"You can always listen to Priya": Concert of the Serbian folk star in the biggest hall in Germany

It's raining and cold, but high heels and laughter echo in front of Germany's largest concert hall. "Nash" and German mix as the Lankses Arena in Cologne awaits the performance Aleksandra Prijović.

"She has both sad and happy songs. No matter how you feel, you can always listen to Priya," he tells za Deutsche says a girl from Croatia who lives in Oberhausen.

A woman with a 14-year-old daughter says that they are from Skopje, and they shot to Cologne from Belgium with some other friends. "Songs, her very character, youth, beauty, she has everything. We have not had the opportunity to listen to our stars in recent years. That's why we came here to Cologne".

Photo: Iva Manojlović/DW

There are more women, of course. But there is also Mesid Karjašević, who lives in Bonn, about thirty kilometers away, and is a native of Janja in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "I came because my wife wanted to come, I was forced to," he says honestly.

"But, in general, she is one of the biggest Balkan stars, she has good songs, she sings well, why shouldn't I come?" He has charisma. Many people think she is popular because of Brena, but she has something of her own and I think that's why she's popular and that's why she's where she is right now," he told a Deutsche Welle reporter.

The story of "mother-in-law" Lepoja Brena follows Aleksandra Prijović, just as many credit her husband, Filip Živojinović. It just makes her angry sometimes.

But she reached the biggest arena in Germany, and that doesn't happen just like that. Many a turbo-folk star - mockingly called "the jay" - filled discotheques from Zurich to Hamburg.

But, if it is not clear with Aleksandra Prijović (29) whether it is still turbo-folk at all, it is clear that her popularity far exceeds the glamorous clubs whose owners know that it is good business to bring girls to the guest workers.

So, what is this young woman with a cracking voice and a spectacular performance? And why is it so popular that some older and supposedly more cultured people are scratching their heads and can't understand what's going on?

Is Prija, as they call her, the voice of a new generation of women or a kind of compensation for Svetlana Cec Ražnatović to those in the region who, for, um, understandable reasons, could not listen to Cec so publicly?

Photo: Iva Manojlović/DW

The "positive" generation

Writer Muharem Bazdulj jokingly says that he wrote a story about the phenomenon of Aleksandra Prijović five years ago - "before it was cool".

He was so interested in it, he says, that he went to the concert in the Belgrade Arena as a research expedition. His eye caught the largest number of young women - not teenagers, but those who revolved around the singer's "Dayton birthday" (1995).

"In terms of styling, clothes, attitude, they seemed like those relatively successful women at the beginning of their careers who work in banks and insurance companies, read books on the recommendations of influential bookstagrammers and are generally in the mood for an orderly and comfortable life," says Bazdulj for Deutsche Welle.

In his generation, he says, until perhaps those who were born in the mid-eighties, "bohemia" was romanticized, people were drawn to the "blackness" from the songs of Dje or Sinan Sakić, the self-destructive lives of male and female singers, the smoke of pubs and "darkness on the edge city".

"With those born in the mid-eighties and younger, I see a positive turn." Even for artistic types, these are some straight-up lifestyle choices: pressed juices, the gym, good clothes, city-break tourism. I think that Aleksandra Prijović is their generational singer", says Bazdulj.

"I wasn't bad enough for you"

Aleksandra Prijović would be the most popular child of Sombor today if it weren't for a certain basketball player Nikola Jokić.

But she grew up in Croatia's Beli Manastir, not far from Osijek, where she attended elementary school, which today is called "Dr. Franjo Tudjman".

She moved there with her mother after her parents' divorce. She happened to be born right after the end of the war in 1995 and she never attributed the mistreatment by her peers to her origins.

She fought school to join the sometimes cruel Zvezda Granda circus, but she shone especially after the first (2017) and even more strongly the second of the three studio albums "The Sound of Silence" (2022).

For Bazdulja, everything fits in her verse "I wasn't bad enough for you to be good to you". He is from the song "Body", which starts as a ballad, but soon gets turbo-melosy. "Body" because the singer, i.e. the lyrical character, realized that she was just a body for her lover and that it looked good with his suit.

Miljenko Jergović also wrote about something similar on his blog when last year Prijović, to the disbelief of many, sold out five Arenas in Zagreb in a row.

For Jergović, she is the incarnation of Ceca for new generations. "A strong but deeply wounded woman, opposed to her own cruel fate, the role that is intended for her in society, the man who betrayed her, or her own rival - from Ceci's turbo folk epics, in Priya's incarnation she is additionally emancipated, independent, free".

And so, according to Jergović, Prijović becomes a more modern replacement for Ceca. Which, to make sure there is no confusion, is also massively listened to in Croatia, but could never come to Zagreb in her life.

"The bride of the war, Arkan's widow has that indelible symbolic burden for those Croats who worship her, which creates an almost Freudian situation of simultaneous universal attraction and repulsion," writes Jergović.

World, but Balkan

Admittedly, it may be unfair to constantly measure Priya with Cecom. Both came out of nowhere, but there is a big difference in the way they gained popularity, and it's a different time.

Then again, one cannot fail to notice the similarity in modern production and the wealth of genres. For example, in the hit "Dam, dam, dam", Prijović sings about men who are looking for casual one-night stands and says: "It's logical for you, but toxic for me."

The rhythm is reminiscent of American pop and "what's popular in the world now". Only, the voice is Balkan, it vibrates, it is far from ideal, but it is exactly as it should attract the audience.

"Its success is the combination of the popularity of tjaki as a Balkan phenomenon with extremely high production and quality marketing. "Expensive videos bring her closer to the pop mainstream, thus attracting a younger audience, while she wins over folk fans with her folk sound," sociologist Dario Hajrić tells us.

"Somewhere between those two, the feeling of stigma that listening to the songs usually carries with it is lost, because the packaging is too high-quality to be seen as simple popular entertainment, and still authentic enough not to be perceived as generic," he says for Deutsche Welle. .

Photo: Marlon Amoyal/DW

No controversy

It would be unfair to see Aleksandar Prijović only as a product of her production, although she cannot do without it. She is nice, well-mannered, you will never hear from her statements that divide or, far from it, insult someone.

It is possible that Priya's job is made somewhat easier by the fact that - apart from some older generations wondering how such a star can rise without them even having heard of her - the days of the exhausting Kulturkrieg between rockers and folk folk, where the other was always "yikes and shit", have passed. .

"He doesn't drag behind him the baggage and controversies of pop music in the nineties," says Hajrić, who certainly counts himself among rockers. "You may not be interested in her music, but you won't make fun of your friend who goes to her concert."

During the current tour, Prijović sold out halls several times throughout the former Yugoslavia and the countries of the guest workers, but she made the biggest sale in Zagreb. Before that, no one had sold out five Arenas in a row.

This matter was followed by routine seductions, polls in which the majority of portal readers consider such music to be worthless. In Croatia, there have even been, here and there, attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to ban the performances of "jays" from Serbia.

Jergović wrote about this: "Those with Prija have no aesthetic misunderstandings, nor do they themselves have any aesthetic views and cultural needs." To them, she is what she really is not: a chick, a Serbian singer, a Serb, a Serbian..."

Then again, such speeches were not a nuisance for Prijović. On the contrary, any indulgence only attracted additional attention, and that can't be bad for business.
Of the singers who started their careers after Yugoslavia, there are hardly any bigger stars. Admittedly, Aleksandra Prijović is still waiting for the test of time.

In the Cologne Arena, the mood was on a high level, the diaspora gave their all. However, the hall was not full - maybe around seven thousand people. The upper rings of the hall were not even intended for sale.

It may be that seventy euros for a ticket was too much, and in the west of Germany the autumn school holidays have started.

Prijović continues his tour "From East to West" in Chicago, again in Sarajevo and Zagreb, and finally, in December, it ends in the Belgrade Arena. Tickets for that last concert sold out at the end of September - within one day.