Chords for The Death of Balašević (an American's guide)

This is an unexpected and unwanted surprise video.
I'm going to be doing an American's Guide to the Death of Velocevic.
Every year for my wife's birthday, my wife is Yugoslavian,
just like Georgia Velocevic, every year I do one video
for her birthday that covers one of Velocevic's albums.
I've only done two thus far.
After every video I get lots of comments saying
please do more, please do more, especially from people in former Yugoslavia.
But I'm not going to because I love my wife and I'm going to be with her forever.
So I'm going to be doing one a year and it was always my thought and her thought as well
that eventually, you know, his production, he releases less than one album a year,
eventually I would catch up with him.
_ [A] Sadly, he [G] died way too young.
He died of COVID a couple days ago.
Amazingly, I learned about this from the comment section to one of my videos.
Someone said RIP Velocevic.
That was so soon after his death
that that's how my wife learned about his death as well.
Our house has been filled with his music since and quite a sad house.
But I thought I should make this video to try to explain what Velocevic's death
or what I think his death means, right?
What do I know?
I live in America and I'm married to one person, you know,
who grew up in the country now known as Serbia, right?
[N] That's just my perspective.
But I think I can shed some light on why this is so important.
Why this is one of the most significant celebrity deaths of all time.
Why this person's legacy means so much.
I was thinking I might compare it to Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan's eventual death,
but I actually think that's underselling it.
When Bob Dylan dies, it's going to be used by American baby boomers
as a way to mythologize the 60s.
It's going to be used by American nationalists to be proof of American genius and greatness.
It's not going to do much for Dylan's legacy when he dies.
To understand Velocevic's death and its importance,
I'm going to give you a quote and I can't tell you who said it
because my wife said this to me.
She said it to me last night.
She's asleep right now.
She doesn't know I'm doing this video.
She told this quote to me from a Serbian journalist.
_ How many times can one country die?
That the death of Velocevic is a symbolic death of Yugoslavia,
a country which has not existed for decades.
Yugoslavia, if you don't understand,
I'm not going to give you the whole history of Yugoslavia here,
but I will tell you it was a country that was comprised of many different smaller countries,
many different religions and ethnic groups.
It stayed united as a communist country for decades
and in a way it can be seen as a triumph of humanity itself.
People getting over their base tribal instincts and creating something together
regardless of those base instincts.
Now, I'm not going to get into how it was kept together.
At times that's controversial as well,
but when Yugoslavia broke apart,
I think we can also see that as the failure of humanity.
Not the failure of Serbs and Croats and Montenegrins,
but the failures of human beings, of all of us.
The universal failure of humanity is our tribalism,
is our inability to understand humanity and other people,
and taking something and saying it's ours and killing people for saying it's theirs.
When Yugoslavia failed, when it broke apart, it was a loss for humanity.
It really was.
And Velocevic, the reason his music is so important,
beyond the fact that it's great, it's funny, it's interesting, it's witty,
and all the reasons that Dylan's music is great,
that's why Velocevic's music is great,
but he is so much more because he really does represent
the greatest part of Yugoslavia.
This connection, this togetherness.
When Velocevic died a couple days ago,
ever since then, former Yugoslavia is in absolute tears everywhere. _
Even and perhaps especially in Croatia, okay?
A country which was at a bloody war with Serbia.
And if you say, oh, Serbs and Croats and they hate each other, this and that,
they don't hate each other when Velocevic comes on.
When Velocevic comes on, they sing together.
Velocevic's mother was Croatian, and okay, so is that why?
Is that why Croatians love him?
Because he's kind of Croatian?
No.
He grew up in Serbia, is that why Serbians love him?
Is it because, yes, Serbian rights?
No.
It's this great call to humanity.
And that's what his music is about, and that's what makes him so beautiful.
I heard another _ anecdote from my wife,
which will help to explain to you Velocevic's importance.
And please, if you have a lot of comments on this,
I'm going to try to say this in the most politically neutral way possible.
In the country of Bosnia, there's a city called Sarajevo.
A lot of things happened in Sarajevo.
A lot of very sad things happened, including a seizure of the city.
I'll just take this one example, okay?
People who identify as Serbian nationalists,
people who believed that Serbia was a great country and should be the dominant force,
would literally send bombs and have snipers killing people in the streets of Sarajevo, okay?
Look that up if you've never heard about it.
I'm just going to take this one example, okay?
After Sarajevo, after the war was over,
after they were trying to rebuild a sense of connectiveness
and trying to instill hope in the people,
there's a Canadian diplomat who's in charge of, like,
trying to figure out, you know, what to do.
Like, you know, we need to get people together.
We need to get people together and feeling better about being in this city.
Maybe like a sporting event.
And so they asked someone in Bosnia,
maybe like a sporting event.
No, not a sporting event.
Something like big, you know, that could get everybody together.
Yeah, well, there's a singer.
Oh, great.
Yeah, there's a Serbian singer.
A Canadian couldn't believe it.
He's, no, no, absolutely not.
How can we do, how could we possibly do that?
When the Serbians killed them, we can't have a Serbian sing.
It's because the beauty of Sarajevo,
the beauty of former Yugoslavia,
and the beauty of Vlasovic is that it goes beyond that.
He's not a Serbian singer.
I guess you could say he's a Yugoslavian singer.
But I think more fairly is to say he is a human singer.
And when you need humanity, that's one of the rules of music.
_ So this love of Vlasovic is the uniting force, okay?
And beyond that, you know, in Serbia,
he was also the voice of the revolution.
His music was the sort of unofficial soundtrack
to the fall of Milosevic.
Yet he managed to stay alive.
Yet he stayed in the same country.
He stayed in the same country, the same town,
the same house that he grew up in his entire life.
He would walk the streets of Novi Sad.
And even though he is so famous that right now,
right as I'm speaking,
there's still three days later, two days later,
thousands of people in the town square singing his music.
He could walk through the town square.
He could sit down at a cafe and nobody would bother him.
He's an amazing example of what humanity can do,
of what it can be, of what art can be.
And we lost it.
We lost it because of COVID.
Of course, COVID spread is another sign of human's stupidity. _ _
_ Perhaps there's a meaning in that.
I don't know.
I'm not going to get into that.
It's very sad.
It's just a very, very sad day for humanity.
So I wanted to make this quick video.
I don't know.
If you have comments, please leave them.
You can leave them in Serbo-Croatian
or you can leave them in English.
I want to know what I missed.
I didn't do research.
I didn't look up who said this or who said what.
I'm not like trying to make some kind of official splashy video.
I just wanted to make something to recognize this great artist
that means so much to me and my wife and the world.