What Europe's Biggest Protest Band Think Of Australia's Refugee Crisis

As rebellious and politically incisive as they are fun and raucous, Dubioza Kolektiv hail from Bosnia and Herzegovina and have developed a reputation as one of the world’s must-see live acts.

Dubioza Kolektiv mix an eclectic range of influences, including ska, punk, reggae, electronic, hip-hop with traditional Balkan flavours, and inject this musical cocktail with politically incorrect lyrics.

Now one of the most popular live acts in Eastern Europe, having toured every corner of the continent, Dubioza Kolektiv will soon be showing Australian crowds what’s made them so popular in their homeland.

With the band set to make their debut Australian appearances this December, we caught up with bass player and founding member Vedran Mujagić to discuss the origins and future of this unique project.

Tone Deaf: Your music is so varied, who or what are your inspirations?

Vedran Mujagić: Well, there’s like eight people in the band each with their own particular influences. So it’s hard to articulate, really. But as a band we’ve never tried to define our musical style or fit into any genre.

What’s important to us is the stories we’re telling and we’re just trying to find the best musical background for certain lyrics, which is why you get such a diverse range of styles, we’re offering different perspectives.

TD: Can you describe Dubioza Collective for Australian audiences who aren’t familiar with the band? What are the stories you are trying to tell?

VM: We have albums in our language and in English and other languages. We aim for an international audience and we’re trying to make a difference. In our language we speak more about domestic issues, local politics, and the problems in our society.

The lyrics that are in English and other languages, they’re a bit different. We try to address issues that are a bit more, let’s say, international. Everything from immigration, to the Syrian refugee crisis. Stories that can be understood more widely than perhaps our local issues.

TD: Dubioza is very active politically, in fact. What would you say are the biggest issues facing Europe at the moment and do those differ from what is happening in Eastern Europe specifically?

VM: I would say simply the rise of right-wingers everywhere. You can see all these parties gaining strength throughout Europe. Coming from the Balkans, we’ve had our own experiences with right-wingers and the war and refugee crises that result from that. We have a good starting point to talk about these issues.

TD: What’s your opinion of the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe? Refugees are a big political issue in Australia and many have criticised how the government here had handled the situation. Are you familiar with that?

VM: It’s actually a very similar approach that Australia has taken to Western European countries, basically playing down the crisis. Everyone, the whole coalition that entered that part of the world, they’re very happy to sound alarms about the Middle East, but they’re not happy to deal with the refugee influx. They’ll say, ‘Go back to your country and deal with the issues that you’re escaping from.’ It’s not exactly… humane, let’s say.

TD: Can you explain a bit about how the Bosnian war affected the band and you personally?

VM: Well what it did, really, was inspired this Do It Yourself attitude the band has. The biggest lesson we got from the war was that you have to do everything yourself and take a real punk rock approach to what we do, which how Dubioza has been since the beginning.

We produce our own records, design our own records, do our own social media, and everything is independent. From the beginning we understood we couldn’t rely on anybody but ourselves. We learnt that from the war, because that was the only way to survive.

TD: If you were speaking to someone who wasn’t familiar with the Bosnian war, how would you describe it to them? What was it fought over?

VM: [laughs] It’s a very, very complex question and probably requires hours of very politically correct answering so nobody gets upset. But in the end, really what it was… if you could see the consequences, you’ll see that a lot of these right-wingers got extremely rich and the rest of the population got extremely poor and a lot of people died. So really it’s about that, like any war.

TD: Can you talk a bit about ‘Free.mp3’? What’s your opinion of music copyright and piracy in 2016?

VM: I think that really what we wanted to say with that song was not just cheering for piracy. It was just our way to question the state of the music industry right now and really our philosophy has always been that the people who do pirate shouldn’t be treated like people who committed violent crimes.

For us, it’s really just about questioning things and we think that there are other ways that bands can make a living off their music. Touring is just one way, there are lots of other ways to make money off what you do. We weren’t really trying to answer a question, we were just trying to ask it.

TD: You do albums specifically for different markets in Europe, be it in Spanish or other languages. Can you talk about that process? Is it just a matter of re-recording the vocals?

VM: Not really. We realised from the beginning that simply translating doesn’t work. If you just change words then the musical background becomes obsolete, so we never tried to do that, we just make new music. And it’s not that we make music for a specific market, it’s just that we have our language, which will be understood in our region, and then music for the rest of the world.

See one of Eastern Europe’s biggest exports and one of their most vital protest bands do their thing live on their debut Australian tour this month – check below for details!