Laibach during a concert in Niš, Serbia, in 2018 – © RadulePerisic/Shutterstock
It is the most famous musical group of the Slovenian music scene of the last decades. The Laibachs are known for being provocative and irreverent. They were supposed to play in Kyiv these days, but their positions on the war did not please the organizers who canceled the concert
It was 26 September 1980 when two posters appeared in Trbovlje, a gray Slovenian mining town. The first had a black cross, in the second someone was gouging out his victim’s eyes. Both bore the inscription Laibach. It was an invitation to an exhibition and a concert which should have taken place two days later. Communist authorities immediately banned that show and a flurry of controversy ensued. The cross recalled too much Nazi iconography, while the use of the German name of Ljubljana was considered an unacceptable provocation.
The most famous musical group of the Slovenian music scene of the last decades was born. An artistic collective that with its branches in the field of visual arts and theater challenged the taboos of Slovenian national identity and played to highlight the contradictions and the charm of totalitarianism.
A possible phenomenon at the end of socialism, when the regime was collapsing and where everything seemed lawful. A peculiarity not only Slovenian, but also of other Eastern European bands. The Laibachs, however, were on the crest of the wave throughout the 1980s and 1990s and still today they continue to be objects of worship and study, passing successfully from one provocation to another.
In 2015, they were the first foreign band to perform in Pyongyang, North Korea to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of Liberation from Japanese Occupation. The message sent to the Korean authorities at the time was eloquent: “You are us. Our form is your content. What we sing, you put into practice”. There would have been two concerts scheduled, but after seeing the first performance, the Koreans decided to cancel the replica that was supposed to be staged in the following days.
A few weeks ago the Laibachs enjoyed great success in their homeland, participating in the opening ceremony of the Nordic World Ski Championship in Planica. They took the stage to sing “O Tricorno la mia casa”, a classic song from the Slovenian national popular and patriotic repertoire, dedicated to the symbolic mountain of the country. A performance, made together with other singers, with an epic tone that thrilled those who say they have Slovenia in their hearts; although others have pointed out that the Laibachs have become a caricature of themselves and that this time, however, rather than mocking power, they actually seemed to be at its service.
Precisely in conjunction with that representation, the band returned to filling the pages of the newspapers announcing that on March 31st they would sing in concert in Kyiv in Ukraine. In a statement issued by the group it was specified that while Europe was preparing to celebrate its idea of freedom and solidarity on 9 May in Liverpool, they would be the ones to bring Eurovision to Ukraine, where “the only true vision of Europe”. The significant title of the initiative was meant to be a sort of compensation for the failure to organize the European song festival in the country, which would have rightfully belonged to Ukraine after the Kalush Orchestra’s victory last year with the song Stefania.
This time they wouldn’t be the first stars to sing in the besieged capital. Last May the U2 frontman Bono, together with The Edge had improvised a concert in a subway station, but for the Laibachs there would have been a performance even at the Bel Etage Music Hall, a real concert hall. In the end, however, nothing came of it.
Speaking of the current war, the Laibachs said it is nothing more than a conflict between the United States and Russia, conducted on Ukrainian soil. “A cynical proxy war for the geostrategic interests of great powers and financial capital” such as the war industry. The organizers did not like the considerations of the Slovenian artists. For the resisters, being told that they are nothing but puppets in the hands of the United States and high finance was the classic straw that broke the camel’s back.
Similar speeches made from afar were not lacking in the 1990s, referring to the Slovenian independence process and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Seen from the perspective of those who fought on the ground to gain independence or to preserve the integrity of their borders, however, such considerations were perceived as deeply offensive, the result of a lack of knowledge of the situation and a superiority complex. Living room speeches, made from afar, peppered with sophisticated geopolitical analyzes and pacifist intentions.
The organizers asked the band for explanations, who replied in a statement saying they were on the side of the Ukrainians, but also admired Russian culture. This has only added fuel to the fire. In the end, after an increasingly heated back and forth, the concert was cancelled.
On the matter, the writer Goran Vojnović succinctly concluded that to the Ukrainians “it may seem absurd that people who tell them of their immeasurable love for Russian culture come from a country which thirty years ago, after a war of only ten days with the Yugoslav People’s Army deleted Yugoslav writers, including Danilo Kiš and Ivo Andrić, from its textbooks, while Yugoslav music, including anti-war pieces, was banned from radios for several years”.
In war it is difficult to cultivate love for one’s adversary, even for his culture. The scars that remain are deep and the reconstruction very difficult. To understand this, you don’t need to go to Ukraine, but just look at the Yugoslav wars or the wounds not yet fully healed left on the eastern border by the Second World War.
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