BalkanMapper

Profile Picture for the BalkanMapper channel

I first became aware of Yugoslav war music around 2015 when I stumbled across the Kocayine video for Jadna Bosno suverena. From there on I found channels like Sak0 and artists like Roki Vulović and Baja Mali Knindža. At that time it was all very surface level and was just something mildly interesting that I didn't think about much.

My YouTube channel was made around April 2019 when I started doing mapping videos of dubious quality. Around that time I also regained my interest in Yugoslav war music and started looking a bit deeper into the topic. I wanted to find more albums, and learn about events from the war, and eventually I found artists like Pirgo.

I would go on to buy my first tape, Živeće ovaj narod, on the 11th of February 2020, followed by Srpskim radikalima, Gara iz Nemačke, and many more after that.

Jumping to July 2020 I started uploading one of my rarest tapes, Pesma o Zoranu, followed by Đe si legendo. Unfortunately, the zealous hand of Renome did not like my efforts. My channel was promptly deleted for copyright infringement. A month later I made my current channel and ever since then have been completely diving head first into war music. As of writing, I have more than 200 cassettes and a lot of knowledge of even the most obscure songs.

Discogs Controversy

Discogs seems like the perfect site, right? It's a giant database where you can submit albums, their covers and it even has a marketplace. Unfortunately, it's trouble in paradise that led to the creation of savez.net.

Around 3 years ago I submitted the album Glas Trebave - Tri planina, tri brata to Discogs, as a regular submission, not thinking much of it. Well turns out you're not allowed to submit stuff from the internet and especially not if the releases "don't even exist". Now, I really didn't know that izvorna dump channels remove label logos from their scans, but after finding that out and noticing that the Glas Trebave album had a doctored J-card scan, I decided to vote on the removal of the listing. Well turns out the Discogs moderators really didn't like that.

"Looks like the user's subs could use a bit of scrutiny, submitting photoshopped fantasy releases is a really bad sign."

Is the comment that would precede an entire team of Discogs moderators going through all of my 220+ submissions and deleting everything that they thought looked off.

"Are we all supposed to be familiar with how Balkan CDs look?" Was posted under the CD version of Uzalud behari mirišu as a reason for removal.

After this campaign, I and many other contributors were very disappointed at the outstanding unprofessionalism of the moderators, and contemplated moving to a different platform. This the fire was fueled when I got banned out of nowhere weeks later.

After this event I was in search of another site, a site what would offer us a better home than Discogs. We never found that site, and in the interest of being totally independent, we decided to make our own.

The Collection

How big is your collection?

Let me count ...237 Cassettes, 7 CD's, 2 VHS tapes, 5 Vinyl and 1 Magazine as of March 2025.

What's your rarest item?

There are quite a few contenders and aside from izvorna tapes nobody has ever heard of (or cares about) here are some:

Mišo Šarić - Krajina nas zove

Perica Ivanović - Self titled

Nedjo Kostić - Osveti me sine

Baja Mali Knindža - The Best Off

Slaviša Guja Slaja - Otadžbina

Zoran Đukić - Za Srbiju Srbin živi

What's your favorite item?

My favorite tapes have to be two 60 minute recordings of Srpski Radio Ozren from 1994 and 1995, it's got some real gems on there. Some lost media but also recordings of Koridor songs and cool commentaries by the hosts, like a song being dedicated to a brigade on the front line. Other than those, when it comes to commercial releases, either Perica Ivanović or Humanitarna kaseta iz Semberije.

What's still in your wantlist?

I could list a bunch here that I'm still on the hunt for, but if I had to narrow it down to one I want the most, it would be Minđušari - Armija Srpska.

What do you digitize with?

A pretty obscure unit called the Universum Pentagon 5000 for cassettes, although it is a combo unit, it certainly wasn't cheap when it came out and neither the hardware, nor the digitizations have disappointed. For vinyl I use a modern AT-LP120XUSB. CD's I digitize with a portable USB CD drive and Windows Media Player and I'm still working on a VHS setup. Scanning I do with a Canon CanoScan Lide 300.