Archives for January 4th, 2005

"Let me suffer if I love her" by the Paloma Ensemble.

I’m grateful to Radovan Anzulovic (creator of the Slovenian Phrase Guide) for pointing me to Yu-Mex: Mexican Music in Fifties Yugoslavia. I had no idea about that there was a Mexican fad in Yugoslavia, but judging by the wide range of album covers on display, there certainly was.

The site, which has four pages of old album covers and mp3s, traces the origin of the fad to Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948, which prompted Yugoslav authorities to reject Russian films in favor of Mexican ones. Why Mexico? Yu-Mex explains:

"It was far away, the chances of Mexican tanks appearing on Yugoslav
borders were slight and, best of all, in Mexican films they always
talked about revolution in the highest terms."

The film Un Día de vida (1950) by Emilio Fernández, which told the story of two men in the Mexican revolution, was a box-office smash. Yu-Mex writes:

"Old people in the former republics of Yugoslavia even today regard it
as surely one of the most well known films in the world ever made
although in truth it is probably unknown in every other country, even
Mexican web pages don’t mention it much.
The Mexican influence spread to all of the popular culture: fake
Mexican bands were forming and their records still can be found at the
flea markets nowadays. This is a small homage to hundreds of performers who covered themselves with sombreros to become Slavic Mexicans."

* Yu-Mex: Mexican Music in Fifties Yugoslavia
* Jugoslovanska Mehika (Slovenian version)