Ex-yu Rock- Pop- Hip-hop The Best Of World Music Page

For two years, that record was my secret education. I learned the angry poetry of Hladno Pivo and the melancholic waltz of Van Gogh . I memorized the hip-hop of Tram 11 —their slang from the streets of New Belgrade as foreign to me in Ljubljana as American gangsta rap, yet utterly familiar. I didn’t understand the war. I only understood the beat.

I sat down on the edge of her bed. The needle dropped in my memory. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t hear borders. I heard a beat. I heard a beginning. Ex-Yu Rock- Pop- Hip-Hop The Best Of World Music

The best world music, I realized, isn’t from everywhere. It’s from a place that no longer exists, except in the space between the speakers and the heart. And as long as one kid passes it to another, that place is never really gone. For two years, that record was my secret education

She shrugged, pulling out her earbuds. “It’s just good music, tata. It’s not political.” I didn’t understand the war

“Where did you find this?” I asked, my voice cracking.

When the beat dropped into Gane by Who See (a Montenegrin hip-hop duo I didn’t even know I had on the record), Srđan finally spoke. “You have this?” He grinned, a real grin, the first I’d seen on him. “My cousin is their sound guy.”

I lost the record years later, in a flood. The sleeve disintegrated. The vinyl warped into a useless, black bowl.