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Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
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"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)
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My father has a lot of those records :o) I grew up believing that there had been a mexican musical movement all over Europe. It took me some time to realize that we were the sole owners of such records here in Sweden and that there had been no equivalence of it here.
Do you think this explains why there are three good Mexican restaurants in Ljubljana but few other places with “exotic” cuisine (except for Chinese)? And did this Mexican craze in the ’50s perhaps prepare Slovenes to appreciate Mexican soap operas in the ’90s?
This link was posted on Boing Boing a week ago. (www.boingboing.net/2004/12/24/mp3s_of_yugoslavias_.html)
If don’t know Boing Boing it’s definitely in top 10 of blogs (www.daypop.com/blogrank/, www.blogstreet.com/top100.html)
Being BoingBoinged is probably even cooler than being SlashDoted. (slashdot.org/)
So the fact tha Miha Mazzini’s site was BoingBoinged is a very cool fact!
I wanted to blog about that, but forget. Now you beat me to it.
Peter: If (when?) Yu-Mex goes back into fashion, your father might be sitting on a gold mine. I hope he still has them.
Roli: I actually thought about the same thing. Maribor has three Mexican restaurants, two of which are very popular. I didn’t think of the soap opera connection, though — now that I do, I think you might be onto something.
David: Rad told me he saw it there and although I read Boing Boing pretty regularly, I missed it completely over the holidays. Do you know Miha?
No, I don’t know Miha personally, just as a writter.
www.mihamazzini.com
I lauded this post at: pratie.blogspot.com/2005/02/souvenir-from-our-blogcon.html
Thanks for the tip! I went to Yu-Mex site and listened to the wonderful mp3s.