This Is Serbia Calling

This Is Serbia Calling
Matthew Collins
(Serpent's Tail)

"It is a national interest to love President Milosevic." This was the decree in 1999 from the bullyboys who did the dirty work for the erstwhile dictator of Serbia. They were laying out the doctrine to one of the last bastions of free speech in the renegade, pariah Balkan state. Radio station B92 broadcast throughout the decade of turmoil in their country, always believing in the redemptive properties of the rock music they aired to their repressed and culturally starved peers. Of course during the 1990's their contemporaries in the free world in the west were indulging in a ten-year party fuelled by various musical revolutions.

While blood was spilt around them, B92 made sure that young Serbian's knew which direction the prevailing winds of popular music were blowing, inspiring them to keep the faith. "This is Serbia Calling" was the call sign, and Nirvana, REM, Sonic Youth, Rage Against the Machine, Tricky, Radiohead and Primal Scream the soundtrack. Collin, who previously wrote the rave history Altered State, captures this voice of resistance as a metaphor of rock music’s primal energy.

Over those ten years B92 was under constant threat - of closure, of censorship, of violence - but they persevered regardless. "Now is the worst time in Serbia this decade," said presenter Srdjan Andjelic in 1999. "This repression, people being killed, people disappearing. We have gone from Germany in the thirties to South America in the eighties...what a trip!" This period of NATO bombing, virtual siege conditions and immensely difficult living conditions almost finished B92, but their resolve is testament to the power of radio. In this age of music television and digital file sharing, the ability of a single radio transmitter to draw a community together, to communicate to the ragged masses with an all-seeing benevolence, has been all but forgotten. This Is Serbia Calling is an inspiring and moving story of what will probably be one of the last occasions when this is the case.

Originally published in 2001, the year after Milosevic's final fall from grace, this new Serpent's Tail Five Star edition features a new postscript covering these years since the conflict ceased. As Collin's discovers, the new Serbia is as fraught with tension as it was in the middle of hostilities. "A lot of people say that if this is what we were fighting for, we should have given up a long time ago," says Sasa Mirkovic. "We're living in a state of uncertainty. Chaos is all around us. We're doing things and thinking there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But how long is this tunnel and where does it go to?"

Gavin Bertram.