world music hypocrisy :: Zehra Bajraktarević and turbofolk melodrama

What's with world music and political correctness? Since I first heard of the term, I was full of hope – finally someone got it: there's tons of great pop music out there all over the world, just waiting to be discovered. Then it dawned on me, popular music and folk music is apparently not the same thing. For some strange reason, music classified as folk music is supposed to be frozen in some time warp when people were officially traditional, whereas pop music (i.e. popular music) is simply what lowbrow people around the world listen to. And it's not worthy of world music compilations...

Which is why the records filed under European "world music" (let alone released on Peter Gabriel's "RealWorld label) are generally very acoustic and traditional. In the sense of being preserved by some national academy, mostly played on statesponsored cultural programs, and – frankly – not very popular.

Accordingly, the truly popular music in countries in "world music land" is hardly ever found on the world music shelves in western record stores. No, you have to search in the grocery shops catering to different immigrant communities or surf the net to find truly popular music.

Blogs are good for the odd rant, thanks for skimming through it. My main point today is to spread the news of ex-Yugoslav turbofolk, through the wonderfully dramatic Zehra Bajraktarević. I first stumbled across her on the BalkanMedia website, which not only sends you great ex-Yugo cds, but chuck in sweets too! They let you listen to sound clips of the cds, so you know what you'll order, and that's how I fell in love with Zehra's song Nevjero ("betrayal", if BabelFish is not mistaken), off the album Samo nebo zna.

I'm pretty sure Zehra is Bosnian, since her first name is common in the Muslim world (it means flower), but apart from that I haven't been able to find any information about her on the internet. So you'll just have to trust my word, follow the links here and download some of her songs to see how wonderfully, quartertonally vibratingly great she is. I have no idea what the lyrics are about, but I'm sure they're pretty melodramatic. And what better place to perform a song (probably) called "betrayal" than in front of a swimming pool somewhere in the Balkans? Enjoy:



The title track of the album Samo nebo zna is not bad either:



Turbofolk rules, pc world music eat your heart out!