Belgrade - An underdeveloped but hard-rocking Serbian
village was set to reveal a sculpture to the Jamaican reggae icon Bob
Marley on Saturday and so join others in the region already boasting
or planning celebs-in-bronze.
The Marley monument, made by Croatian artist Davor Dukic, is to be
unveiled on the second and final day of the two-day Rock Village
festival, launched in Banatski Sokolac in 2005 in a bid to bring the
ex-Yugoslav rock elite to a rural stage.
The 2-metre-tall statute of the small musician who has had a huge
impact on global music would acknowledge 'admiration for Marley's
musical opus, as well as his contribution to freedom and equality,'
organizers said on their site www.rockvillage.org.
The idea came from the organizers, but local authorities went
happily along, village mayor Milan Agbaba said in a recent interview
with the daily Politika.
In the choice of the best personality for the monument, Marley,
who died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36, defeated two other
1960s-era rock icons who died young, guitarist Jimi Hendrix and
singer Jim Morrison.
Due to attend the festival and the ceremony are regional
dignitaries from the world of music, including both performers as
well as critics, in addition to 'friends' from Jamaica, Ghana and
Suriname.
Presentations of statues of real and fictional personalities has
become a regional fad, amusing people but also drawing the eye of
international media and visitors to otherwise obscure places.
Before Sokolac, a place 70 kilometres north-east of Belgrade that
is unmarked even on large wall maps of Serbia, boosted its renown
with Marley, a monument to the film character Rocky Balboa was
erected in 2007 in the equally unknown nearby village of Zitiste.
Also in the area along Serbia's border with Romania is Medja,
claiming to be the birthplace of the US Olympian swimmer Johnny
Weismuller, better known for his role in Tarzan films. Naturally,
Medja is preparing a monument to Weismuller, or Tarzan.
West of Serbia, in Bosnia, a bronze statue of Bruce Lee - Hong
Kong's deceased kung-fu spaghetti movie king, but also a true martial
arts icon - stares across Mostar, a major city, since 2005.
In amore subdued manner, the authorities in Novi Sad, Serbia's
second-largest city, named a street after John Lennon in 2005, on the
25th anniversary of the Beatle's assassination. The re-naming of the
street was however later challenged by anti-Western nationalists.
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