Europe Chevron. Kosovo Chevron. This is part of Global Sounds , a collection of stories spotlighting the music trends forging connections in In , four years before Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, year-old Patrik Ukiq decided to throw a party. Born and raised in the capital of Pristina, he had recently discovered house and electronic music after an older cousin, who had been immersed in the UK rave scene, brought back a couple of CDs. Those led him to online forums, where techno heads from all over the world were swapping notes on new releases and foreign DJs, and eventually, to a harebrained idea: Ukiq would fly Felipe, a well known DJ, over from Vienna to perform in Kosovo—a rare thing to happen due to post-war red tape at the border; even more so for a teenager to be the one orchestrating it.
I was so happy. The trance-y, heavy thud of techno pounds out of the Servis soundsystem. Just a few days before, the city had marked 25 years since the end of the Kosovo War—and there is a sense of possibility in the air.
At the Pristina airport, there are just as many Kosovars getting ready to travel out of the country as there are welcoming others in, a sight that would have been almost unimaginable just nine months ago. Everyone is excited. Some 13, people were killed—many of whom were ethnic Albanians; often by mass killings—and tens of thousands more were displaced.
Since then, Kosovo and its people have slowly been finding its feet as a fledgling nation while still wrestling with its recent past: rebuilding cities, writing national anthems, reclaiming cultural and religious spaces that were taken away in acts of ethnic cleansing out of approximately mosques in Kosovo were destroyed , and preserving what is left of a Kosovar culture that can be traced back thousands of years.
As I knock back a few beers with Ukiq, he tells me how that same techno-loving cousin who lent him those CDs suggested that the family open a bar after the war. Following years of being banned from cultural spaces like cinemas and theaters, a place to drink and gather freely as ethnic Albanians was necessary and cherished—and, suddenly, filled with opportunity. Twenty five years on, nightlife is now a driving force of Pristina.
