5 Videos from Kosovo: Post-War Indie

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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.

Biography

Brilant Pireva (1993) lives and works in Prishtina, Kosovo. As a multidisciplinary artist, he works with poetry, video, music, and digital painting to explore mythology, religion, and the phenomena of failure. Pireva’s approach incorporates everyday public life into his creative process, which often generates improvised video pieces on public space and a continuous contemporary display of still life studies and objects such as food, etc. In a similar vein, his work engages in historical references based on archive research. Pireva’s photographic works tend to explore strange, mysterious moments or elements that appear out of place: his video pieces focus on peculiarities of places and things marginal and overlooked. He is currently a program coordinator at Kino Armata, a public cinema and space in Prishtina, Kosovo, promoting alternative culture and social dialogue. Follow him on Instagram.

Published on June 19, 2024

Last updated on August 21, 2024

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BOGOTÁ XOXO

Track

by Canina

Canina is a promise of the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Acting on this promise, she delivers a track that contains multiple sounds, noises, and expressions of what Bogotá means to her. As part of a renewed cultural wave of communities occupying clubs and itinerant venues, she proposes a reflection of sounds and bodies through it.

encuentre una versión en español de este texto a continuación

Think of life as an orchestra whose array of stimuli overwhelms us. Induced by our hectic pace of life, these stimuli often bring our senses to saturation point. Consequently, our lack of attention causes us to ignore the numerous harmonies produced by our environment. This project considers these semi-conscious universes that emerge from the tangle of noise that surrounds us and of which we are a part.

«BOGOTÁ XOXO» is a sonorous interpretation of this hellishly chaotic, accelerated, and noisy city. For the realization of this track, I chose to make audible several sounds that, sunk in the inarticulate chaos of Bogotá, become noise. Among them, I highlight alarms, horns, and sirens, as well as the voices of street vendors and birds at dawn, acoustic traces of the city. Once recorded, I chose to transform, sample, and arrange these sounds, so as to add melodies and percussions to an amalgam of hardcore kicks, added to accelerated guaracha and reggaetón basses.

The intention of this sonorous interpretation is not to capture in order to fix or freeze that which it explores, since sonorous memory is ephemeral, volatile, and fragile, but rather to intensify the very flows of life in which it unfolds, creating territories and memories as the sounds resonate into the listening bodies.

Canina es una promesa de Bogotá, Colombia. En esta entrega nos ofrece una pista que contiene múltiples sonidos, ruidos y expresiones de lo que la ciudad significa para ella. Como parte de una ola cultural renovada de comunidades que ocupan clubes y espacios itinerantes, propone una reflexión de sonidos y cuerpos a través de ella.

Pensemos en la vida como una orquesta cuyo despliegue de estímulos nos sobrepasa. Inducidos por nuestro estrepitoso ritmo de vida, dichos estímulos suelen llevar nuestros sentidos a su punto de saturación. Por consecuencia, nuestra falta de atención nos hace ignorar las numerosas armonías que produce nuestro entorno. Este proyecto considera esos universos semi-inconscientes que surgen de la maraña de ruido que nos rodea y de la que somos parte.

«BOGOTÁ XOXO» es una interpretación sonora de esta ciudad infernalmente caótica, acelerada y ruidosa. Para la realización de esté track, opté por hacer audibles varios sonidos que, hundidos en el inarticulado caos bogotano, se transforman en ruido. Entre ellos destaco alarmas, pitos y sirenas, además de vocales de vendedores ambulantes y los pájaros al amanecer, huellas acústicas de la ciudad. Una vez grabados, elegí transformar, samplear y ordenar estos sonidos, de manera que añadieran melodías y percusiones a una amalgama de kicks de hardcore, sumado a bajos acelerados de guaracha y reggaetón.

La intención de esta interpretación sonora no consiste en captar para fijar o congelar aquello que explora, pues la memoria sonora es efímera, volátil y frágil, sino que se dispone a intensificar los propios flujos de vida en los que se desenvuelve, creando territorios y memorias a medida que los sonidos resuenan en los cuerpos escuchas.

This track is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Bogotá», curated and edited by Luisa Uribe.

Biography

Canina (Camila Vargas) is a Colombian artist based in Bogotá, D.C. In her creative work, she explores experimentation with social semiotics and visual dialectics, where the selection, re-composition, and editing of images and sounds are seen as poetic, artistic, and political material. Currently, she also works as a DJ and producer of Latin electronic rhythms. Follow her on Instagram, Linktree, or SoundCloud.

Published on August 22, 2024

Last updated on August 30, 2024

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The Impossible Sound Banks of Beirut

Short Essay

by Jana Saleh

Jana Saleh always made use of field recordings of her native city in her compositions and productions until recently, when the uprising and subsequent collapse of Lebanon caused her to pause this practice. To describe the sounds that accompanied the major events that changed the course of her country, she created a lexicon of sounds and found ways to incorporate these auralities into her music.

As a musician and DJ, I often record sound samples with my phone during walks. I use these recordings in my music to create beats or soundscapes. For years I’ve used the sounds of Beirut as a sonic palette in my tracks; it’s what started my habit of capturing sounds everywhere I go. I found it easier (and more discreet) to record audio on a phone to capture an urban environment. With the ease of signal processing, the use of a better device with a better microphone becomes, in my case, unnecessary. Another advantage of using a smartphone is the existence of metadata information and archiving functionality. Each recording is automatically given a timestamp and geolocation, making it easier to locate the recordings for future use.

In the last three years, Beirut has experienced a major political upheaval, an economic collapse, and the largest non-nuclear blast in history. These realities shaped its new sound palette, especially since those events were also very sonically present. On my phone, they are organized into three sound banks:

The October 17 uprising in 2019; the Beirut port blast on August 4, 2020 and its aftermath; and the height of the economic and fuel crises in the summer of 2021.

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Techno-Territorial Dissonance

Their titles alone impose an affective connection between the events and their sonic content. For the first time since I started collecting field recordings, the sounds I captured in a specific street or corner in the city became charged with distress. Instead of hearing a potential bass drum in a specific sample, sound became a source of post-traumatic anguish. A clapping sound, which I would have used in a rhythm section, oscillated between a sound of hope or despair.

From an archival perspective, the sounds on my phone reflected the cross-sectioning of names and events. At times, the geolocation of the recording linked with names of high-end nightlife venues and private residences in which I performed as a DJ before the protests that swept Lebanon in 2019. During the uprising, the geolocations were the same but their content now sounded very different. The geolocations of the venues that corrupt politicians and bankers frequented became the sites of mass protests where people aimed at toppling them.

I created a lexicon for my sound bank of Beirut at the start of the October 17 uprising, which includes: crowds chanting, screaming, speeches, mics and megaphones with and without amplification; sounds of people banging on different surfaces like metal, wood, using tools or with bare hands; hands clapping; portable musical instrument sounds like percussion, brass and wind instruments, and an accordion; voices, amplified or in recorded music; and food preparation sounds.

To me, these sounds conjure desire and hope. And on the flipside of that, the second sound bank in 2019 contains: tear-gas launching, rubber bullets, water cannons, gunshots, burning tires, glass breaking, loud screams, ambulance sirens, motorcycle engines, and horns. This particular sound bank is associated with a burning anger towards the ruling class and, in retrospect, is mixed with disillusionment.

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Composing the Aftermath

The August 4 explosion sound bank exists not as intentional sound recordings but as real-time witnessing to the events at the port before the blast occurred. I experienced the event at very close range and attempted to recollect it from memory. The sounds vary from one witness to another but to me, they included: fire burning, siren sounds, something exploding, a loud sound heard as planes or not, a vacuum sound that rattled my apartment, a blast, a rumble, a bigger blast, sounds of breaking materials such as wood, glass, and concrete, human voices, and car alarms.

In the months that followed, when I was able to record again, my sound bank contained: sweeping broken glass, moving concrete blocks and pieces, the thud of wood, aluminum and construction material, crying, all of which provoke varying forms of anxiety.

And lastly, the sound bank representing the peak of the economic collapse contains: the constant hum of power generators, fights, screaming, and honking, prompting feelings of exhaustion and despair.

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Although the act of recording and archiving felt necessary then, sampling these sounds from Beirut came with moral and emotional quandaries. I could no longer bring myself to use these recordings in musical compositions because it was impossible for me to disconnect the sounds from the people and the city that created them. Instead, what I am trying to achieve as a musician is an interpretation of what these recordings bring to me into my compositions. What is sampled is the imbrication of the city on me; a layering that is perhaps most audible in my most recent compositions «Soupire» (French for sigh). I frequently return to these diverse sound banks and, although I do not use them, they help chart a vast sonic terrain that allows me to connect musically with my city.

This article is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Beirut» curated and edited by Rayya Badran.

trailer «norient city sounds: beirut»

Biography

Jana Saleh is a performer, music producer and sound artist from Beirut, Lebanon. She composes music for plays, ad campaigns, and television series and is an active member of Beirut’s DJ scene. She has a BA in film scoring and music synthesis from Berklee College of Music. She spent ten years in New York exploring various music scenes, touring North America as an electro-acoustic duo with her long-time collaborator and Csound pioneer Dr. Richard Boulanger, and heading the new media department in the number one reggae and dancehall label, VP Records. Follow her on Instagram, or on her Website.

Links

Nadim Mishlawi, Rana Eid: «Beirut: Traces of a City – A Pod Poem » (Norient)

Published on August 25, 2022

Last updated on February 14, 2024

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When the Sound Listens Back

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