Guerrilla Radio: Rock 'N' Roll Radio and Serbia's Underground Resistance
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Tolk.
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Written by Matthew Collin.
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($14.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
This is a book about a group of Belgrade’s young idealists and their pirate radio station B92, who began with the naive desire to simply play music, but ended up facing two wars, economic sanctions, violent police and government crackdowns, the attentions of armed gangsters and neo-Nazi politicians, and ultimately became the leaders of an opposition movement forced into exile. Before Milosevic was finally ousted in October 2000, B92 would be shut down and resume broadcasting four times as, through an inspired combination of courage, imagination, and black humor—and a playlist, from The Clash’s “White Riot” to Public Enemy’s rap manifesto, “Fight the Power,” which in sound and spirit, echoed the street fighting in which they sometimes took part—it somehow persisted in disseminating the truth. Matthew Collin knows the founders of the station well and has had extraordinary access to the key personalities and their archives. He first reported on the station as part of a feature on Belgrade’s mass street protest in 1996. The book is based on in-depth, first person interviews and exhaustive background research. “Matthew Collin captures the conviction of a generation whose culture and identity were under siege....”—Independent on SundayUser Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Tolk thinks this book is Excellent.
Rock'n'Roll Radio and Serbia's Underground Resistance: Armed only with a stack of old punk records and a dream of freedom, one defiant Belgrade radio station waged a ten year war against Slobodan Milosevic's dictatorship - and won
For most Europeans, the war in Serbia was just a bit of news on TV. Very few of us are probably aware of the fact that the struggle for freedom actually lasted ten years - as they went by unnoticed by the west. What we might have noticed was 24 September 1999. That day, NATO started bombing Serbia in a last attempt to stop Milosevic from attacking Kosovo. But the countless demonstrations against Milosevic were not seen on TV. Nor was the struggle of Radio B92 or of the activist group Otpor ('Resistance'). This book tells the story of Radio B92. But also the story of people who stayed in their country to fight for it without weapons and those who left it because it did not leave them air to breath. How would I have decided if I had been in their position? I don't know and I am glad I never had to take this decision.
But B92 was also about fun, punk and not being conformist. But how can you be all that if people in your country rely on you for true information they don't get anywhere else. Tough question....
Amidst the serious programming were plenty of silly stunts [...]. But there was also a lot of hard-edged, bitterly dark humour. This was the period when Milosevic's mass rallies of nationalist Serbs all across Yugoslavia were reaching boiling point. A demonstration was organized in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia - a city noted for its lack of Serb inhabitants. A B92 presenter began randomly calling numbers in Ljubljana, introducing himself as "Voja, your old friend from the army", and asking whether he could come and stay at their house that Saturday and bring twelve Serb friends with him. The recipients of the call, naturally, were horrified at the prospect of a dozen redneck nationalists descending upon them - but their reactions exposed what the rest of Yugoslavia thought of Serbia's populist frenzy.
Matthew Collin is a journalist from Great Britain who mainly writes about popular culture, music, travel technology and the politics of social justice.