Syndicate: travelogue from belgrade - about b92 (by ft)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

From: "f," <ft@mur.at>

	dear friends,

some holidays delayed distribution of this last text from the travelogue to
belgrade in july. it may by now be a bit outdated ... anyway. if you did
not get part 1./2. or 4. and are interested in, let me know. take care

	f,

3.

b92 had been taken off air on march 24th, a few hours after announcing that
the bombing by nato-forces will start soon. the staff continued to produce
a news service distributed via email and a programm available via realaudio
and rebroadcasted by anem-stations in yugoslavia and via satellite. this
was interrupted when the station was taken over on april 2nd by a state
loyal management with the help of the court and the police. the threat of
banning had been already acute in last year's fall; parts of the archive
and the equipment were then removed from the radio's premises and brought
back after the immediate danger was over. this year the station had taken
less precautions, but though the police showed up every day after march
24th parts of the the music- and the newsarchive were saved.

the new management did not realize at once what they had conquered. it
took them days to take posession of the enterprises, premises and projects
connected to b92. sometimes clumsy they tried to evoke the impression that
except the people running the station nothing has changed. when in may
they finally succeeded in cracking the http://www.b92.net-site (which was
by then still under control of the b92-staff) the new design included old
symbols (but the webstream to be received from the site is the one of
radio belgrade, the local station of rts; the service is rather
unreliable); they try to make money by selling cd's published by the
b92-label before the takeover; they recycled old jingles with the voices
of b92-people despite the programm was completely changed. it now consists
mainly the so called turbofolk. d., member of the old b92-staff and now
working for the new b2-92 explains: "it's a trivial phenomenon,
unfortunately not very recognized by those who think about art and music
here. turbofolk has its roots in the late sixties when lots of yugoslav
went abroad to work in germany, france, switzerland etc. and then original
traditional folkmusic was transformed and that was called new composed
folkmusic. it deals with the problems of people going away from home,
working in a strange country and they are homesick for their villages.
this music was mainly played in those countries in kafanas, in bars; here
it became popular only later. the turbofolk of today is a mishmash of
dancemusic, parts of popmusic, hard rock, recently techno and parts of
balkan folkmusic including bulgarian, rumanian, macedonian and turkish
elements. so turbofolk is popular in the countries surrounding yugoslavia;
in a way it was an attack on the cultural life of those nations because it
destroyed the local musicproduction; in serbia itself for instance the
rock scene nearly vanished. gouvernment here was very benevolent to
turbofolk and despite their nationalism and hatred against muslims they
didn't mind the oriental influence. turbofolk is music not for the
peasants but for urban people and it keeps their minds away from the real
problems. it's a big industry and the mainstream today." so the programm
now broadcasted on the old frequency 92.5 and under the name of b92 has
it's popularity today. it can be heard in the pedestrian zone, in
department stores and gas stations - z. and d. told me that it was rather
torturing when a few days ago they had to wait for an hour for gas and the
programm was emitted by big speakers there at the gasstation. the new
management were no radio-professionals; they were mainly recruiting of the
youth council of belgrade loyal to the current gouvernment. they claim to
be the legal posessors of the station because when the station was founded
ten years ago this organisation gave kind of first permission for
operation. to corroborate their argumentation they rewrote the history of
b92 (to be read in serbo-croatian at
http://www.b92.net/radiob92/index.html) and let it start in 1977; strange
enough their story ends 1990. out of the need for professionality and
camouflage of the takeover the new management tried to convince members of
the old staff to work for them. all employees were invited one by one to
talks in april. z., another member of the staff recounts: "it was not the
first time that b92 was cut off; i worked for the radio when it was banned
back in 1996 during the protests against the repeal of communal elections
and then i was scared; but this time i was so angry that i became kind of
militant. and after i had the interview with those people who took over
the station in april i became sick, i had temperature and i suffered
badly." d. describes the interview: "it was a very unpleasant situation.
although we knew what people we were dealing with i didn't believe that
those apparatchiks, figures from kafka's books still exist. i'm not sure
whether they all know about the beatles. we were asked to collaborate with
them - there would be only minor changes. they asked me for instance to
work in a show and i asked them: what do you expect me to do? to do what
i've done the previous years? they answered that it will be slightly
different - the show would have a new title: 'you have to fight for your
country with your heart.' i said: sorry - i didn't work for the children's
department and they asked why, what's wrong with the title and i told them
that it reminds me on the pioneers from the socialist system. you can fool
them as much as you want as long as you let politics aside. but as we know
for the last ten years everything is connected with politics and it's
stupid to pretend we're living on mars." no one agreed to work for the new
management; even the charwoman did quit. 50 employees and 150 freelancers
lost their economical base or at least a major part of their income; few
had other financial sources; some went abroad, some men were drafted for
the army; most of the staff stayed in belgrade. the loss of the station
meant more than a financial problem. z.: "for me b92 wasn't just a
station, it was a whole idea. in one moment of my life i realized that
everything i do is somehow connected with the this radio, that my life
completely _is_ this radio. many of my friends work there, many others are
passionate listeners - and those were in much worse condition when after
the shutdown of the radio because for them it was the only normal thing in
the city. and then i realized that i had to stay here and to help this
thing to sort out. in the beginning it was very hard to concentrate on
anything because of the bombing; later i got used to it as you can get
used to everything in life. i stayed home and wrote ten thousand emails
the day explaining people what happened and answering questions about
other people. The only other thing you could do against falling into apthy
was to see friends, not to be alone and sitting together in the light of
candles, listening to good music, remembering the work in the radio and
thinking how we should go on." during the wartime two websites were set
up. while http://helpb92.xs4all.nl/ was organized by non-b92-organizations
with the goal to gain support for the station http://www.freeb92.net was
devoted to represent the real b92-staff as kind of a backbone. After
netaid 1, a webcast dedicated to the 10th anniversary of b92 on may 15th,
netaid 2-4 followed the 15th of june, july and august with streaming from
different places in the world featuring dj's from those places and various
bigshots from the international music-scene. while the helpb92-site was
stopped some weeks ago, freeb92.net became the website of the station when
b92 was relaunched by the old staff as b2-92.immediately after the
takeover legal steps were taken to regain the frequency and the premises
of b92 - until now without success. when studio b, another radio- and
tv-station in belgrade in june offered broadcasting time on the frequency
99.1 the opportunity was taken even it was not an easy decision: studio b
is mainly under control of the serbian renewal movement, the party of vuk
draskovic, the chameleon of the yugoslav political scene: once part of the
zajedno-coalition back in 1997 he joined milosevic's gouvernment later
until he was dismissed in april this year. the staff of b2-92 is aware of
the problems this arrangement may cause even the contract guarantees them
independance: "we know that draskovic wants to get back some political
credibility with this deal. but we left no doubt that we would rather stop
broadcasting than accept any intervention." since all the equipment
remained in the old premises after the takeover b2-92 had to start under
rather poor technical conditions. the broadcasting studio under the roof
of the beogradjanka, one of the skyscrapers in belgrade looked like a
relict of the real socialistic times when i saw it in july: the speakers
studio was a small room with space for hardly more than three people,
walls and chairs lined with brown imitation leather and connected to the
sound mixer's studio with a huge window; there beside the console was
little more to find than a recordplayer, two cd-players and two old
reel-to-reel-machines. the bureaus were accomodated in three or four rooms
down at 17th floor with perfect view over smoggy belgrad and especially to
the building at makedonska 22 that was the home of b92 only a few months
ago. preparing the program and equiping the offices simultaneously the
desks were loaded with packages, empty coke-bottles, full ashtrays, papers
while people were discussing, chatting, soldering, trying phonelines,
installing programs. the relaunch of b92 as b2-92 first was scheduled to
july 15th; technical problems delayed it. z. told a few days before the
start: "the iniative for b2-92 was born here in belgrade and i was so
happy when i heard about it and sad when it was delayed again and again
because i can not wait to begin: i've so many things to say. we will have
this frequency to tell people what happened and to stir something up.
throughout the last ten years i had the feeling to see a very bad movie
but i didn't want to go abroad because i didn't want to miss the last five
minutes." b2-92 did start its broadcasts for 12 hours the day on july 28th
with a music-program; since august 2nd the program contains again the news
b92 once was famous for. and since a few days the old news-service via
email is set up again and distributed via xs4all.



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