DUBIOZA KOLEKTIV (BIH) STARTS UP A PARALLEL BAND

“In the first few days of the violent protests in Tuzla, Zenica, Sarajevo, Bihać and Mostar, Croatian left wing websites were buzzing with articles showing solidarity with the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There was an impression that the message that the world-renowned reggae-ska-punk band from Zenica, Dubioza Kolektiv, has been sending for the past six years to its domestic and international audience had finally reached the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It would seem that in the neighbouring country, a completely new post-national Bosnian identity is in formation that would unite all three constitutive ethnicities and turn them against their true enemies – political elites that grew out of the Dayton Peace Accord. However, just as the members of Dubioza Kolektiv are predominantly Bosniaks, so also was the case with last week’s protests that took place in predominantly Bosniak towns and cantons (in divided Mostar the protest participants were only Bosniaks from the eastern part of town), while Serb and Croat entities and parts of the BH Federation were mostly silent observers of these events”, writes Jutarnji list.

“Prompted by your article, we had an idea to start up two more Dubioza Kolektiv bands, which would be made up of members from the relevant ethnic groups and according to their territories. Maybe then it would fit better into your fascist worldview in which ethnicity is more important than content.

“Dubioza Kolektiv can be just about anything, but not a ‘predominantly Bosniak’, ‘predominantly Croat’ or ‘predominantly Serb’ band, but it seems to us that the attitudes expressed in your article are predominantly ‘assholeish’.

“We as humans simply don’t accept such counting of blood cells. If we are going to go into details, in the recent census not a single member of the band declared himself as a Bosniak. Dear author, maybe you will be shocked by the fact that in our midst we even have one member from Serbia playing saxophone.

“You and other like-minded members of the media are constantly trying to reduce the social and non-ethnic character of dissatisfaction among the citizens, and instead are highlighting the non-existing ethnic conflict and the protection of ‘national interests’ of certain ethnic groups. You are forgetting that a hungry Serb, Croat, Bosniak or Other, is above all a person with an empty stomach, and only then a person who belongs to one of the ethnic groups.

“One of the few things that all BH political elites perfectly agree on is that all state-owned property and companies that are worth something (telecoms, energy sector, etc) should be sold off and privatised. Once everything that is worth something is sold off, people that live in Bosnia-Herzegovina, regardless of the constitution or their ethnicity, will finally have full equality. They will all equally inherit the debt that they will pay to IMF and have equal holes in their stomachs.

“We are often in Croatia and what we see and hear from our friends is that in your country, stomachs are predominantly empty, salaries are predominantly small, politicians are predominantly corrupt and that very soon you can expect predominantly Croatian protests”, are the final words of Dubioza Kolektiv’s response to the article by Jutarnji list.

Article originally published at http://www.klix.ba/magazin/muzika/dubioza-kolektiv-osniva-paralelni-bend/140214087  on 14th February 2014.