ZVONKO

It was on my wife’s so-called “bucket list”: see Zvonko Bogdan live. She had fought and won her battle with breast cancer, and her perspective on life had shifted from uncertainty, through cautious optimism, to the renewed vigour of remission. She had been part of the management of KUD Avala here in Montreal, for which our son danced folklore while she sang in the “Biseri” choir. Many of Zvonko’s songs were the standards in the choir’s performance programs.

For my part, I had a media player with a collection of Yugoslav “old-town songs” for car trips. Because I didn’t understand the lyrics, it served as an ideal background music at work. However, listening to that playlist repeatedly, the melodies began to work their magic on me, meeting with the blues we all harbour inside. I learned some lyrics and picked up a little Serbian along the way.

But before any of this happened, my wife and I learned that Zvonko was playing at Tamburica Fest in Novi Sad while we were there. Under clear skies on a hot summer night, after a fine Friday evening meal at that

Danube resto beside the bridge I told you about, we sauntered up the hill to the gates of Petrovaradin.

Immersing ourselves in a crowd estimated at about five thousand, beer and rakija accompanied a joyous mood of anticipation. Twenty-one musicians with various stringed instruments appeared and formed a semi-circle, followed by our fellow from Sombor sporting a classy suit and greeted with raucous applause. At this point I was still not so familiar with the man and his music. I approached the event as a curious outsider and, observing the people around me, I was amazed. Couples held each other and swayed. People who had grown up as friends, and others who had just met, young and old, they all sang together.

There was such beautiful goodwill everywhere, and it was infectious. But one of the things I noticed most was that the young people, teenagers you would not expect to be attracted by this artist in the face of local and global pop trends, seemed to know all of the lyrics to all of his songs. This opened my eyes to the legacy Zvonko has established in Serbia: he connects.

Years later, our annual visit to Belgrade coincided with a rain-postponed show of his at the Old Weifert Brewery in Pančevo. A beautiful courtyard packed with people, a small stage with Zvonko and only six musicians, and… thundershowers again! But this time, the show went on. We all sang together, me included, for I had learned Ko te ima taj te nema and a few others by this point. Strangers seemed like friends, and no one cared that we were getting soaked - it just didn’t matter. The experience was transformative: I felt like I was dissolving into the feelings evoked by his music, nostalgic for everyone else but novel to me. At the end of the show, I bumped into him in front of the bathroom and said the only thing I could think to say in my broken Serbian: “Zvonko, ti si legenda!” He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and said somethi ng I believe translated to, “Thanks, but I really gotta go!” I cherish that moment.

In the days that followed, I realised that Zvonko’s songs are like flat pebbles whipped across a still lake, skipping over the wounds of history and touching precisely the places in the heart that needed to be touched.  This metaphor allowed me to understand why, and express how, this special man is the treasure that he is.

And to top it off, my wife got to tick the item off her list twice!