How I Went to a Concert that Never Existed and Met Vlado Kreslin

Last summer someone posted a YouTube video on the Facebook page of a mutual friend.  The video was called “Rulet” with two guys I’d never heard of—Šajeta and Vlado Kreslin.   I usually don’t watch videos but I figured, what the heck? My work was giving me fits and I might as well do something besides stare at the screen. 

This young man started singing in a foreign language.  I couldn’t understand him but it was still nice… and then the camera switched to this bald headed guy singing, seated at a piano. I thought, what is this…  and then he stood up and started, “Še zmeraj me skrbi…”

I swear I don’t know what happened to me.  I still don’t. All I know is I felt something like an arrow pierce me right through my heart. Never have I been struck by such a voice and such words as those sung by this bald headed man. I must have listened to that video fifteen or twenty times right then, one after the other, trying to figure out why this was making such an impact.

The next day I went back to that Facebook page looking for the video. It was gone. Okay, no problem--I’d find it myself.  I remembered the song was “Rulet” and one of the guys was named Vlado. Not much to go on but I figured even if I had to wade through thirty or so videos on YouTube I’d find it.  Of course I found it.  

I searched for other videos with Vlado Kreslin.  Bookmarked them. Downloaded them.  Bought the CDs. Listened to them while I wrote. Learned the songs while I wrote—it didn’t matter that I knew not one word of Slovene. I knew what was being sung without understanding the meaning of the words. Home, family, friends, loves lost and gained, tears, laughter— Vlado’s music spoke of all these to me through the summer and into autumn. And the pictures I saw when I heard him sing!

I finally got brave enough to send Vlado an email, telling him how much his music had meant to me, thanking him for touching my life. I figured if I heard anything at all it’d be from the webmaster, thanking me for writing Mr. Kreslin and please go buy his latest CD. The usual promotional stuff and that was okay. I didn’t write him expecting an answer.  I just wanted to thank him.

The next morning I had an email from Vlado himself.  We began corresponding.

When my husband asked what I wanted for Christmas, I said I wanted to hear Vlado in Ljubljana.  Vlado had a concert scheduled for the end of January and we made plans to go.  I confirmed our reservations—and the next day Vlado wrote saying the concert was canceled. Could we get out of the trip? Alas, our tickets were nonrefundable… and then I saw the bottom of his email.  His wife would cook us a good Slovene meal and he would play for us in his flat.

We left Dallas Thursday afternoon and arrived in Paris at noon on Friday. We sat in the terminal for six hours, awaiting our flight to Ljubljana to come up on the board.  Finally it showed and just as we thought we were getting out of there, the flight was canceled.  I dashed off an email to Vlado, telling him of this latest setback, and promised that somehow we’d be in Ljubljana the next night. We ran for a flight to Zagreb and from there took a bus to Ljubljana with three other people.  Got to the airport after midnight and found we had no car because the rental agency was closed.  Took the last taxi to the hotel and hit the bed exhausted at 1.30 am. Saturday morning.

I’d read that Slovenes were a reserved, formal people.  I was prepared for reserved and formal.  I practiced my almost non-existent Slovene, tried to remember all the things one should not talk about while a guest in a Slovene home—and promptly forgot everything when greeted with an exuberant “Ruth! I can’t believe you’re here!!” and a gigantic bear hug.  We ate, drank, laughed, told tales on our families, talked about everything old friends talk about—and sang. Oh yes, he sang.  I had my concert in Vlado’s house, sitting next to him, with his children playing in the next room and the snow falling outside.  I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Ruth Dupre