MAGNIFICATION by MAGNIFICO- Hawaiian Surfing Spaghetti Western Balkan Music

Most Americans had probably never heard of Slovenia until the US soccer team came up against them head to head in recent World Cup play. And while most probably could identify it as one of the now-divorced Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia, any more info than that would probably require some serious head-scratching. Slovenia was in fact the first Balkan country out of the gate, long heavily influenced by Austria and especially Italy, which all converge in and around the now-Italian city of Trieste. When the Iron Curtain started showing some serious rusty spots, Slovenia wasted no time in declaring its intentions. Outside the main Serbo-Croatian core of the southern Slav region, Belgrade didn’t even protest. Since then Slovenia has moved into close alliance with Western Europe, and is firmly on the main tourist trail as an easy inclusion on any Italian or Austrian itinerary, something like post-communist ‘lite’. In fact Ljubljana is one of the coolest and most beautiful cities of the region, no exaggeration necessary.

Musically I’ve never been too strongly attracted to Balkan music, perhaps because of a lack of exposure to tuba bands in my childhood. I keep listening, though, figuring that sooner or later something would strike my fancy. Magnifico may just be it. Something of a mix between Manu Chao, surf music, spaghetti Westerns, and traditional Balkan brass, Magnifico is probably best understood as something of a South Slavic answer to Mumiy Troll or Gogol Bordello. It wasn’t easy being a young Communist growing up in the grips of the Kremlin, you know, and even though Yugoslavia was independent, the psychology is common to all of them, and even to Cubans and North Koreans to this day. You learn to adapt. You learn to suppress your emotions. You learn to do end runs around your own imagination. You go a little bit crazy. The internal security police exist like a gray pall over your entire life, and Las Vegas looms like a dream from heaven all out of proportion to the reality. When you finally break loose, you hardly know where to start in making up for lost time. This is the world into which Robert Pesut, aka ‘Magnifico’, emerged, full of iron and irony, both music and words, tongue planted firmly in cheek.

He’s got a new album out, too, called ‘Magnification.’ ‘Zum Zum’ starts off like a raucous Balkan gypsy rag, doing a parody of ‘Ten Little Indians’ al la Europe with gypsies giving the lie to modern Europe liberalism. ‘iThink’ ups the intellectual ante a notch- albeit in similar musical fashion- “iThink and I got an idea that, there is too much, too much nation, too much nation for liberation and too much nation, for one railway station.” ‘Bosangero Nero’ slows things down a bit and goes into ‘spaghettti western’ mode to great effect as our poor hero tries to explain to police that ‘I don’t know much about no globalization, I’m just a Bosangero.’ The effect is completed with cha-cha-cha ending. ‘Ubicu Te’ goes into full-scale Balkan brass and is the first song to be sung entirely in Slovenian… and with electronic flourishes. The parody and paradox continue unabated regardless of language, “There is no place where you can hide, someday you will be my bride. And if I got to kill, kill baby I will, if I got to kill you honey trust on me I will.” Yes, Magnifico has a strong psycho-sexual side to his tongue-in-cheek, which ‘Emily’ explores further, “Emily, Emily after midnight come to me, I wanna see you dancing just for me Emily.” ‘Pismu Kumu (Rambo Rambo)’, also sung in Slovenian, adds some Hawaiian-style guitar and some reggae–style beat to the musical mix and some serious religious doubt to the philosophical mix, “Oh, Rambo, Rambo,… I thought there was a heavenly God, to tell me some things I know nothing about, But neither has he spoken to me, nor he knows to tell me anything, it seems to me he’s just a big hoax.” Hmm, maybe Communism wasn’t so bad, after all.

‘Avanti Popolo’ is the only song to be sung in Italian, though hardly an ‘Italian’ song, and ‘Giv Mi Mani 2’ shows the influence of English language- and hiphop- on modern Slovenian music, though neither song is much more than mid-album filler. “I’m clever I’m not a fool, I got TV and I know what is cool, Sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, Satisfy my body and soul” may be a genuine expression of existential dilemma, but ends up sounding more contrived than inspired. ‘Did You (Did U)’ fares better. Self-deprecating and ironic, the lyrics actually manage to explore some little-discussed territory of the human psyche, and does it with horns and electronica in the background, “I don’t care if you look at my lady, no problem it’s ok with me.” That takes guts. ‘Ljuba’ adds another wonderful ‘spaghetti western’ feel overlaid by Slovenian lyrics, while ‘Amore’ carries the Italian feel to its locial conclusion. “There is something up above, some people call it love, some people call it love, and I feel amore, yes I feel amore.” ‘Hidee Hi Hidee Ho’ is something of a Balkan war march, compelling enough, but ‘The Land Of Champions’ alone is worth the price of admission. This is no less than a Balkan ‘House of the Rising Sun’, boogie-woogie surf style, ‘Oh mother, tell your children not to do what I have done, I've lost my soul, oh glory hallelujah, down in Yugoslavia.’ Who’d’ve though to rhyme hallelujah with Yugoslavia? He’s Robert Persut and he calls himself ‘Magnico’. The album is ‘Magnification.’ Cute, ey? Check it out.

COST OF SINSEMILLA IN ZAGREB, COST OF SUCCESS IN LJUBLJANA

And God saw that man was hungry, so on the eighth day God created ham. And it was red. And ham was lonely, so God created cheese. And it was white, sometimes yellow. And the rest is history. Ham and cheese together proceeded to conquer the world, spreading far and wide, forever occupying the hearts and minds and bellies of their patrons. But is it halal? Is it kosher?

All I really want is a real meal, complete with rice and soy sauce and fresh-cut veggies kissing the wok with light hot licks. My stomach’s growling, but I’m so bored with bread and cheese that I don’t bother to eat. I eat a lot of apples, but that’s boring, too. Such are the whinings of the not-so-intrepid traveler. They used to say that the way to a man’s heart is through is his stomach, and while that may or may not be PC-OK to say in reference to women any more, it certainly applies to geography. I’ve been spoiled by years in Asia, with fresh hot cheap healthy (?) food readily available on the street, or close to it. European-style bakeries are nice for a change, but really can’t compete in the long run. Pizza makes a valiant try to be the universal standard fast food, but with mixed results. When they start coming out of bakeries, not pizzerias, complete with ketchup on top like I’ve seen here, I start looking elsewhere. I think I’ve even seen mayonnaise on them here, but I don’t want to know any more than that.

I almost got run over crossing the street in Zagreb because I thought I saw a Chinese restaurant on the other side, but it was a false alarm. Then I found a real one, but the prices were in geo-stationary orbit over Iceland. I’ll survive without it I guess. At least the veggie pizza here has broccoli, and there seems to be local cuisine with some of the same names as those in Bosnia, so I may venture into the restaurant fray if I find one with a ventilator. But the real food story of this trip is about blood oranges. I discovered them in Italy, found them again in Tunis, then Mladen had some from home in Dubrovnik, and now I find them in Zagreb. Is this something radiating outward from Italy? Why haven’t I ever seen them in Asia or South America, places with many sizes and types? Thailand even prides itself on refining oranges to the ultimate sweetness and the thinnest skin and the least fiber possible (any comparison to their women would be inappropriate since my wife is Thai. If we ever break up, then look out!).

Well this sounds like an opportunity for the enterprising adventurer, so I imagine myself taking carefully selected seeds back to Thailand and starting a new life as an orchard magnate. When I see them in the market today, in varying degrees of redness, I figure there’s no time like the present so invest in a kilogram (Th. ‘lo’) of them, some that are light red. There’s only one problem. THEY’VE GOT NO SEEDS. I JUST INVESTED IN A KILO OF SINSEMILLA (the word ‘sinsemilla’ means ‘seedless’ in Spanish btw, nothing more nothing less. Any connotations of sensual derangement are pure pig Latin). So where does the redness come from? Are these hermaphrodites or something like that? Do I get to manipulate my orange trees’ sexuality? It’s sounding more like Thailand all the time. Of course even sinsemilla has a seed or two of course, and in a half kilo so far I’ve found three. This orchard may be a slow starter. I also figure out that the redder the better, or at least, sweeter.

Darko Rundek has a song called ‘Sinsemiglia’ which gets all mystic and mysterious before ultimately playing out into Balkan over-dramatization, but still he’s quite fun to listen to. He’s one of the few local boys to find some currency in the current world music market. I planned to catch him in Sarajevo tonight but now I’m not there. He’ll be here in Zagreb tomorrow night, but I haven’t seen any posters for it, so make no plans, except to continue on to Ljubljana. I almost left today, but thought better of it. Compared to S’jevo, my current digs suck- no wifi or cable TV, just a lot of Croatian stuff and some sitcoms like The Nanny, Reba, and similar fare from UK and Spain, but at least the weather’s better. Ultimately any place worth stopping is worth staying, at least for a day. You can quote me on that. So I do. Zagreb’s pretty nice really, almost like Prague or something, but cheap lodging is scarce, not uncommon in capital cities- Santiago de Chile comes to mind. If the international groovers ever get tired of Budapest and come here instead, some competition may help. Me, I’ve got up such a head of steam after achieving the escape velocity to leave ‘S’jevo’ and booking Africa for next month that I’m having trouble slowing down.

Well, the big news in Zagreb is that sales of U2 tickets have lines of buyers backed up all over town, camping out and causing the web-site to crash. I’m not sure it’s worth all that. In Kenya someone who looks a lot like Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic’s general Mladic has been spotted after being on the lam for nearly fifteen years. And on the home front a new Chinese store has opened but they misspelled the word ‘Chinese’ in Croatian. Instead of ‘Kineski’ they spelled it ‘Kienski’, the ramifications of which I’m not sure of, like ‘Chiense’ instead of ‘Chinese’ in English, no big deal, but if it were like ‘Chiens’ in French, then that would be different. To blend into a new place seamlessly, you need to know enough of the language to GET the jokes, not be them.

Zagreb and Croatia feel like Europe again, a welcome change after a string of sometimes-not-so-beautiful cities in the Balkans. Ljubljana and Slovenia should be even more so, complete with higher prices. At least they’ll be in €uros. I’m tired of counting all this funny money, Monopoly money, shopping certificates only good on the day of the sale and at selected stores. Mostly I’m tired of being in the dark, an ironic curtain, in a region that really shouldn’t be so. I’m constantly reminded of the line in the Coen brothers’ film ‘Brother Where Art Thou’, “we ain’t got no radio here.” That kilo of orange sinsemilla cost about two bucks George W btw.

Ljubljana does not disappoint. Say that three times really fast and try to pull your tongue through the loop. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto. This is pure Europe, Europe at its best, maybe something like a cross between Amsterdam and Venice without all the girls in the windows or water lapping at your toes. You can hang out in sidewalk cafes till the cows come home. You can go to the Saturday market and not only find veggies and dairy products, buckwheat bread and preserves, but stained glass and ceramics, way cool. Myself maybe I still prefer the Sarajevo Turkish quarter’s kilims and copper, but that’s an anomaly of time and space. This is a pleasing creative blend of past and present, Europe that is. A river flows through it, too, without trash lining the banks or plastic bottles caught forever in the infinite flows and eddies. Chaos and turbulence may be inspiring for off-beat rock bands and movies, but does little for tamer esthetic sensibilities. The weather’s nice, too, not so cold to begin with AND heaters in the room. Comfort- now there’s a concept.

It’s too nice; that’s the only problem. At only a quarter mill, the place fills up with tourists fast. I don’t think I’d want to see it in high season. Even now you almost hear more English than Slavic in the tourist area. My little bit of Serbo-Croatian doesn’t help much here with the Slovenian language either, which diverges greatly. My hostel room doesn’t help much either, just a bit too institutional for me. At first I feel weird staying in the private room while everybody else is bunking it, but then I realize half of them are hanging out in the cafes eating expensive meals, so it’s a trade-off. Me, I’m so excited at seeing some instant noodles in the grocery store that I even pay the w/bowl price. It’s an acquired taste. Finding a grocery store open on Sunday is something of a miracle in itself. Then I find a Chinese restaurant with reasonable prices, semi-takee-outee. Then I find a special train fare to Zurich for only €29. I’m on a roll. There’s a documentary film festival in town focusing on human rights. Maybe they’ll open the doors on the last day and make it free to all.

My reservations about Ljubljana have nothing to do with Indians, certainly not the ones from South America here in town posing as American Plains Indians while playing songs from their CD entitled something ‘Mohican’ that seem to have nothing to do with any tradition except that of the flute and New Age music in general. It’s not bad, but no more ‘Mohican’ than it is Bolivian to my knowledge, the war bonnets serving what purpose I know not. I’ve seen similar acts in Buenos Aires and Barcelona within the last year or so, the others from Ecuador. I guess work’s work, and I’ve even been accused of ‘sacrilege’ in my career as a folk art entrepreneur, but still… what’s the point? Carlos Nakai doesn’t need to wear war paint to get his music across; it speaks for itself. The word ‘nakai’ means ‘Mexican’ for God’s sake. Who cares? I don’t mean to be judgmental, but… somebody needs to be.

Then the rains came. As if things are not dead enough on Sunday already, the rain puts a damper on the little bit that’s left. And it rains for forty hours and forty minutes. That’s okay; I’ve got a train ticket and a belly full of sweet-and-sour chicken to my credit on the balance sheet of life. Finally it stops shortly before dawn. Maybe I’ll get to do some sightseeing today in Ljubjlana before my train leaves after all. If so I’ll show you some pictures. Deal? Next stop Zurich via Austria via Liechtenstein, two more countries to check off the list. I’m on a roll.