If you got here through a meme or a YouTube rabbit hole, here's what the songs are actually about.
Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. It held together for four decades under Josip Broz Tito, who died in 1980.
After he died, nationalism filled the vacuum. Slobodan Milošević rode Serbian grievance politics to power. The republics started declaring independence. Serbia, which controlled most of the federal army (JNA), fought to stop them. The result: a series of wars that killed roughly 140,000 people, displaced millions, and produced the Srebrenica genocide, the siege of Sarajevo, and ethnic cleansing campaigns across Bosnia and Croatia.
The music in this archive was made during and about these wars. Even a basic understanding of what happened changes how you hear the songs.
The quick one. Slovenia declared independence on 25 June 1991, the JNA tried to stop it, and ten days later it was over. Slovenia had almost no Serb minority, so there was no territorial dispute to fight about. The JNA pulled out and moved on to Croatia.
Croatia declared independence in June 1991. The substantial ethnic Serb minority — roughly 12% of the population, concentrated in the Krajina region and eastern Slavonia — rejected Croatian sovereignty. Backed by the JNA, Croatian Serbs declared their own breakaway state: the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), with its capital in Knin.
The fighting destroyed Vukovar in late 1991, one of the worst urban battles in postwar Europe, and produced the Ovčara massacre of prisoners. Then years of stalemate. In August 1995, Croatia launched Operation Storm and retook the entire Krajina in 84 hours. Around 200,000 Croatian Serbs fled. The territory that gave Baja Mali Knindža his name was gone.
The big one. Bosnia was the most mixed of the republics: Bosniak Muslims, Serbs, and Croats all living together. When it declared independence in March 1992, Bosnian Serb forces backed by Serbia launched a campaign to carve out a contiguous Serb territory through conquest and ethnic cleansing.
The siege of Sarajevo lasted 1,425 days. Snipers and artillery hit civilians daily. Across the country, concentration camps were set up, rape was used systematically as a weapon, and whole communities were destroyed along ethnic lines.
In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić overran the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica and killed over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. It was the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. The ICTY and the International Court of Justice both classified it as genocide.
The war ended with the Dayton Agreement (November 1995), which divided Bosnia into two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniak-Croat) and Republika Srpska (Serb). This partition remains in effect today.
Kosovo was an autonomous province within Serbia, about 90% ethnic Albanian. Milošević revoked its autonomy in 1989. Years of nonviolent resistance went nowhere, and in 1998 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) started an armed insurgency. Serbian security forces responded with mass displacement and killings of Albanian civilians.
NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days starting in March 1999. It was the first time the alliance had used force without a UN Security Council vote. Serbian forces pulled out of Kosovo that June. Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Serbia still doesn't recognize it.
These names come up constantly in the songs.
Shows up in more songs than anyone else. Serbian artists mock him by name in track after track: "Oj Alija, Aljo," "Ne volim te Alija," "Jadna Bosno suverena." Bosniak artists praise him just as directly: "Živio Alija i bosanska armija," "Da te nije Alija." Same person, completely different song.
Ran Arkan's Tigers (Serb Volunteer Guard). Was on Interpol's most wanted list for years before the wars even started. Married Ceca in a televised wedding in 1995. The ICTY indicted him on 24 charges of crimes against humanity. Shot dead in a Belgrade hotel lobby in January 2000.
Commander of the Garda Panteri (Panthers Guard) — the elite unit celebrated in songs by Roki Vulović and Miro Semberac. Based in Bijeljina, Semberija. Both Roki and Miro served under Mauzer. Miro Semberac's "Pevaj Semberijo" names him directly. Assassinated in Bijeljina in 2000.
The guy at the center of it all. Rode Serbian nationalism to power in the late 1980s and set everything in motion. The ICTY indicted him for genocide and crimes against humanity. He died in a cell at The Hague in 2006. The songs don't name him much, but he's the reason they exist.
Led Croatia to independence. Oversaw Operation Storm. Shows up in Serbian songs like Koridor's "Kumovi" as the schemer behind the Croatian-Bosniak alliance. His own nationalist record is contested in much the same way Milošević's is, just from the Croatian side.
Terms, acronyms, and concepts that appear throughout the archive.