Episode 7: Sing Every Song Like It’s Your Last, Featuring Gino Sarjan Yevdjevich.

Gino: When the culture shock started in Seattle in 1996. We were acoustic band and everything was fine until the moment when we plugged in and started telling people our political opinion.

MUSIC: Kultur Shock

I remember Piranha records guy said, this is the worst thing that world music has ever like put out because you're immigrants, Right? And it's not yours to think about, politics. 

Meklit: Yeah. 

Gino: It's yours to play music. It's yours to dress in white. Put some candles on stage. Entertain me on Fridays and Saturday, and then go back. Clean your toilets, you know. Go do a day job on Monday morning. Right? What? What are you talking about? Politics

Meklit: Be grateful, you know.

Gino: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my band’s everything but that. I mean, I came over here from the war and right now Imma exercise my freedom hundred percent. I don't care what you think.

INTRO

Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich AKA Gino, is an intense dude. He’s got a bald head, and a salt and pepper zz top style beard so long that he sometimes ties it in a knot beneath his chin. Gino is from Sarajevo, and came to the US in the 90s, when the wounds of the war in Bosnia were still fresh. He’s the founder and lead singer of the Seattle based band Kulture Shock whose music brings together punk, metal, and Balkan folk. 

But even after surviving a war and touring the world for over two decades, Gino told me he is still haunted by a little demon of self-doubt. It comes to him before he goes on stage and it asks, do you still have what it takes? When it’s just you and your art in a broken world will it be enough?

My name is Meklit and this is Movement, music and migration, remixed.

Gino: You know, in the life is not going the way we always plan it. They're actually never going the way we plan it. Usually people are changing the world and having like revolutionary bands when they're young and then, you know, they make it, and then they become a couch. A $30,000 couch. From police, you become stink.

Meklit: Right.

Gino: Nothing against. It's just like that's the normal development of many musicians. With me, it was different. It was the other way around. And for me it is pretty, how can I say? It's logical, you know? To be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid.

MUS: Enter

Gino: I mean, I was a pop musician for the first whatever, 10 years of my life until I was 20, 29. And I listened to all the record labels in the world. Yes, I sold records, but I was miserable. 

Meklit: Really?

Gino: Yeah, I was miserable. But, you know

Meklit: why were you miserable?

Gino: I have to say I never started in order to become famous. I started because I liked the stage. I like the sound. But you know, when you make a hit, that hole turns around. That, that happened to me

Meklit: Mmm.

Gino: My second album I made a pretty big hit in me for Yugoslavia, and that's it.

MUS: Post

Gino: Slowly but surely I became a little bit more miserable, you know? I needed some art in my life because the music became way too commercial. It was a battle. And, I think I got saved by the Crisis. I got saved by the war.

Gino: I think I'm a war profiteer. 

Meklit: Wow. 

Gino: In a very weird way where I realize life is way too short to waste it on stuff that you don't believe in.

Meklit: Right

 Gino: Money, fame, whatever it is, you know? I was at the end of the civilization. I was at the end of the world and I realized when it's up to disappearing, art will prevail.

Meklit: I was wondering if you could tell us where you were the day the war started.

Gino: That's way more complicated question than one would think.

Meklit: Okay.

Gino: Usually people know where was I when 9/11 happened? Where was I when somebody called me on the phone and offered me a record deal for the first time? Where was I when I got the record? You know I can't tell you. 

And I, this is how I can't tell you. First world countries, they go into the war and they come back from the war. We don't go to the war. We sit at home and we mind our own business and war comes to us. When exactly, and you know, it comes here, it comes there, it comes like this, comes like this. 

And I was living in my place in my condo. My mom's living across the bridge, so every single day, you know, you wake up, I don't have food at home. I go and, and like, you know, kind of linger on her food. Open her place, linger on her food and go, because she's in the center of town. Go see the coffee shops. and I still didn't believe that I was in a war.

And then one day when I came to my mom's the bridge closed.The gun, the armed people on the. So Oh, really? It's really happening like that? They're not lying. But we were there, we were in war already. 

So talking about circumstantial, if I partied that night and I woke up at 3:00 PM. I would not know you. You would not know me. I would not come to United States. I would not make this band. I would be, who knows where. This is circumstantial. So that day, April 2nd, I came to my mom's and then I stayed there for three years.

Meklit: Wow.

Gino: Because my condo was on the front line.

Meklit: So what was the specific story of how you came to the us?

Gino: I'm walking to the theater one day and, this father of my friend he said, let's do something. We have a chamber theater over here, you know, let's do something. Let's do a musical. We all in town anyway. I mean, nobody would be in town because we're all touring now. We trapped, we gotta do something right and straightforward, I go, let's do Hair. And he's like, you're crazy dude. This is anti war musical. Like, we're in the middle of the war, this is. Well, let's do it the other way around. And by the way, let me tell you something, I'm not doing pop music anymore. 

He's like, doing wait? What are you doing? So I got people in, everybody all right away. I mean it’s amazing. It's not like a Broadway musical where you have a Broadway musicians. No. This drummer has a hundred thousand records sold of his last album. This bass player, 500,000. Right. You know, it's like those kind of guys from like really big bands, right? Yeah, sure. Let's do it. This singer, this, you know, this actor in that movie, you know, we all there.

You know, important part here to say is that we did it out of the selfish reasons.

Meklit: right

Gino: We did it to stay sane. To stay normal. I don't like normal. For me, normal is a knob on washer and dryer. That's it. It ends right there. But in that circumstances to stay normal, to be who you were before.

You know, before the war. You could not push people in the theaters like to pack the theaters with guns. No wait, you know, if it's not comedy, it's not packed, right? We were packed for three years because there was no electricity, there was no running water, there was no nothing. There was just art.

Our sound guy died. My guitar player, he was heavily wounded. The shrapnels went between his eye and his nose and stopped in the hypervisor, right here, in the middle of the brain. It's just like at the miracles that were happening, the doctors that were happening over there. So where were we? Go back. 

Meklit: We were to, the most amazing musicians gathered to make Hair. Three years sold out every night. Packed, packed, packed.

Gino: Yes,and how did that resulted with me coming to United States? It was a long process. One day we're playing, Let the Sun Shine In, da na na na na na. One woman jump on stage and she starts singing with us. Like, why is woman's jumping on stage and singing at us? But woman looks familiar. Who's the woman? Woman’s Joan, Joan Baez.

Also, there's the guy who's hanging out on the stage and taking the photos and with the camera and doing the video shoot. And I see she’s kind of annoyed with him, and I'm like, let the  man, do it. Foreigners, whatever, you know, let them do it. The guy was Phil Alden Robinson from, the director and the writer of Field of Dreams. 

And then he went, had the drink with us and said, this is the best show I've ever seen in my life. And then said, would you, I would love to have you guys in United States. Would you like to? And fuck yeah.

And of course we can't get out. How can you get out? There's like, we’re paused in negotiations and this high refugee committee, Anthony Land. I'm never gonna forget this asshole in my life. He's like, what would the world think that we're taking out a group of musicians?

 All of a sudden they're playing like, you know, like, aren't we telling the people that you guys are barbarians hitting each other because you know, you don't know any better. Like you would ruin everything that we are kind of building over here. Right?

And that's the moment when I figured out the global politics. We were three, four times told that we are going. To the airport and three, four times we were burned. It was so horrible. Every single time we would get together and then the UNHCR, the blue helmets would come. No. Like oof. Wow.

They recognized me over there thinking, oh, there's a musician. Don't let him out. Yeah. Being trapped, being used as a pawn in the negotiations, I remember what I discovered, that I discovered that, you know, terror is a war of the poor men towards the rich man. And war is a terror of the rich man towards the poor man. And there is no difference between terrorism and war. It depends how much money do you have and how many weapons do you have?

But nothing really happened for her, to come to United States.

And Phil is saying: Ok, how about can you get out, by yourself? I just went under the ground and I ran, I was young and fast. And,yeah, I got to Croatia and then after that, United States. I, yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I  don't have words. I told you all the details, but what, how I feel I can't, I can't really explain that. That's one maybe part of my life that I don't have a formula about what happened. Why, how, where? because I probably don't want to think too much about it because it hurts still.

Meklit: Yes, yes. I understand. I understand. Can you tell me about how Kultur Shock was founded?

Gino: Yeah, that's also, that's also that. Kultur Shock is a child of, my war propheterisim, where I of course don't wanna do anything that is, that I don't feel in that moment.

Meklit: Mm-hmm.

Gino: In that moment, I felt really homesick. You know, I'm a pop slash rock musician. I don't do folk music much. I don’t do

Meklit: mm.

Gino: ethnic music much. I know how to do it cause my Roma background and I started singing that thing just for myself. And with Lazy over here and Hajia, my best friend, and Boris Lavioch, the drummer from Bulgaria, we formed some kind of a band that would accompany this ethnic music that we would play.

And we did it acoustically. We played with Joan on a couple of festivals. We were doing good. We were playing over here in some acoustic venues, but you know how acoustic venues are. It kind of, you know, something was missing in that moment. It was great. There was a lot of people coming in. Everything was fine. It was very emotional. It was a little too emotional for me. Not too emotional emotional, but it was, there was still a lot of rage in me. There is still a lot of rage in me. I'm thinking. 

Meklit: Yes

Gino: And I needed to, I don't want to that rage to go out in my private life. I'm in second marriage in that moment. And that wasn't going well. And you know, a lot of things are not going well. I don't know what to do over here, but you know, but I still have something to say. There's not just me. There's a lot of people like that around.

Meklit: yes,

Gino: So we plugged in.

MUS: Kultur Shock

Gino: And we're loud. 

Meklit: Yeah, 

Gino: We're loud. We do Punk Rock, we do Metal at the time, Jazz, you know, we switched music styles. Yes, it is sevda, it's Bosnian folk music in 14 different languages. Which is our way of blues you know? When a good man feels bad. 

So we were nobodies because Metal, I mean, Metal world totally pretended we don't exist. You know, we don't do stuff exclusively in English and exclusively in German. Right. So bye-bye. Right? So I'm See you later. You know, and Punk rock crowd is more politically accepting, but still, you know, still there. English is a barrier.

We have this, this song Tamni Vilajet, which is the Dark Alley, which is describing Bosnia that is orphaned, but unaccepted, you know, between Italy and Greece, south Europe. Nobody's. Nobody wants us. We don't have a flag, you know, we fight under other flags because we don't have our own and that's how I see our music.

Meklit: I was watching some videos of you singing and I was watching the sound kind of bounce around your face. So it would go to your cheekbones and then it would kind of go up here, and then it would raaa, you know, like in a, and it would become a growl, and then like a clear tone, all these things. And I felt like it was going through you.

Gino: I'm a vessel. I think. I, you know things happen in people's lives and, good things happen and we are in the right place, in the right time. And then miracles happen and humans usually subscribe that to their own genius, you know? And I don't think it is, I think it's just, we gotta listen and we just gotta. It's a vessel what it is. I enjoy it. I enjoy being that vessel.

Meklit: I feel sometimes when I'm singing on stage, I feel like. My only role is to be as free as possible. Just as free as possible. 

Gino: Absolutely. And what I learned from the war is that you need to sing every single song like it's your last song or it doesn't count. So that's Kultur Shock, doing everything you have, like it's your last thing. Like you have five minutes, five minutes to Sing. Sing.

Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Geographic Society and distributed by PRX.