ĆIRIĆ & SKROBONJA LIKE JOHN & PAUL I can't imagine the world without The Beatles The Rubber Soul Project has come a long way since 1995, when it emerged thanks to the tandem of Rastko Ćirić and Goran Skrobonja. This album, conceived as a creative reconstruction of non-existent Beatles songs, even managed to secure a gold medal in the major world contest for the Global Music Award 2021. R astko Ćirić, a wizard of the graphic design world and a professor of illustration and an- imation at the Faculty of Applied Arts and the University of Arts in Belgrade, won one of nine gold medals at the start of 2021. His multimedia project The Rubber Soul Project Col- lection (RSP), including a double music album with a film and two books, won “Best of Show” in the cate- gory 'concept - creativity and originality' at the ma- jor world contest of the Global Music Award (GMA). At the same time, Nebojša Ignjatović Nebe secured a bronze medal at the GMA for the music he composed for Ćirić's latest animated film, Lights & Shadows, in- spired by Faust. “The initial primer for RSP was the song Rubber Soul, which doesn't exist on the Beatles' famous al- bum of the same name. I was surprised to find that title on a list of songs that they recorded but never re- leased. My friend Goran Skrobonja came up with lyr-
ics for that imaginary song, I composed the imagined music and that's how we started the project of creat- ing an “imaginary Beatles album”. I later researched, bought pirate Beatles albums and searched the inter- net. It turned out that the song doesn't exist and is just a legend. Of all the “creatively reconstructed” songs based on titles, we found original songs for a few of them and realised that there were various reasons why they weren't released,” says Ćirić. Production and arrangements were entrusted to professor of double bass Nebojša Ignjatović and Ba- jaga's “instructor” Miroslav Cvetković. Twenty years later, Igor Kordej produced a second album with 17 songs. This luxuriously outfitted collection box con- tained, alongside two CDs and a DVD, a feature-length documentary by Dinko Tucaković, Goran Skrobonja's novel Rubber Soul and his book RSP Journey, with a story about the project. A total of around 40 musicians participated in the two album's 32 songs… “When, in 2015, we released the RSP collection box, with two albums, a film and two books, thanks to producer Igor Kordej, I breathed a sigh of relief be- cause the project was complete. We held a few concerts and that was that. Goran and I made another song for friends from Belarus in December 2020, called The Minsk Sunrise, and the project started reawakening after five years. That was prior to news of the award. Goran and I didn't intend to make a third album. But who knows, we're still young, together we aren't even 125 years old.” Working on Beatles songs, the authors imagined the timing and topics of the songs, agreed on the Bea- tles' period to which those songs would have belonged, often also accurately placing the record “from which they come”, as well as the genre and atmosphere. Ac- cording to the text, they determined the authors as John, Paul or George… When asked why they chose the Beatles in particular, Ćirić answers with a ques- tion: “And who else?” “They didn't only change music, behaviour, art – in short, the complete reality during the '60s, rather they also changed me and my friends. It's difficult for me to imagine a world without the Beatles. They brought a great many changes to the world. That was continu- ous and intensive therapy during the 1960s. Elvis re- mained in the '50s. And all others who thought in a modern way were followers of the Beatles and also the Rolling Stones. The Beatles symbolise creativity for me.” More than 25 years after its birth, the RSP has turned golden, by winning the major independent an- nual award of a Californian institution. “I hadn't heard of that award until Nada Kolundžija received it a year ago for the triple piano anthology In- hale / Exhale. She also persuaded me to submit RSP to the competition, along with the CD containing music by Nebojša Ignjatović for my animated film Lights & Shadows. Astounding, but that was successful for us!”
Iz dugometražnog dokumentarnog filma Dinka Tucakovića The Rubber Soul Project Still from Dinko Tucaković's feature length documentary film The Rubber Soul Project
Gold medal » Zlatna medalja | 33
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator