Miss Margita's sense of sound

I would like to write a few words about the girl Margaret, to our heroines new wave day, who seemed to have stepped out of a Knut Hamsun novel, so free, so unaware of her beauty and talent, like a Marquez Remedios, so unsurpassedly focused on the music, on the architectural dance of lines, on her own being and, finally, on the electric magic of your instrument.

Does this sound too pathetic for 2024?

Because, the first band Margita Magi Stefanović (1959–2002), under the name Katarina II, released the self-titled album exactly 40 years ago, exactly in Orwell's 1984, which may have cast its fatal spell on their unruly existence. Who would have thought that from then on, the Ministries of Love, Peace, Truth and Abundance would proliferate in this world and burn human potential homo sapiens? Catherine the Great as if she foresaw the fall of our waning civilization and mourned its tragic delusions already at its first realization. And then gave the promise of euphoria for all the rebels and misfits, sowed the ecstasy of youth from here to the beginning, directing her sensual arrow towards the sisterhood and brotherhood of humanity, equal in all things.

But the poets of the cosmos always live in the past or the future anyway. Margita Magi Stefanović is one of those visionaries who patiently processed the voracious frenzy of the world with her innate finesse. She was the only child of her father, television and theater director Slavoljub Stefanović Ravasi, and mother Desanka. A promising pianist, born from the distinguished class of professor Miroslava Lili Petrović. Graduated architect. Beloved girlfriend of Srdjan Vejvoda, who provided us with so many amazing photos from the earliest days of the 1980s for the exhibition Magi - When I go to, placed this spring on the Plateau in front of the "Cvijeta Zuzorić" Art Pavilion. A respected bandmate who was her second family. A worshiped artist throughout Yugoslavia, a role model for countless young musicians who stepped onto the stage even decades later, encouraged even after so much time by her courage.

And Margita herself represents another personality in a series that begins with the nun Jefimija, through the composer Ljubica Marić, all the way to today's outstanding authors such as the poets Ana Ristović and Jelena Žugić, the painter Simonida Rajčević, the musicians Konstrakta and Sajsi MC.

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In April of this year - in the organization of Dom omladine Beograd - Dragan Ambrozić and I made our own exhibition Magi - When I go to first of all, a dedication to Margita Maga Stefanović, but also to all the other protagonists of the new-wave turmoil in our socialist popular culture at the time. The girls were muses, authors, musicians, vocal frontwomen, photographers (Goranka Matić!), artists and works of art in themselves during those unreal eighties. Among all of them, Maga's aura had its own special shine, and her long stay at the top of the Yugoslav rock scene testified to the high quality of her playing and arranging powers.

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During that decade, we were bombarded with Margit's spectacular photos – album covers, interviews, posters – her exotic face and presence beckoned attention and admiration. But no, we didn't choose such photos. In an attempt to rehabilitate Magi as an exceptional personality and clearly separate her from the ugly stories in which many wrong things were concluded about her, we wanted our exhibition to present only the works of those people who knew and loved her closely. And it is precisely this feeling of love that washes over her earliest photographs from the beginning of the 1980s, taken by Srđan Vejvoda, recording her youthful naivety, but also her unequivocally strong character, her fashionable chic with shining edges, in short, all those preparatory actions to soon become a rock star.

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The photographs of Srđan Vejvoda and Goranka Matić at the exhibition will soon begin to intertwine - as Margita has already stepped onto the rock stage of SKC - then they will completely surrender to Goranka's lens, going towards the peaks of those most glorious EKV days in the late 1980s, in order to Aleksandar Kujučev rounded off this series with his brilliant photos of Ekaterina Velika, made for their last studio album Someone is watching us from 1993. End.

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While preparing the catalog of the exhibition that is now in front of us, Dragan and I once again passed through the beauty of the streets of Belgrade, where Margita seemed to have been filmed yesterday, we watched her smiling embrace with Goranka immortalized by Goran Vejvoda, her spiritual rapture at the band's first concerts. , her gazing into some mystical distance at which she smiles in an almost unearthly way.

And yet she is happy all the time, strong, it simply emanates from these photos, and that happiness and strength keep her in the capsule of a time that resisted breaking for a long time. The collapse of Yugoslavia was a kind of heartless execution of Catherine the Great and who knows how many other bands throughout the former SFRY. Delayed, their number - individuals, groups - was also much higher. But the beauty, wisdom and joy of this composition, Margit's deep dark eyes and unassailable hair remained forever imprinted in the stone of the epoch. We still discover their traces today as mysterious records of great dignity.

In an age when the necessary rigidity was required, Margita and her comrades from the band Catherine II/Ekaterina Velika did not show themselves to be metal willing to bend, nor did they agree to be miserably silenced, trampled dolls. Both in happy times and in other times, this noble generation considered it their human duty to populate their own self with kindness and imagination, spreading that wonder around. It's a pity that bad times always find the most correct ones more easily than those who bend on time.

However, we will always remember Miss Margita's sense of sound.