When Vace Zela came to Pristina, people were crying

Memories from Hys Shkreli, moderator of the only Vache Zela concert in Pristina three decades ago.

Veche Zela! When I heard you're gone, because you've changed your life, it gives me life to a Vacé, which I met 34 earlier at the border between Kosovo and Albania... That Vache, of my memories, was entering Kosovo for her first and last tour of this country. That Vache, that day Mayi, went down quietly like a butterfly from an old van-bus. He hugged me and the others who were gathered to wait... At that moment, I felt as though they were being made two centuries out of a people. Because, so long as we had that separation. We were waiting at that border about forty years Vache...
We had come to the border, then called Yugoslav-Albanian, to meet the largest and most popular group of artists from Albania, who were visiting Kosovo for the first time. I can't even dream at that moment that, someday, I'll be commended for being the one who baptized the sizzrearo-Albanian border, and others distributed that name. That day, the symbolic collapse of the Albanian-Albanian border began with you. The truth, your song had crossed that border years ago.

That border, that spring day in 1980, looked like the dead “toke”, land and earth without life and life. That's where spring had never arrived, the centuries had stopped. And this view proved how deep this imposed division was between Kosovo and Albania. But on that day, that country was revived as never before, with you and others breaking that wall, bringing banned singers to isolated Kosovo. The border crossing was flooded by village residents around whom they had heard of your arrival of other song artists. We gave in to the immigration. The flowers we brought to the border for you, mixed with tears and... grew up in a few minutes.
You are violating Kosovo for the first time. Maybe you didn't know that you had lived in Kosovo many years as a song. In that time-star caravan, except for you, there was Limos Dizdari, Gaqo Chako, Luan Zhegu, Liiana Kondakci, Zina Zdrava, Hysni Zela, and many others, whom we lived with in Kosovo, but we had never met.
Those years, after decades of isolation, the wall of division was breaking. In this new political climate, the most popular song artists from Albania were beginning their first tour of Kosovo and Macedonia. Some of them had never traveled outside Albania before. For the first time, they were stepping into a second Albanian land. These were the stars of Albania shining even in Kosovo, but they had never seen this country...

I was a journalist, but I also used to do public shows of that time. I was chosen to accompany this group and conduct their concerts. The trip with artists from Albania was a time travel, pain, and events. Full of moments of joy and laughter, but I was always through more touching and exciting situations. It was a strange feeling to celebrate the meeting of Albanians with Albanians, re-connecting scattered roots, triggering ruined bridges, uniting frozen blood.
We traveled by bus from town to town. Wherever we stopped, the road became a river, the neighborhood revived, the city woke up. Businessmen in front of shops, old ladies in windows, younger flowers like they met the dream angels. But in each crowd, there was one of the “ata” to control the expression of that, which politics called “the celebration of nationalism”. So there was also seen to be controlled love, especially when people spoke from face to mouth. When the mouth and the eyes were silent, the milk and the soul spoke. We knew that any excessive euphoria would result in new limits from Yugoslav power. So even in these emotions, there was self - restraint.
At the gym where you sang Vache, people waited with flowers, merchandise and fire. Excellently, they lit their jacket shirts and set them on fire. They knew their merchandise shirts and hearts. Burn the boundaries. Those concerts were creams and protests. Symbolically, they were burning time and politics that divided the nation. So those gatherings were not just music. It was that great Albanian-Albanian shit year... The Great Radio Television Orchestra in Pristina accompanied. I'm sorry I didn't remember the directors of the Orchestra, but I know that Severin Kaitazi, Isak Muqolli, Christ Lekay... were the most engaged. This orchestra, for the first time, was accompanying soloists from Albania, to all orchestras should be prepared, and played directly in front of the public or <x0...

Fuck.

In each city we visited, volcanoes of admiration and love broke out.

Your superiors, they advised me to make the modes official. They criticized why my modemation, according to them, seemed a little Western. I was advised not to raise my voice when I pronounced the names of artists, because it reminded them of Italian fashionmakers, the style appreciated as modernized and indebted in Albania. Then I received criticism on the other hand, Kosovar. Since at the time, the bilingual in Kosovo was in charge of public gatherings, I was told that I would have to greet the public with a sentence in Serbian, or engage a Serb, it was a provocation. If the Serbian public comes to the Vache Zela concerts, then we talk about matters, I suggested.
Vache Zela. Do you remember the Pristina concert? You told us, you haven't experienced such moments in Albania either. It was the biggest scenario Pristina had seen in those years. At the Sport Gym, where the concert was held, all Albanian rivers were already running. People from the regions had come to connect the decades apart through your voice. You lit up Pristina and shook the wrinkles of those who were born and didn't hope that one day they would catch you on the scene of their city. Your songs gave that city a new spirit. Today, I look at the images of mothers bringing their babies to be photographed with you, convinced that those moments are gone, but they become history. Do you remember the reporter who interrupted the interview with you, because she couldn't hold the tears... people who never met you, came in children, mothers, grandmothers... into your backstage room, and were shocked to see you: They were crying and crying. There was something strange, divine enough in those hugs. Every once in a while, they looked like a date with someone who just got out of jail. Some, like hypnotized, stood before you and kissed your hands. They didn't talk much. Tears replaced words.

Fuck!

Vache Zela. Do you remember the last evening before we split up in Ohrid? Last night at the Hotel “Merpolo”, where we sang, we enjoyed the laugh until morning. And at dawn, like a sound, Gaqo Chako stood us up with his calls from the roof of the hotel, with all the voice he had... ...Who's Selim, ask us? We knew Gaqo had had had a bit of a drink, but he wasn't drunk. He was yelling at me. Then she explained that, right across the lake, in Poradec, there's an army colleague named Selim ...” I want to tell him, here I am and where you are, he added. For us, this sounded like a mood, since we knew whether Selim had good memories or whether to choose.
One hour later, Gaqo Chako, and the others, were across the lake on Selim's side... Those of us who remain on this side of the lake, we put on the leak. We were both looking into their separate worlds. The Great Song Albania, which we built during those days, ended. It split in two again...

Vache Zela. After three decades, you returned to Pristina for the second time. Last time you brought us the song, this time the painting. You entered the Tirana Opera and Ballet Theatre for the last time, and from there you went to heaven. Stars like you belong to heaven. You joined other Albanian stars -- Elena Gnjika, Alexander Moisiu, John Bellushin, Elena Cyril, Ibrahim Kodra, Bekim Fehmiu. You remain our Theta of our song. I salute the Vache stars. Rest up there in your new sun, and continue to crack...