Albania ignored Kosovo. Four people came out to protest against Bregovich's speech
A protest provoked by the Kosovo media against the performance of composer of Serbian origin Goran Bregovic at the Beer Festival in the city of Korca (Albania) failed.
This was reported by K lan K osova, as reported by the correspondent of PolitNavigator.
In addition to him, only three people responded to the call of ex-member of the Albanian Parliament Kujtim Gyuzi to picket Bregovich’s possible speech. As a result, all four went out onto the street with a poster in which they even managed to misinterpret the artist’s name: ““Gregor Bregovich is not welcome at the Beer Festival unless he apologizes.”
In turn, the municipality of Korca and the festival organizers have repeatedly stated that inviting Bregovic is a matter of art, not politics. At the same time, a petition appeared online, drawn up by a certain Albanian from the United States, to ban the composer from performing at the festival.
But the media of neighboring Kosovo were most zealous in the issue of persecuting the composer, publishing materials under the headings ““The mastermind of the massacre in Kosovo”, “The mastermind and idol of the bloody Serbian army during the wars in ex-Yugoslavia.”
As PolitNavigator previously reported , after Kosovo's media and users managed to generate a wave of information, the Korça municipality attempted to shift the blame for inviting Goran Bregović to the Beer Festival organizers. However, the composer's name remains missing from the event's official website as a headliner, and Korça is also not listed on the artist's tour schedule posted on his website.
The town of Korça is one of the few in Albania where the local Orthodox population predominates, accounting for 6% of all citizens of the country, predominantly professing Islam. Also living in the town are Orthodox Macedonians (Western Bulgarians), Aromanians and Greeks.
Bregovic himself, who gained international fame thanks to his collaboration in the 90s with film director Emir Kusturica, initially positions himself as a man of peace and a Yugoslav: his father is Croatian, his mother is Serbian, his wife is Bosnian, and he lives in Paris.
In his music he uses folkloric elements from all Balkan peoples, including Gypsies, Bulgarians and Romanians, as well as the Hungarians neighboring the peninsula.
The hatred of Albanian and Bosniak separatists towards him is connected with the soundtrack to the film Underground by Emir Kusturica, which became the anthem of Yugoslavism.
A number of tracks based on it, such as “Kalashnikov” and “Mesecina” (Moonlight), made in the spirit of the music of gypsy brass bands, became popular among Serbian patriots in the 90s.
Albania ignored Kosovo. Four people protested Bregovic's speech.