Songs are not just notes and lyrics, they are for the Bosnian-Herzegovinian author Emir Bukovic small, honest stories that preserve emotions and memories. When music comes from personal experience, whether it's written for his band Emir and Frozen Camels or his solo project BUKOWSKEE, every tone brings a piece of truth, and every word a piece of past moments experienced. That's the case with the song "Zbogom", the premiere of which he has scheduled for today at noon on the Vijesti portal.
For the past few years, Bukovica has been releasing new singles just in time for Valentine's Day, and the single "Zbogom" (Goodbye), as Vijesti's interviewee says, represents a short emotional journey through time and a personal time machine through his upbringing. With this single, he told a story from Kumbor that happened to him during his more carefree, teenage days, and is also a kind of remake of a song from the 1980s.
The song "Zbogom" is the fifth single from his solo project BUKOWSKEE, and Emir Bukovica talks to Vijesti about the song, growing up, and the inspiration for this track...
Emir, it's a tradition to release a song on February 14th. Even though Valentine's Day is celebrated on that day, and love is often idealized, your songs are quite realistic, perhaps even anti-love. Will Zbogom also be a farewell with such songs, and will it then round off the story of anti-love songs?
When I first released a song on this day four or five years ago, I didn't plan on making it a tradition. However, our people often get very attached to certain dates, so I got asked many times during the year whether there would be a new song for Valentine's Day again. So I decided that this day would truly become a tradition for releasing new songs by my band Emir & Frozen Camels or my solo project Bukowskee. Now, I think that in one of my now also traditional interviews for your media outlet, I said that not all loves are happy, so not all love songs can be happy and cheerful. My opinion is that there are no anti-love songs, but rather love songs with an unhappy ending. However, what I want to say about the song "Zbogom" is that it really is, as much as its title might not suggest, a beautiful, even positive nostalgic story about that happier, more relaxed time that many of us remember. The time of our growing up, our first independent trips to the sea, our first loves at sea, and then our first disappointments in love.
Goodbye sometimes means an end, but sometimes a new beginning. What does this word mean to you? How long does it take for that goodbye to become final?
Somehow, my first association with this word is loneliness. It's as if it was created at the moment you realized you were alone. In fact, if we literally scan that word, it's as if you were left alone with God. It's as if "goodbye" is the word that signifies the true end. Not just of love, but of everything else.
In that I see some strength in the word “goodbye”. And it is certain that with every “goodbye” a new beginning begins. Or as the legendary EKV sang: “In every defeat I saw a piece of freedom, and when it is over, for me it only began”.
You announced that this track is a remake of a song from the 1980s. What is it actually about?
I believe that all of us, as we grow up, go through some life stages and events that we later remember better or worse. Then, in that return to the past, we try to remember some important detail to us, in order to better recall an event. For me, remembering some songs related to certain events has always been the easiest way not to forget them. You know, that song was playing when I was this or that, that song was a hit that year, I first danced with a girl to that song, etc. So, one beautiful ballad, which I remember very well, was a big hit that year when a beautiful Slovenian girl left me on a teenage summer vacation. Somehow the chorus of that song coincided with what that girl, with whom I fell head over heels in love as a teenager, said to me when we said goodbye.
Years later, when I came across that song again, I decided to do a kind of remake of it, but in my own way. The way I hear it now. And that's it, the song "Zbogom".
You say that this song brings some nostalgia, but that politics and everything that happened in the 1990s imposed the view that nostalgia and memory are neither desirable nor good, and that any return to the past before the terrible conflicts is a kind of betrayal of the present reality. Is nostalgia becoming a refuge in a time without war, but with perhaps even greater chaos and divisions?
What I have never liked is the imposition by politics, or better yet, politics in our region, of the idea that everything started with them - with the arrival of "democracy" in the 1990s. For a while, you weren't even allowed to mention which country you were born in. You were almost anathema if you praised something from that "past life". The word nostalgia was a mortal sin. It was like that in all the ex-YU countries. Somewhere a little less, somewhere a little more. And let's be clear, I'm not a "Yugonostalgic" or anything like that. Especially not in a political sense, but dear people, we once had some beautiful lives, some beautiful moments, moments,... This is not about political nostalgia, but about the human, emotional and sentimental one. How can we forget some things that have greatly shaped and formed us? How can I, for example, forget that Kumbor and the Slovenian woman who so coldly rejected me (laughter)? I also talk a little about that and "scratch" it in this song.
This track, as you claim, is a short emotional journey through time and a personal time machine through your growing up. In the description, you also recalled your teenage days. Considering that most musicians start playing music in their teens, how have all these experiences and situations shaped you as a musician?
I grew up with a brother who was five or six years older than me, who was already into music, had a band, and played the guitar. I grew up with very musical parents, who, for example, when we went to the seaside, and our destination was usually Kumbor, would sing a duet in the car for those four or five hours non-stop. It would be a real family concert on four wheels. Growing up in that atmosphere and, I must say, in a family that was truly full of love and support, I started playing the guitar very early on, forming my own band, and playing concerts. The band was called “Metro” and we weren’t bad at all. Playing the guitar, especially acoustic guitar, during my teenage years had its positive and negative sides. When I would play somewhere on the beach or along the coast, a lot of girls would quickly gather. That was great, but... I would play and play and play. And when I finished playing, usually all those girls had already been “picked up” by guys who didn’t play (laughs).
In any case, music shaped me into who I am today. I always wanted and knew that it would be what I would do in life, whether someone paid me for it or not. Even the moment I graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, to somehow please my parents, I knew then that I would never become an engineer. That the little rocker in me would not let it come to fruition.
Rock music was born as a kind of rebellion. On the other hand, love is undervalued today. Do you want to express rebellion about this through your songs?
I really wouldn't want to be pretentious to claim that I want to express some kind of rebellion through my songs, nor am I naive to think that music can change the world, especially the one we live in today. It's important to me to be honest with myself. To not flatter anyone. And not at any cost. If music had ever been something other than true love for me, I would have made a slightly different kind of music and written slightly different notes. Take my word for it, I am very talented at writing a very commercial song, and some of the songs I wrote to see if I could do it were said by some authorities in that field of music to be very good. I know, if I had gone that route, my pockets would have been fuller, but I stuck to the one written by one of my idols, Miladin Šobić: "Isn't it a joke to break life's nose..." So I chose a different path. My songs are my little, honest, mostly true stories and I will stick to that as long as there is inspiration for them in my musical repertoire.
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