[BRIEF NOTE] Ceca in 2005

[rfmcdonald]

I don't normally read GQ, but in the May 2005 issue, the one with Hayden Christiansen on the cover, there is a remarkable article about Ceca, a Serbian turbo-folk singer best known for her marriage to the late Arkan. Born Zeljko Raznatovic into a military family, after being a gangster in western Europe and an assassin for the SFRY's secret police in the 1970s and 1980s, in the 1990s Arkan went on to command the famous "Arkan's Tigers", a brutal paramilitary organization which committed numerous crimes against humanity elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. His murder in a Belgrade hotel lobby in 2000 came as no real surprise, but inasmuch as Ceca's career was intimately tied up with the nationalist gangsterism that dominated Serbia in the 1990s she took a hit. After being arrested in July 2003 following allegations of her involvement in the assassination of Serbian prime ministre Zoran Djindjic, her career took a nosedive. In between talking about how she's persecuted and her love for her ex-husband, she mentions that she's trying to make a comeback, though thankfully The Glory of Carniola's conclusion that her career is dead seems more likely. The GQ article--"The Most Dangerous Pop Star in the World"--is a fascinating read, if a voyeuristic one.