To raise awareness of people living with HIV and AIDS, a variety of concerts were held around the world on December 1st (World Aids Day) and the following weekend. Having been told a few times that I need to see Dubioza Kolectiv live, I decided that I would cover the concert held in Zagreb, playing alongside Stereo MCs (yes, you do know that name), Kawasaki 3P and Svadbas. When I got the tram through Zagreb to Dom Sportova, I was expecting an average sized place – maybe a few thousand people maximum – but when I got to the venue it was a huge arena, usually used for ice hockey. While not quite as big, it’s not far off Wembley Stadium, and with a ridiculously low entry price, plus incredibly cheap beer, it’s the perfect location for music tourism!
Unfortunately, after a day of travelling, I didn’t make it in time to catch Svadbas, but after entering the arena, Kawasaki 3P were taking to the stage. Kawasaki 3P are an eight piece ska band from Zagreb, who have been around since 1993, and have a cult following in Croatia as well as having a decent following all around south eastern Europe. They played a good, fun, brand of ska, with a large number of elements of punk music, and they had no problem getting the gradually increasing crowd dancing along to all the tracks. Musically they were really interesting to listen to, and kept my attention easily – even without me understanding the lyrics.
After a short break, Stereo MCs took to the stage. They’re a name I’m familiar with, as I enjoyed their album Connected back when I was a young child (I realise I’m not old, we’re talking mid-nineties), playing a fairly popular brand of hip hop and electronic music. I must admit, I was a bit shocked to see this name on the bill; I guess I just presumed the band were no longer going, as they started in the mid-eighties, and their most popular songs came out early nineties. Turns out they’ve been busy since then, released seven more albums, and are still going strong tour wise, and they easily exceeded my expectations. The band, fronted by Rob B, backed with electronic samples, live drums, live bass and two backing singers, easily got the crowd moving early, playing some fairly calm electronic music, with dub-esque guitar parts and some great vocal harmonies. By the time they played their two most popular songs (Connected and Step It Up), massive amounts of people in the arena were singing along while dancing around in a crazy manner. The newer songs were great too though, and I thought it was genuinely a shame that they seem to have disappeared from popular music since the nineties, as their new songs are as good, if not better than their popular songs of the nineties. Weirdly, I bumped into Rob B from the band in the airport on the way home. He told me that they’re currently in the process of booking a UK tour for next year, as well as releasing a new album. So I would say that if they’re playing near you, they’re definitely worth checking out; still a very strong band after all these years.
Finally, it was time for the band the arena had been yelling for all evening, Dubioza Kolectiv. Hailing from Bosnia, Dubioza Kolectiv are a seven piece band, playing a mixture of rock, dub, hip hop, and Bosnian folklore, there’s a bit of everything in their sound. Taking to the stage dressed head to toe in matching yellow and black football shirts, they give off a good impression straight away, even before the music has kicked in. Starting with a looped sample as each member took to the stage, the band started with the opening track off their most recent album, Wake Up, which instantly got the people in the seats standing and dancing and the whole middle of the crowd jumping, the saxophone playing through the traditional folklore influenced melody, with the delayed guitar adding a reggae style to the track. The band went straight from this track into the more hip hop influenced Um Klade Valja, with great dual vocals, and some great guitar riffs. The songs kept coming in a fast and furious manner, and it’s obvious the band want to play as many songs as they can in their set, and don’t want to waste any time. The last few gigs I’ve been to have had the opposite approach, with the bands trying to kill as much time as possible, so it was a breath of fresh air to see a band that actually seemed to want to play everything they could. In no time at all, Dubioza Kolectiv returned to their newest album to play Eurosong, complete with the band holding up signs to announce scores during the break towards the end.
Throughout the set it’s good to see the band all over the place while performing. Both vocalists run around the stage and onto the speakers near the audience constantly, making it a bit hard to keep up. Even the bassist and guitarist ended up on the speakers right in front of the audience on a few occasions, while the vocalists jumped around in an insane manner behind; the band were definitely enjoying performing to the huge audience. Vlast I Policija managed to get the majority of the huge audience shouting the main lines back. It’s obvious the music is well known in Zagreb, and the audience were familiar with the lyrics and the time changes, and it’s good to see so many people getting involved. Well known tracks such as Vidi, Vidi, Vidi and Celebrate the Riot just confirm this, with the band in their element, and the audience jumping around singing the words back. After a slurry of samples, the band returned back on stage for a quick encore, finishing with Balkan Funk, which was even better performed live than on record, the energy particularly pushing this up a notch. The saxophone playing was brilliant throughout the set, but shone through on songs such as Balkan Funk.
While I probably wasn’t in the best position to judge how well the night raised awareness of HIV/AIDs (the only band to speak in English between songs were Stereo MCs who did make a short speech on the importance of protection, and other than that there were a few signs trying to dispel myths, kindly translated to me as they showed up letting people know that the virus couldn’t be spread by hand holding, for example), it reminded me how awesome live music can be outside of the UK – that’s not to say live music isn’t awesome in the UK, obviously, just that there’s a tonne of live music out there that we’re not able to see, still great, and still successful in a more local area. Dubioza Kolektiv, for example, are a huge band around the Balkans, and yet they’re basically unknown here. It also reminded me how music trumps most world issues; not only is it a platform to discuss issues with the artists world, but it’s a fairly safe platform at that. For example, the headliners are predominantly from a Muslim background, but the venue was held in a predominantly Christian area, and yet despite fairly recent history, the fairly young audience singing along and jumping around like crazy shows that music is more important than past issues. Potentially it’s music from backgrounds like this which will play a large part in fixing these kind of issues anyway, by approaching the issues in music, as well as by bringing people together. Music is a pretty powerful thing after all. Overall then, an insanely good night of music in Zagreb, with a good variety of styles covered, and a huge crowd seemingly enjoying themselves. A special thanks to the security guards at Dom Sportova, who were happy to help me out, and even start a few conversations with me, in perfect English, something which I was a bit afraid may be a problem.
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