Last year when I was in Dublin, I wound up hanging out in a pub somewhere, talking with a woman named Zlata Filipovic, a friend of my Irish friends. I’d actually met her a couple months before, while she was in New York, and we got talking about this and that and ultimately about Bosnia, where she was born and lived until her early teens, when her family fled Sarajevo during the siege. As I often do with people from the former Yugoslavia, eventually I asked:
“Do you by any chance remember a pop singer named Gino Banana? The guy who did ‘Mace moje cupavo‘?”
She laughed and gawked a little and responded something to the effect of, “Oh my god! How do you know about that?”
So I explained that as it happened, I knew Gino, who lived in Seattle, and who, to her surprise, was now the dredlocked lead singer of a Balkan trad/punk-metal outfit that sounded somewhere between Gogol Bordello and System of a Down.
Her response was basically how Gino told me (some six years ago, the first time I met him) most people who knew him before respond: “It’s kind of like, imagine if Justin Timberlake came back in 20 years with some insane band, and your son would tell you, ‘Dad, you know Justin Timberlake from your time?’ And you’d say, ‘Oh shut the fuck up.’ ‘He’s great!’ ‘No he’s not!’ And that’s pretty much what was going on there with me.”
Zlata was momentarily wowed, before admitting: “Well, he always had a sort of weird, crazy style.”
Anyway, I hardly think there’s a better glimpse of the effect of war and ethnic strife–the way it casts people, dispossessed and scattered, across the globe–than talking about a former commercial pop star from Sarajevo turned punk rock anarchist in Seattle with someone like Zlata Filipovic, while sitting in a Dublin pub (if you want to know who she is, you can read this article in the New York Times from 1994).
Such is the subject of Krk Nordenstrom documentary Kultur Shock: No Borders. Nordenstrom (a good friend of mine–I even kicked in a few dollars for the Kickstarter campaign) spent several weeks on tour with Kultur Shock (also good friends of mine) through Southeast Europe, taping shows and interviews with fans, and generally exploring the legacy of war and ethnic conflict through the band members’ and their fans’ experience. Kultur Shock’s message–opposition to borders, prejudice, and anything that creates false distinctions between human beings–has profound resonances in Gino’s homeland, as even the New York Times has noted.
As it happens, Nordenstrom and his collaborators will be offering up a sneak peek of what’s in store this weekend, when he presents “Balkanalia: 25 Days on the Road With Kultur Shock,” an exhibit of still photography he took as part of the project, at Rung Studio as part of the Georgetown Art Attack. From 6 to 9 p.m. this Saturday, April 14, you can join Nordenstrom and what promises to be a healthy crowd of supporters for art, food (I understand Gino is cooking for the event), drink, and the chance to learn more about what remains one of my favorite bands in the world.
Gino might be cooking something. I’ve had homemade pita of his in the past and it’s always incredible. It’s a possibility.