BRIDGING THE GREAT BALKAN DIVIDES WITH MUSIC

By Matthew Brunwasser


SOFIA: To "Balkanize," according to Webster's dictionary, still means "to break up into small, mutually hostile political units."
And it still is difficult to find common ground among the Balkan states, where ignorance, prejudice and indifference among neighbors persists even though four countries in the region — Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Slovenia — are now in the European Union, and the others aspire to join.
But Balkanika Music Television is using pop-folk music — a uniquely post-Communist Balkan blend of Western pop, Euro- dance, traditional folk and eastern or Turkish styles — to create a sort of cultural unity as well as a common music market.
"For centuries it has been separation, not hatred, between the Balkan countries which has kept people apart," said Victor Kasamov, the owner of Balkanika. "I think it will be helpful for the music industry regionally."
Started in August 2005, Balkanika's goal is to reach 100 percent of households through cable or satellite access across the Balkan region of 67 million people.
Balkanika, which broadcasts pop and pop-folk videos by artists from around the region 24 hours a day, is being built gradually by signing contracts with individual local cable operators and music producers in different countries through Balkanika's national representatives. Currently, access is free via Eutelsat's W2 satellite and cable television in seven countries — Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Romania, Bosnia, Albania and Slovenia — with varying degrees of coverage. The channel signed a contract last month for distribution through an operator in Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic.
Perhaps the most novel aspect of Balkanika is that it is completely multilingual: programming switches back and forth among any of 10 languages. This means most of the channel's viewers at any given time are hearing a language they don't understand.
While Slavic-language speakers can understand each other at least somewhat, Albanian, Greek, Turkish and Romanian are unintelligible to speakers of other Balkan languages.
"For singers who look good and sing well, it doesn't matter what language they sing in," Kasamov said. He said the people of the Balkans were accustomed to the proximity of languages they did not understand.
Kasamov noted the success of a song by the Romanian duet Alina and Costi, "Necazuri si suparari" ("Troubles and Quarrels"), which became a major hit in Bulgaria despite the fact that most Bulgarians do not understand Romanian. Dual-language duets have also become fashionable, featuring male and female performers singing to each other in their own languages.
The videos are highly stylized, offering sparkling, brightly colored escapes from everyday life. Well-groomed and embellished young women strut and gyrate across the screen, singing about the universal sufferings of the heart.
Most of the channel's commercials are still self-promotional, advertising the musical products and artists of the Bulgarian label Ara Audio-Video, also owned by Kasamov. There are also ads for recordings and performances of Balkanika's partners from different labels in other countries.
Kasamov said advertising currently brought in about 65 percent of Balkanika's income, with the rest coming from on-screen sales of ring tones or fortune-telling and romance-forecasting services ordered by SMS.
With a simple office in Sofia and no production facilities, Balkanika keeps expenses low. While Kasamov declined to say how much he had invested, he said he expected Balkanika to break even within two to three years.
In October, Balkanika is planning to produce its first program: a weekly "Top 5" list from each of the Balkan countries.
Lyuben Stanev, owner of Diplomat Business Group, who advertises his water boilers on Balkanika, said the television channel had "a lot of prospects."
Stanev said he liked the fact that people in other countries saw his ads, even if they did not understand Bulgarian. While his Bulgarian-made boilers are sold only domestically, he said, customers come from neighboring Macedonia and Serbia to buy them in Bulgarian shops.
"It's still a young television," he said. "There is a place in the Balkans for such a television, and the first one is always the best positioned."
Nikolina Karaivanova, Balkanika's marketing and advertising manager, said entertainment channels gave advertisements a greater impact than did serious programs, since their viewers tended to be happier and in a lighter mood. Balkanika viewers also tend to leave their television sets on when doing household chores, listening as well as watching. "The message has a better way of getting through," she said.
Bulgaria has some 170 cable television channels, though the overcrowded market is consolidating. But Balkanika is one of the few that reach neighboring countries.
The national television markets of the Balkans are "slightly introverted and closed onto themselves," according to Kiril Gotsev, a former general director of Bulgarian National Television. He said that when the Balkan countries emerged from political isolation in 1989, "they viewed each other with suspicion."
"At the moment they are opening and starting to share know-how," he said, adding that Balkanika made him optimistic about the trend toward integration. He said he expected other channels in Bulgaria and the region to broadcast more videos and programs from neighboring countries.
So far, the toughest nut for Balkanika to crack has been Croatia. That is not because of any lack of enthusiasm for pop-folk — or just "folk" as it is called in the former Yugoslavia — but because of national feelings, said Alen Borbas, Balkanika's representative in Croatia and Bosnia. Croatian channels, Borbas said, won't show pop-folk videos because the genre is too closely associated with Serbia, whose pop-folk industry is the most developed in the Balkans.
"People say that if you listen to pop- folk, you are not a Croatian patriot," said Borbas, who was in the military police during the war with Serbia in the early '90s in his city of Osijek, 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, from the Serbian border.
Still, he said, he can see attitudes changing: "Many people here listen to pop-folk, even the former soldiers. In the discos they show Balkanika via satellite on plasma television sets