The cheerful melancholy of Zvonko Bogdan

Zvonko Bogdan said in an interview that Bunjevci are a cheerful, happy and melancholic people. If anyone is still wondering what kind of music comes from such a mentality, it is enough to listen to any song performed by the said gentleman and his tambourine players. It is, at the same time, an ode to life and an overwhelming sadness. And it becomes even more difficult (musically, philosophically and emotionally) when you add Bosnian sevdah, the smell of Dalmatia, Hungarian passion and Romanian mystery to all of that, so you go even further north to Russia. Divine gibberish, as written by Teofil Pančić.

Each Zvonko Bogdan concert is a kind of journey through time. Not only because of the songs he performs - in which he has no equal - but also because of the stories that accompany them and which he conveys to the audience, setting the pace for us in Vojvodina slow motion, taking us to farms, to pubs, to the company of poets and bohemians. There are also Belgrade and the once famous "Union" hotel in those stories, where various people took their first musical steps, and to which the beginning of the career of our Frank Sinatra, Net King Cole or, to quote Teofil Pančić once again, "Džeger from Szabadka" is connected. There is so much to the story of Zvonko Bogdan's biography that a substantial book could be written... Nevertheless, the film was created first.

Ej, farms directed by Maja Uzelac premiered at Beldocs on May 27, at the Dom omladine. Ivan Kljajić, a music producer and composer who has been collaborating with Zvonko Bogdan for years and hears firsthand "how it used to be", came up with the idea for the film script, and Maja Uzelac was the first choice for the director. It was necessary to shape different segments from Zvonko Bogdan's life in an authentic way - success as a jockey, love for horses, pigeons, devotion to family and certainly an inseparable relationship with music and the plains. In 54 minutes, the life of one of the last witnesses of the world, who has long since ceased to exist, is vividly and movingly evoked, although he still lives and sighs, wistfully or with a smile, in the sound of tambourines and in Zvonko's verses. "The tambourine is a tree that has a soul", Peca Popović will say at one point in the film and add - "but what is a soul worth if there is no voice that will give it meaning".

Reminding us of the term talking singers, our esteemed critic pointed out the most important thing when it comes to Zvonko Bogdan's performances: the audience trusts him the moment he sings. This was also the case during the film, because apart from the blacksmith (who made horseshoes for Zvonko's dad), associates, musicians and son, most of the time we see and listen to our host. He tells us about his upbringing, his parents and the moments that inspired him to write songs that will become classics of "Vojvodina chanson" over the years. "Ej salaši" is his first author's composition - he wrote the lyrics on the bus one morning in 1973, when he was returning from a concert in Belgrade to Sombor. Music was soon created, followed by a recording with Janiko Balaž and - radio success. In one of Zvonko's stories, we see before our eyes a picture of a sleeping town in which a man, accompanied by tambourines, returns from a tavern and quietly sings a song to his wife (Zvonko's mother) "all night long, my gold sleeps"... "I've been preparing my mrkov for a long time" - it will be created later as a dedication to him - to his late father and farmer who is no longer there; "It is said that you are cheating on me" evokes memories of early childhood and an uncle who left this world at a very young age, leaving behind a young widow.

However, the dynamic of the film does not allow us to sink too much into melancholy, nor to hide in the music until the end. Fast editing and sudden cuts bring us back to the reality of Pannonian expanses and water behind the doors of Vojvodina dining rooms, furnished bedrooms where, however, there are no people, and no one can hear the songs on the television anymore. Only we listen to them.

We stop at the stations with unusual toponyms - "Fijaker stari", "Suknja plava", "Osam tamburaša"... We linger under the Petrovaradin clock for a second longer with Janika's note. Hey farm boy is a tribute to a time that, as most participants in the film conclude, will never happen again. However, on this suggestive journey through the memories of Zvonko Bogdan, many of us have passed and along the paths of my childhood. And for that we can thank our great master - his songs have been around for long enough that they were spontaneously transferred from our and their parents to us. And so they became a little bit ours. And that generational flow continues. In a light rhythm, how else?