Miss Sarajevo

 (by Alvaro)

Miss Sarajevo is the only single in the album Original soundtracks by U2 (Bono and the Edge), in a parallel project of The Passengers. It was compoused by Bono and interpreted by him, Luciano Pavarotti, The Edge and Brian Eno (a famous producer) during a concert in Verona, Italy. It highlights the voice of Pavarotti with Bono and the violins.

The song and the videoclip are about an event which happened during the war in the old Yugoslavia, in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. This city was attacked by the Serbian, Muslims and Croatian armies. In these riots, hundreds of people died daily. In the middle of this chaos, some citizens created a beauty competition.

The context, the city

Bonia and Herzegovina is a sovereign European state, with the capital in Sarajevo, situated in the peninsula of the Balkans, in the southeast part of the continent. Its borders are bounded by Croatia at the north, west and south, Serbia and Montenegro at the east and the Adriatic sea in the south. In 1992 it obtained its independence as one of the six federal unit constituents in the old Yugoslavia which emerged at the end of the first World War, and was constitued according to the terms of the agreement of Dyton, which foresaw its administration. It’s divided into two entities: Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srpska Republic.

The war

The Bosnian war was an international conflict which happened in Bosnia/Herzegovina from 6 April 1992 to 14 December 1995. It was caused by a complex combination of political and religious factors: pride exaltation, political crisis, social problems and lack of security that followed at the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Communist system in the old Yugoslavia.

The history behind the beauty pageant

The anecdote which is based on Miss Sarajevo happened during the Balkan War, in the early nineties.

In a city besieged by bombs, a group of people called a beauty contest, to crown a Miss Sarajevo for the first time. For this event a special effort was made by the European administration in order for it to be transmitted to the whole world. Most girls that participated in the audition showed physical traces of the war on their bodies. A parade of malnourished adolescents in swimsuits was shown in front of the cameras, in an extravagant show. 

A young girl about 17 years old won the title. At the end of the show a banner showed the sentence: DON’T LET THEM KILL US!.

After the conflict

The winner of the contest Inela Nogic moved to the Netherlands with a Dutch journalist and  was married for six years. There, she has lived since then. Despite her history an urban myth was created according to which she was murdered by a sniper after the beauty contest.  In the concert which was celebrated at the Kosovo stadium, on 23 September 1997, Nogic arrived at the city with U2, in the private plane of the group and acompanying them on a tour on the devastated city before the concert started, where she was a guest.  After she worked as a model, she started profesionally to be an art designer, settling down in Amsterdam. Despite all, she has decided to be in anonymity.

 Official videoclip Miss Sarajevo