Entering the area where the video projections are taking place, all you can hear is the music of Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass (Ravi Shankar is a world known performer of India’s etno music having a great influence upon the rock musicians –from Beatles on till the present day - and Philip Grass is a famous New Age musician).
To understand what that projection is all about, a visitor has to put the headphones on and listen to the conversations implying the turbo-folk singers from Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia and to their performances recorded at the folk clubs in Zagreb, as well, and experience a real cultural shock of what is laying beneath the surface of every day’s life.
 This installation was exhibited at the “Nano” Gallery. It was reproduced by the 11 sources, making it a documentary of some sort - not in a form of a directed linear film, but as a number of the different possibilities given to the viewers, to choose and take their own decisions on what the first and what a following segment would be.
This is a film layered in space, giving anyone an opportunity to come inside and participate interactively.
 If you don’t have the means to present the installation that way, it may be reduced to 2 – 3 video sources following the groups: Interviews, Stage Performances and Audience (+ Music).
 The background of the turbo-folk style make the old croatian country music and a “sweet”  Balkan-style music coming from the east Balkan, Greece; the matter of fact that’s a hybrid genre expanding in the aftermath of the war raging in the area, bringing from Serbia and Bosnia – Herzegovina to Croatia the music and style called colloquially “cajkas”. The turbo-folk suppressed the old-style pop music brands like “sevdah”, “becarac” and the others, together with their immanent soul and pathos. Turbo-folk changed in time under the new influences and rhythms coming from YouTube, Facebook, Google.
 Some researches say that the increasing number of secondary school students (all born after Croatia was established) choose to listen to the “cajkas” over the urban-style music, as a result of the rebellion and defying their parents who fought the war against the Serbs – now, the young people sing Serbian love songs, do not make a war. It happened that we, running toward the capitalistic rich and progressive West, away from Yugoslavian socialism and primitivism, made a step back in numerous segments of life (way of life, morality, sociology, taste, economy, and so on).
 It is a common knowledge that at the pop folk clubs you may find the “high society” people  – starting with the established buisnismes, footballers, politicians, jet-set persons having just half an hour earlier had their cup of coffee at the down-town Zagreb, all the way down to fra Sime Nimac notorious for selling the church land.
 That’s the very reason making so very difficult for us to record at those places, the owners of the clubs staying away concerned about their own safety. The fact is that at such pop clubs the incidents, fightings, shootings are far more often, partly because the visitors are drunk, partly because the passionate rhythms and the words of the songs mainly speaking about the love pains, dramas, cheating and betrayal do incite them well. That’s the world of breaching the borders, of monthly incomes spent in a single night and the turbo-folk passion overcomes the visitors easily, so, we became ourselves the witnesses to that. We live in the strictly controlled conditions, practicing nice and cultural behavior, not always in accord to what we feel inside. A lot of people don’t even know how to get that out of themselves, the reason why at the pop clubs the emotions erupt. One of my friends told me the difference between the dancing east- and west- style: the east-style dancers raise their hands upward making their pheromones evaporate in the air.
 Anatolije Pusic, a Montenego musician, known better as Rambo Amadeus, defined the turbo-folk in a following way: “Folk are the people and turbo is a system of injection the pressured fuel into the machine cylinder. Turbo folk is peoples’ burning. Turbo folk is not the music. Turbo folk is a masses’ pet. Rising the lowest passions of homo sapiens…”  
  We intend to continue our investigation further in Germany and Swiss where there are a lot of “our” pop clubs.
 Despising or admiring the turbo folk, it is impossible to squeeze it away from its musical or broader social context. That’s why we made a note on that moment of time we’re living in.
 
Davor Mezak
 
 
P.S.
The material is recorded and available in HD and can be reproduced that way.