BACK UP THE BALKANS? C.R.A.S.H.!

In another year marked by bombs and bloodshed on the Balkans we are proud to present you, and offer you a genuine chance to "Back up the Balkans". Simply buying this third CRASH CD in the series "Blues for Bosnia"(ë95), "Beat up Bosnia"(ë97) makes you directly support the humanitarian organsiation C.R.A.S.H. (Construction, Reintegration And Social Help), and thereby the psycho-social and social-cultural reintegration of youthculture in the devastated republics of the former Yugoslavia.

The Bosnian-Dutch organisation C.R.A.S.H. is an independent NGO supporting musicians, youth projects and local NGOís throughout the former Yugoslavia. It offers direct material, moral and organisational support to youth in general, and musicians in particualr, by bringing in instruments and equipment, opening up audio/video recording and rehearsal facilities, structuralising a tour circuit and setting up non comercial multi-cultural concert tours and festivals. Additionally, it instigates and/or supports more general multi-ethnic psycho-social and social-cultural youth programmes, initiatives and centres with a reintegrative potential.

In its attempt to break the -war induced- isolation of ex-Yuís youthculture, C.R.A.S.H. operates a Counselling Service and a Cultural Exchange Prgramme. The first forms a local NGO development programme aimed at structuralising rudimentary youth initiatives, and linking them up with international sponsors, while the Cultural Exchange Programme aims at forging direct international grassroots solidarity between youth throughout Europe, supporting the internal and external reintegration and normalisation of the Balkanís youthculture. It sets its definitive mark by staging the memorable breakthrough ë98 Ëx-Yu Rocks!"Festival, bringing together -for the first (and up-to-now only) time since the outbreak of war -bands from all the republics of the former Yugoslavia on one stage in the heart of Bosnia. This blockbusting rock marathon, reuniting young bands from both parts of the Bosnian Federation, Croatia, Serbia, Monte Negro, Slovenia,Macedonia and the Bosnian-Serb entity of Srpska, formed a powerful statement by a new generation ready to face the future, and as such a promising step forward on the very specific reintegrational path that the organisation C.R.A.S.H. has set out on.

The more recent Bombs on the Balkans, though, truly tested our hopes and admittedly threw us back a few steps. They didnít manage, however, to bomb us off our chosen track nor to shatter the dreams we share with the new generation of ex-Yu.

As an old Brazilian folksong puts it: "When you dream alone, itís only a dream: but when you dream together itís the Dawn of Reality". We trust in concerted dreaming in compassion and solidarity, and wholeheartedly thank all those who joined us in realising this heartening CD, hopefully enabling us to persevere in Backing up the Balkans.

Yours sincerely;

Arno van der Pas, General Project Coordinator,

C.R.A.SH.