The Balkans: “Whose Is This Song?” · Global Voices
Elena Ignatova

Recently several Macedonian bloggers published links to the online documentary “Whose Is This Song?” by a Bulgarian director Adela Peeva on their blogs and started discussing the story. The documentary was filmed as an idea that the director got during a dinner in Istanbul with several friends (a Macedonian, a Serb, a Greek and a Turk), when all of them said that the song playing in the background was from their country.
First to publish [mkd] a short review of the documentary was Arheo Blog:
[…] Although the documentary doesn’t have any political tendency, the search for an identity of a song shows the search for the identity and national impatience for the nations from the Balkans. Instead of connecting them, not knowing the situation, in some moments Peeva has to deal with emotional reaction of the interviewed people thinking that she is offending them. Trying to connect the cultural heritage for the Balkans, this time through music, Adela Peeva at the end will conclude that it’s almost unbelievable how only one song with unknown background can create hatred in people. This is shown in the end of the movie, in the scene where one Fiesta is transformed into a field that is on fire and its save by “people from different ethnicities”. This is happening at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey.
Although it’s a great documentary, I was intrigued by the two facts said in the movie – “That this is a war song and that the rhythms are from North Europe, because they are not typical for the Balkans”. It’s up to you to determine which song it is.
When the post of Arheo Blog was shared [mkd] on Kajmak.ot there were several reactions:
Arwena:
I don’t know why there is always a tendency to look for argument and reasons for national tendencies. That is always the case for the Balkans, because politics is unavoidably connected with history. I stand by: “that the documentary doesn’t have any political tendencies”, because it’s made with another purpose. Probably it didn’t have that motive at the beginning, but the results show something completely different. This is something that we have seen several times when there is mixture between cultural heritage and achievements of different ethnicities and civilizations. Everything artistic that includes more sides, by the nature of this region will lead to nationalism and it will be considered as motive with political tendencies.
Zlochko:
Yes, yes. It’s made by completely naive reasons to find the true origin of the song. That’s why she says to the Bosnians that the Serbs have the original (although she still hasn’t been in Serbia), she plays the Bosnian version to the Serbs, and to the Bulgarians she says that the Turks claim that the song is theirs.
There is nothing naive in the documentary… and if it’s full with something it’s politics. But it’s good that it’s made in that way – it shows the nations here in the best way :).
The blogger Razvigor also published the video and wrote [mkd]:
[…] The author of the film in the part for Albania said that she would return, and that really happened with her last movie “Divorce Albanian Style” [mkd]. Is that movie available on the internet also?
These are the things I was talking about when I was searching for the Macedonian Michael Moore [mkd].
There are two version of the song in Macedonia: from the town of Prilep “Oj ti Paco Drenovchanke” and from the town of Tetovo “Oj devojche, ti Tetovsko jabolche.”