The musicians lost everything in the Eaton Fire. Support their brilliant work. The musicians Celia Hollander and Evan Shornstein are among the thousands of people who have been […]
Watch: Rare Videos by Jet-Setting Serbian Disco King Boban Petrović
“The party is an incredibly complex institution,” the yacht-living, Lamborghini-driving Serbian disco-funk producer Boban Petrović said in reissue liner notes for his 1981 album Žur. He was discussing his life as a Belgrade entertainer, host, ladies’ man, and dance floor groover starting in the 1970s.
A bon vivant who, the story goes, has delivered truckloads of free beer to fans of his football club and once bought 450 bottles of Dom Perignon for more than 4,000 party-goers, Petrović became what Belgrade writer-DJ Bege Fank called the “symbol of Yugoslav and Belgrade Funk and a flamboyant member of the global jet set.”
At the time Žur came out, Belgrade was the capital of the former Yugoslavia and a Soviet-bloc country, one with an approach to communist government that afforded rich arts and culture scenes. Petrović seems to have grown up among relative wealth, at least according to his recollection of the Belgrade disco scene of the 1970s and ‘80s.
“I was privileged with always being able to organize my parties at the residencies of ambassadors’ sons and daughters all around Belgrade, because I didn’t have my space where I could accommodate, let’s say, a hundred people,” he said. “This slowly grew into the first business I started – the disco clubs. For me, the disco club was nothing but a party everyone could attend. It bothered me seeing the same people often at my parties. And then again, some people would come over and we didn’t let them in because we didn’t know them well or we didn’t know them at all.”
The solution: He created a series of spots designed for such interactions, one that played to Petrović’s strengths as what he calls “a talented ‘smoke and mirrors’ seller, although in a positive manner.”
Last month, the Austrian reissue label Everland resurrected Petrović’s 1981 album Žur and hired audio engineer Jessica Thompson (Awesome Tapes from Africa, Numero Group, Smithsonian-Folkways) to make it shimmer.
In notes accompanying its return, Everland described the album as being set in the artist’s comfort zone: “He is at home, in his safe place, since the parties, the music and the people are the first out of many things he had completely figured out in his life. He is at the top of his game, occasionally bothered by a casual heartbreak, but always feeling himself, coming out playful and fundamentally peaceful, satisfied and ready to transcend himself in order to put the rest of the world in the limelight.”
Writer Bege Fank asked the artist about this.
Bege Fank: It’s great that we’ve mentioned the structure of the album … [I]t is, in fact, an album about getting ready for the party and the actual party experience of a non-ordinary Belgrade disco king.
Boban Petrović: Yes
Which is you.
Well, am I a disco king? I say “Yes.” You say “disco king,” and I jump in offbeat with my “yes” [smiles]. No, I was saying “yes” to the comment that this album is a contribution to the musical expression of my idea of the party and the importance of the party.
Music didn’t earn Petrović enough bank to live the life he felt he deserved, so he became, as release notes describe it, “a businessman of the conscious class … He was living in Spain on his own luxury yacht for years. He had a private airplane, a car park. But all this time living on highest class level he never lost his identity.
“In all his offices, yacht, airplane and everywhere was … loud funk music, and he was dressed like a musician who just finished or needs to start a gig. Along the way Boban also wrote two books: Rokanje 1 & 2, describing the time when the album Žur was created.”
Revisit our collection writeup for Petrović’s sophomore album Zora.
