Mojoj majci (Ruža hrvatska)

Prljavo kazalište started in 1977 as a punk band from Dubrava, a working-class suburb of Zagreb, and their first album in 1979 was boycotted by state media in socialist Yugoslavia for its style and harsh lyrics. By the late 1980s, with Mladen Bodalec as singer, they had become one of the biggest bands in the country. Then guitarist and songwriter Jasenko Houra's mother died, and he wrote a ballad for her. Mojoj majci, To My Mother, appeared on the 1988 album Zaustavite Zemlju, which itself proved controversial. A song of private grief took on a very different weight because of one line, in which the mother is called the last Croatian rose. In the political climate of the time it stirred strong national feeling and became a hit. The tour that followed took the band to the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Sweden and beyond, and the concerts drew huge crowds carrying Croatian flags. The tour peaked on 17 October 1989 on Zagreb's main square, then still called Republic Square and now Ban Jelačić Square, where more than 250,000 people gathered. The concert was supposed to be banned, but it went ahead and far exceeded all expectations. Within a few years Croatia would be at war, and the band's later records dealt with its victims. The song remains a striking example of how a son's lament for his mother came to be heard by a whole nation as something larger.