A wild mix of flavors, from limbo and madness, melancholy and fervor, as well as a self-deprecating humor. Watch a list of independent music videos from post-war-struck Kosovo.

With the end of the 1999 war in Kosovo, an interim UN administration, and the beginning of the new millennium, the music industry in Kosovo saw itself flooded with American and European popular culture trends – hip hop, RnB, etc. – that would dominate and define the local commercial industry musically and visually. Club bangers, summer anthems, and flashy, blingy videos to suit. This would be the predominant model for commercial music & music videos that is still more or less prevalent today, where we see tropes of wealth, status, and sex rise to the top. The independent scene that did not conform to this model was often self-financed and explored ideas and themes that were not as marketable to mass audiences. Hopelessness, longing, and many other such currents often pushed out of sight. If these can be considered in a sense a counter-culture in relation to the dominant cultural trends of the day, then it’s interesting to reflect on what they also represent about the history of Kosovo.

Five videos is of course not enough to do the independent scene any justice, and there are countless others out there, but for now these are five interesting ones we can propose for a short introduction.

Music: Retrovizorja
Track: 1999 (Kosovo, 2003)
Video: Klejdi Eski

Hazy vignettes of the city. Despondent and aimless characters inhabit gray and washed out landscapes. A child’s dreamworld is interrupted and terrorized by figures in suits. Faces, bodies, and silhouettes pass by in frenetic double-time. The mood for the new millennium here is one of pessimism. The figures in suits obviously point to the bureaucracy of the day, rife with corruption and shady dealings. Shadowy figures and whispers, rumors, connections to get you in the door, things of this sort are what the UN is associated with here.

Music: Cute Babulja
Track: Kolateralisht (Kosovo, 2004)
Video: KOPERATIVA

A desolate bazaar and an air of torpor leads us to a theater. Where are we? An absurdist comedy or horror? Nightmarish scenes with just enough whimsy carry us along. A frog falls from the sky! A funny commentary on the bizarro aspects of life that dysfunction brings. There is something about the mood of the 1999–2008 period (the period of UN administration after the war and before Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence) that I personally feel is captured wonderfully here. The mixed flavors of limbo and madness, melancholy and fervor, as well as the self-deprecating humor.

Music: NR
Track: Filma Turqisht (Kosovo, 2007)
Video: Puntor’t Social

Outside of the earth’s atmosphere, extraterrestrials beam a ray and latch onto a signal from Kosovo. From here on, we are taken on a ride across a fourth-wall-breaking parody of the tropes dominating the commercial music and video industry. The aliens find it funny. A satirical commentary on the state of the commercial industry that hasn’t changed all too much since then. The music industry today is still dominated by club-friendly anthems that are annually released around the same time, to fuel the summer concerts and club performance circuit. The indie scene here doesn’t have the same options for funding, so this limits it in a way, but also frees it from conforming to the clichés to which the mainstream has to pay lip service.

Music: Aku
Track: Cactus (Kosovo, 2014)
Video: Brilant Pireva

The protagonist explores the spaces and identity of Pristina in an accusatory way, literally pointing the finger at them. Buildings from different periods of its history each contribute in their own way to the mosaic: some damaged, some unfinished, some rushed. The post-war period saw a certain type of lawlessness that also added to the character of the city, where there were over 46,000 illegal constructions. These too are now a part of its character. The track was produced with both sampling and instrumentation, part of an ongoing music project of mine. 

Music: Edona Vatoci
Track: Hala (Kosovo, 2015)
Directed: Noar Sahiti
Editing: Lum Çitaku

The countryside, greenhouses, and the flora contrast with the harsh strobes, gusts, jolts, and contortions. The antagonism and contradictions are plenty. A seed, the sun, sowing and reaping. A more personal reflection of social and emotional life in Kosovo. I think here we also see in the mood and affect of the work the progression into a different phase of the history of Kosovo. At this point, it had been seven years after the declaration of independence and a new dynamic was unfolding quite different from the early 2000s.