to the Americans: "A Serbian mother gave birth to me", and I respond to your diplomat's mention of sanctions with profanity, and then publicly brag about it.

A message to all of Bosnia and Herzegovina: "A Serbian mother gave birth to me", and I am deepening divisions in a divided country.

The core of the message sent by Dodik is not in the national kitsch he presents to us. We have already seen this with the harlequin-singing outbursts of Ivica Dačić. It is fatal that Dodik suggests a non-existent cause-and-effect relationship: since "a Serbian mother gave birth to me" I am necessarily like this based on mere birth in a community. In doing so, Dodik is trying to impose a newly composed cultural model as the only one among the Serbs, because this would make his policy seem inviolable, like the law of gravity.

A message to us

Dodik, therefore, suggests that someone who was born by a Serbian woman must, according to natural law, be like him - tactless, arrogant, arrogant, with a limited vocabulary, if necessary primitive, inclined to turn his own work into a circus reality show.

He is as true a leader of the Serbs as Indira Radić is a Christian saint. In one of the videos, when she says that "with faith in God, her mother gave birth to her," she sticks out her bare leg in front of the Saint Sava Temple. Her erotic suggestiveness is her saintly halo.

Milorad Dodik, according to that analogy - the perverted Indira Radić of the "Serbian world" - is always ready to tickle the dirty imagination for the sake of seducing the crowd.

I would not waste words on the reactions of his colleagues from the Presidency. Because whatever they say, and they said quite a lot of phrases, they can be right without much intellectual effort, since Dodik made a fool of himself with a very precise calculation. It's not his first time. But with that, according to BH. to the system of connected vessels caused exactly the reaction he needed as proof that Sarajevo does not like him "because he is a Serb". That cheap show for poor and impoverished people takes on the proportions of successful Krkan marketing.

How we hear Miletus' voice across the Drina

I had an interesting conversation with my Belgrade Serb on duty. When he heard what I thought about Milet's national yodeling, he said that "I'm a typical Sarajevo shit-kicker". Let him and that former journalist from Sarajevo-South Sanjak who recently called me a "Chetnik" agree on the interpretation of my character and work. The two are compatible.

We argued half the night. Do I have the right to a dissenting opinion, beyond the newly composed mainstream? Am I entitled to say that the ethical vertical is above the obligation of belonging by birth? For my Serb on duty, globalization is dying, and with it global morality - which often disguises imperial interests in universal platitudes. This kind of ideological forging is actually saying: if you think that rational morality with Kant's imperatives is possible, even if you think that the package of ten commandments is enough for the universality of your ethical system - then you are seriously mistaken. Keeping others from oneself - being - is a matter for poetry and daydreaming. In real politics, says my Serb, I have a story like Komšić, and objectively I am Bakir's player. This kind of subterfuge already took on the quality of Udba logic - if you are not with us, then you are - them.

According to the nationalist concept of justice and humanity, morality within the community does not apply to human beings outside its circle. That kind of "morality" reminds me of the cannibals' statement: "We are not cannibals." We only eat enemies”.

On that accordion day and polemical night, I could not agree with either Dodik or my personal Serb. I, too, was born by a Serbian woman, but I would never choose this poetics of a ruined country house of culture as an identity model for Serbs from Bosnia, let alone for all Serbs. Dodik turns his people into a caricature prejudice about him. And my friend enjoys it patriotically.