Petrit Çarkaxhiu: On Rock, Rage, and the Albanian Identity

Petrit Çarkaxhiu

 

PRISTINA, KOSOVO – Last June I was introduced to Petrit Çarkaxhiu, frontman of Jericho, by a friend at a bar in Pristina. The first thing I noticed about him – his drink order. He asked our waiter for a Coke, while everyone else at our table ordered beers. Petrit, I’d later learn, is a practicing Muslim, a minority in a country where everyone claims Islamic ancestry though seldom practices the religion. He is also one of Kosovo’s biggest rock stars – who less than a week after our interview opened for Snoop Dogg in Snoop’s first concert in Kosovo. ”Jericho is the best sound that we’ve got in Kosovo at the moment,” veteran rocker Migjen Kelmendi told me. ”They have this perfect way of articulating their songs and music that’s authentic.”

Petrit – “Rrusta” to his friends – formed Jericho (then Jericho Walls) in 1997 at the age of 19. The band’s name derives from a song by the Brit group Simply Red, though their musical influences are heavily American: Rage Against the Machines, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and bands from the Seattle grunge scene like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. During that time, in the 1990s, the Balkans was in turmoil. War was breaking up Yugoslavia … and MTV had just arrived in Kosovo.

Migjen Kelmendi: “Rock Music Anticipated the Crash of Yugoslavia”

Migjen Kelmendi

 

PRISTINA, KOSOVO – One of the first things I do when visiting a new country is learn about its music. Local and regional music, I feel, can tell you a lot about the disposition of a place. What then in the case of the Balkans? I had never heard of the genre of music called “turbo folk” until I stepped foot in Kosovo. Turbo folk, it turns out, is a bastard mix of dance-cum-electro-pop paired with traditional folk music, originating from Serbia – it sucks – and you hear it EVERYWHERE in the area.

Good thing, turbo folk isn’t the only characteristic sound coming out of Kosovo. By my second week in town, I had gone to Pristina’s second-annual Freedom Festival and had met local musicians willing to school me on alternative rock in the region. My first lesson: You cannot talk about the history of rock in Kosovo without addressing one of the biggest events in these people’s lives: war.

Migjen Kelmendi, frontman of Gjurmët, has been called the godfather of rock in Kosovo. Gjurmët  (“The Traces” in English) was one of the biggest names coming out of Kosovo in the 1980s. [Check out two of their old-school music videos here and here.] Today, Migjen has retired his guitar and is a journalist and media executive with his own magazine, Java, and TV station, Rrokum TV. In 2001, he published his book, To Change the World: A History of the Traces, a biographical account of his band that simultaneously details how the rock scene in the Balkans anticipated the Yugoslav Wars. Here is Migjen in his own words …