Tag: Identity

on arts and politics

The Mac Dowell Colony Newsletter Peaceful Measures, 2008

Composer Aleksandra Vrebalov interviewed by Brendan Tapley

Five years ago Aleksandra Vrebalov, a Serbian composer who now lives in New York, formed a collective with five other composers called the South Oxford Six. Their name — slightly infamous-sounding — is fitting. Under the guidance of Vrebalov, the group decided to put its artistic energies into political action by connecting American composers and students with Serbian audiences and creating music that fused he two. Hoping to “decentralize the Serbian culture” and reconcile the resentments for the NATO countries that bombed the former Yugoslavia in 1999, Vrebalov says her activist plan, now government funded, aimed for “a higher form of exchange that is spiritual in nature.” Art and art organizations, she believes, tend  to “fix things governments do.” The sincerity and altruism of Vrebalov’s newfound mission is affecting. Above and beyond that mission, what she seems most passionate about is the unique way art invites critical introspection into human life, that same introspection that guides conscience, empathy, and the ability to understand — three traits that might diminish a great deal of conflict, personal or international. Though music is the means and result of the collective, it seems that introspection is the goal of the exchange program. In this confrontation with the self, art becomes a handmaiden of humanitarianism. It is a formula Vrebalov bases on her own life: “Being away from my country and becoming more rooted in this one gives me enough insecurity to question things,” she says. “And when you have to redefine your identity, you also have a strong urge to understand your origins, your place.” And the origins and place of others. We spoke to the composer recently about her work.

What do you believe the link is between art and political reconciliation?

I believe that there is a homo politcus in each of us, so creating, for me, is in part a way to respond to the social environment and to deal with events and emotions specific to the moment. In the arts, we have a luxury of creating worlds in which real-life tensions and dramas become abstractions, available to us to mold and manipulate. In that imagined, staged world, we can relive hatred, loss, shame, humiliation, with enough distance to recognize them as universal and shared across the war lines. And this is how we humanize those who are, according to our governments, our enemies. From the moment we realize we share that humanness, we are more open for acceptance and compassion, and eventually for reconciliation.

What about the Serbian conflict inspired you to take up this artistic challenge?

Coming from a place like Serbia, where it has been impossible to separate individual identity and destiny from the collective one — because of events such as the totalitarianism of Milosevic’s regime, nationalism at its extreme, and several wars — writing music turned out to be a way to process and cope with what has been going on for all of us over there.

So this has shown up in your own work?

Yes. In the specific case of … hold me, neighbor, in this storm … [Vrebalov’s work, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2008], I wanted to merge musical languages of two antagonistic ethnic groups (Serbs and Albanians) and create a world in which they can coexist and complement each other. The challenge was to use the elements of their individual identities, such as religious symbols and ethnic instruments, and to fuse them, wed them, in a union impossible otherwise. Therefore, the powerful attributes of both Serbian and Albanian nationalism, which over the years had fueled a dark passion to exclude, become in the piece just  the opposite: the binding, structural elements of a rather striking union in music.

In terms of your exchange program, what specifically have you detected about how art can heal those you’ve worked with?

We do not cry because music is sad, we cry because there is sadness in us, helped by music. So, art has its ways — subtle, yet direct; irrational, yet steeped in our most concrete experiences — and when we are exposed to it in a ritual of performance, we know we are protected by boundaries of that ritual. We feel safe and open to emotions.

Do you think governments, political systems of any kind, would benefit from enlisting art in conflict?

In an ideal world of responsible governments, reaching out to artists and intellectuals would be a part of the prevention of conflict rather than post-conflict reconciliation. The benefits would be about inclusion and treating “the other” as an equal partner in keeping the peace, rather than a threat. So, government-supported cultural programs could contribute to a better mutual understanding of groups. In real life, however, it is a super-sensitive issue, and a very problematic one. Art’s power, I believe, lies in an artist’s readiness to deal with intimate concerns and views on the world that, in the process of creation, exclude the public and certainly exclude  governments. So, as an artist, I want to distance myself from my government and to counteract its doings by creating ways of dealing with political crisis. Art in the hands of government can be in danger of becoming a defender of ideology. Depending on the political agenda, it can be equally effective in both propelling the conflict and helping the process of reconciliation.

Aleksandra Vrebalov has written chamber, vocal, orchestral, and ballet music. She has received honors and commissions from Carnegie Hall, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow Endowment, Merkin Hall, Kronos Quartet, and Festival Ballet Providence, among others. Her residencies include The MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Tanglewood Music Center, Other Minds, and American Opera Projects.

Peaceful Measures, 2008

printed version page 14

Back To The Roots

All-Vrebalov concert in Sombor, Serbia, June 6, 2019

Sombor – a beautiful town in northern Serbia. This is where most of my family comes from. Last names of my grandparents are Gucunja, Knezevic, Ferencevic, and Malesevic. My both parents went to school in Sombor before moving to Belgrade for college. As a child, I used to spend summers there with my maternal grandparents: playing barefoot in hot afternoons in front of the house with my little sister and other children, splashing water from a tiny end-of-the-street pump-well, sitting with adults in the warm summer evenings and listening to their stories, breathing in the scent of flowers of my grandmother’s balcony, picking up gigantic watermelons at the market with my grandfather, waking up to the sound of neighbors’ pigeons being released for the morning flight.

My father’s mother Vera Gucunja was a pre-war communist. She died in the revolution and there’s a bust in Sombor’s main park celebrating her heroism.

In 2007, my maternal grandmother was still alive. I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible and I wished I could bring in my friends, musicians and composers, to experience the creative, carefree power of Sombor summers. So between 2007 and 2011, I put together Summer in Sombor, a week long composition workshop with the South Oxford Six composers’ collective that I co-founded in 2002 in New York City. Kala Pierson, Daniel Sonnenberg, Mike Rose and Ed Ficklin would join me in Sombor to make music for five summers. The workshop facilitated the creation of over fifty new works by young composers from Europe and the USA. We lived together for a week, made music, played concerts, talked about creativity and values. In the evenings we swam in the canal, ate fish paprikash, and had most inspiring discussions.

Kala Pierson, Daniel Sonnenberg, Michael Rose, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Sombor 2007

Sombor has always been about art. Some of the most significant figures from country’s culture come from Sombor: poet Laza Kostic, composer Petar Konjovic, painter Milan Konjovic who was a family friend, painter Dragan Stojkov, Zvonko Bogdan whose singing of traditional songs is iconic throughout the region. Those who have lived in our time – we would visit them in their studios, see them in a cafe, or just wave on the main street. At those visits, as a kid, I would play piano in the dark, high-ceiling rooms absorbing vibes and stories like the one about Kazimir’s nagymama (grannie) taking piano lessons from Ferenc Liszt. I was five years old when I learned to play my first piano tune with both hands – that was in Sombor, in the house of my father’s best friend Kazimir, with his grandmother, Liszt’s student as the legend goes, sitting by me.

Portrait of Franz Liszt painted by my grandmother Vera Gucunja

It’s 2019. My mom and grandparents are long gone. I occasionally visit Veliko Groblje where they’re buried surrounded by family graves dating from 1700s. Living in New York City for almost 20 years I tend to forget how important death is in Serbian culture. In my childhood, paying a visit to the dead used to be an equally common and important segment of visits to Sombor as paying a visit to our living relatives. To the dead we would bring candles and flowers. The living would usually get flowers and chocolate or brandy.

Tonight, June 6, 2019, I will be in Sombor again, presenting an evening of my music at SOMUS, Sombor Music Festival. It is a full circle – music will be performed by the TAJJ Kvartet with who I have worked for twenty years now, and by pianist and old friend Mihajlo Zurkovic. The evening will be moderated by Ira Prodanov, a musicologist and a high school friend with her own family background from Sombor.

After the rehearsal, TAJJ Kvartet and Aleksandra Vrebalov.
Timea Kalmar cello, Aleksandra Krcmar violin, Jovanka Mazalica violina, Jelena Filipovic, viola

We’ll have a concert at the beautiful 200 seat National Theater where over the formative years I had seen unforgettable shows during the annual Sombor Theater Festival.

National Theater Sombor

It’s exciting to go back. There’s purpose in giving context to the present through the past — in the context of my family it is through ideas, values, intangible output rather than through our physical presence in Sombor. I like the idea of bringing sound, creativity and new people into this place of my roots. Thus there’s purpose in actualizing the past through the present, by creating continuity, bringing beauty, friendship, and a sense of belonging to the people in the audience tonight. Even though most of them might be strangers, they aren’t — we share in the Sombor lineage.