Lepa Brena is unarguably the biggest showbiz star from former Yugoslavia (btw, I heard on twitter that the phrase `former Yugoslavia` is a pleonasm, but I can`t keep from using it). Biggest star in a Balkan country by default means that the star`s area of expertise is folk music. What`s interesting about Lepa Brena is that she was a pan-Yugoslavian folk star, never sticking to one position or the other, even later the war broke out and after it ended.
This old picture of hers is a sound illustration of what I`m saying.
Since Serbia was the biggest meca for folk music at the time, it was merely ordered that she chose to fall in Belgrade, and later the war start her own folk music production empire.
Brena came into public focus only recently when she proclaimed a pair of months ago that she would be doing a `worldwide tour` which also included Sarajevo and Zagreb. That caused a lot of fuss in Bosnia and Croatia, because apparently, Brena is seen over there as a Serbian nationalist because of this video where she`s dressed in a military uniform.
Now, we could discuss the character of the video (and the music, for that matter) but when her overall image and attitude is concerned, of all the folk stars throughout the former Yugoslavia, Brena always struck me as the least nationalistic and the most Yugonostalgic one. But it simply goes to prove that there`s even a lot of bad blood between the nationalists in all former Yu-republics, and that it takes just a tiny push to make an avalanche of hate, as shown by endless youtube, blogs and forums comment discussions that are unacceptable to translate because of the fullness of SerboCroatian language when it comes to curses.
On the other hand, Brena`s succesfull concert in Sarajevo and the sold-out forthcoming gig in Zagreb show that there are loads of masses that don`t like all that much around the nationality, which is ever a right thing.
Now that I mean about it, there are just a handfull of performers who really are cosnidered persona-non-grata in other republics, with serious reasons: Marko Perkovic Thompson in Serbia, or Svetlana Ceca Raznatovic in Croatia, for example.