Excited about the possibilities of the genre Drum 'n Bass, I logged on to mp3.com and found an artist by the name of Nee from Yugoslavia.
Scrolling to the right and
clicking on his picture should bring you to his homepage.
NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia has been halted. Thus far the depth of
devastation caused by NATO's bombs and bombing policy has not been the focus of
American media. It is, however, spectacularly present in the music Nee from
Yugoslavia, whose real name is Nikola.
One of his cuts is called "Birds Awakened Loud at 4:45 A.M." It is not hard
to imagine the reason the birds in the title were awakened. Other titles include
"Air Raid Warning Sirens", "Anti Aircraft Fire 2", and "Explosion 2". They are
all straightforward, and the sounds in the cuts are the sounds that the titles
say they are. Moreover, they are, disconcertingly, straight out of Belgrade.
"Pirot Cherry" is Nikola's major work to date, and it is a high-quality
track without direct wartime content, but it is also not as striking as the
tracks that deal directly and specifically with the bombing of his city.
The titles and sounds that Nee from Yugoslavia presents combine to
make an artistic product that is powerful and disturbingly true. Why? And how
can a simple tape-recording be seen as art?
Nikola told me in an e-mail message (You can send artists e-mails through
, at the bottom of their
feature lists of tracks) that he is at the center of the conflict in Yugoslavia
but it is so deep that he can't understand it. But, bombs were falling on his
head and the heads of family and friends, so he had to do something.
In his message he was not specifically talking about making music, but I
think his feeling goes back to the basic human need to express what cannot be
understood. The American people did not seem to care very much about the
information that they were receiving from the media and the Yugoslavians are mad
at us for this.
On top of this, both governments were making propaganda, while both groups of
people knew that something was unspeakably wrong. The art in Nee from
Yugoslavia's tracks is his arrival at a central and indisputable
phenomenon: Bombs are falling. And he makes you feel it. Everything past this is
the responsibility of the people, as long as we constantly remember that actual
bombs are actually falling on actual people.
Nikola has great skill as a transcriber of the world around him. He knows
that before people can make more complicated statements, they must recognize
what is simply happening. No other communication medium, be it TV, newspaper or
Web site, has given us the immediacy that he has, because his is not
information, it is raw expression. It is a brilliant framing of sounds.
Nee from Yugoslavia has given us something to listen to, and it is our
turn to listen back.
