Location: Cerkno / Gabrijel / Slovenia
Date: Saturday, 01.02.2020
Damir Avdić, known by his folk nicknames G.R.A.H.A., Diplomatz and Bosanski Psiho, is always considered a top concert attraction. Because his concerts simply and plainly “kill it.” The indestructible Bosnian singer-songwriter, “the only punk still alive on the planet,” adopted by Slovenia as one of their own years ago, released his eighth solo studio album last year. It was hitting stages not long after its release — but mostly on the Ljubljana end. Avdić’s new stop in Cerkno finally brought the author of these humble lines back to his concert, after a long-ago and until that day only encounter with what I can now safely call a true legend: when Avdić performed on 10.11.2006 at Ljubljana’s Menza pri Koritu at Metelkova.
“Radikalno šik” (RockLine review HERE) is the new album, and Damir dressed the part. Radically so, for him. Equally surprising is his new “radical fit” leanness — the unusual firmness of his current shape. An alarming thought, though: could he have caught the globally trendy veganism bug and taken to sipping various concoctions of corporately generated gluten-free “slop”? Jokes aside. We kicked off with a screening of the 2013 documentary about Damir, titled “The Right Man for Capitalism.” Needless to say, it made for an excellent warm-up and top-notch mental therapy — its “training” priming us perfectly for the concert encounter with the artist.
Gabrijel radiated absolute minimalism this time around. A combo amp, a guitar, and a mic stand. Attendance was excellent. Just past nine in the evening Damir jumps on stage and launches into a set drawn mostly from the freshly released “Radikalno šik.” After the second song he takes his guitar off the stage, makes a quick pass through the first two rows, and briefly greets the audience. As is his custom.
What still grabs you first is his striking presence — in everything this artist is. The charisma, and above all the fiercely sincere delivery of the messages carried on the wings of absolute anti-system revolt by his extraordinarily powerful and infectious poetry. Sparkling eyes that dart constantly in every direction, grimaces that make clear that every sung, dictated thought and message is delivered in the full light of truth-telling and sincerity. In a good hour of concert, Damir owned the room completely. Would anyone even dare to doubt it? Simple as that. The musician gave everything. What was especially heartening was seeing a fair chunk of the audience know the lyrics and sing along with Damir. Avdić clearly already has a solid fanbase of Slovenian followers coming out to his shows. A lot of the crowd had made their way to Cerkno from the Ljubljana area, also from Železniki and of course Tolmin, as well as the Tolmin-Kobarid hinterland. Many attendees were quick to say they’d seen Damir on stage several times before. That alone speaks to the artist’s popularity.
Damir has an innate sense of rhythm, and it showed in his tight phrasing. Over the years he’s refined his handling of the electric guitar. His artistry certainly doesn’t need a Satriani, yet we can say that in what it demands and what Damir needs — his use of the guitar as an accompanying instrument — it works even more effectively these days, matured and optimized. The use of delay effects, even bridging transitions between phrases. Beyond those marginal observations, the audience’s full focus is of course squarely on Damir’s poetry and its delivery. This isn’t just this artist’s current socially critical reflection — it’s all of ours. All of us who dare to admit the truth. The difference is that Damir dares to say it out loud, in public. And the people need a pastor, a preacher. They always have. Damir is all of it in one. Messiah and Mephisto! He shows you heaven, shows you hell. We need confirmation that we’re good inside and that we want good. We need the light. Damir is the light that breaks through and illuminates. He’s never short on dynamite, and even less so on devilish will. With sparks in his eyes and steel-forged, committed courage, standing behind every spoken and sung word of his flawless and endlessly vivid poetry — cleverly seasoned with a bag of self-irony — Damir simply moved the audience, woke them up, and shook them. He injected a shot of hope.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photographs: Aleš Podbrežnik
