More Kornellians
posted by Stanislav
More info about Korni Grupa. Somebody probably told them that “corny” was not a good name for a band, so their official international name eventually became the Kornellians. The group had two distinct approaches to their recordings: Their 45s were strictly commercial and aimed for radio, but their B-sides and LPs tended to be convoluted prog-rock concepts. I imagine it was hard for their boss Kornelije Kovac to negotiate the two, with 45s being so easy to record and get on the radio, while only a handful of people seemed to care for the LPs.
I stumbled upon this interesting video of their concept record 1941, which was written and recorded to mark the 30th aniversary of March 27, when Yugoslav opposition organized anti-fascist demonstrations in Belgrade. 1941 was built around lyrics previously published by the Serbo-Bosnian poet Branko Copic. At that time, Dado Topic (later in Time) was the singer of Korni Grupa, while Jospia Lisac, a pop/rock singer from Zagreb, guested on “Marija,” probably the best song on the record.
The poem itself starts as if it’s about the Virgin Mary, but it’s actually about a young anti-fascist Yugoslav Partisan woman, a fighter in World War II who fearlessly died while storming the Nazi bunker. Kornelije Kovac decided to give this story a musical setting reminiscent of the best Big Brother and the Holding Company moments. The 1941 film originally aired on TV in 1971, but the record was in the vaults for a couple of more years after that. (The reasons for this delay were definitely not political).