Mendi Mengjiqi — Making music to build countries with

There is an artist wandering alone in the mountains of north-eastern Kosovo who deeply cherishes the EU ideal — of a united and peaceful Europe — but who is losing hope the Western Balkans will follow his beloved Poland on the path to accession. 

"There's a dangerous situation in the world today — so many crises, in Ukraine, in the Balkans, in America — in the whole world, something strange is happening, a new era is coming," he tells EUobserver. 

Mendi Mengjiqi is a 66-year-old Kosovar Albanian classical music composer who wrote Kosovo's national anthem shortly before it declared independence on 17 February 2008.  

He lives in the mountain village of Lupçi i Epërm, where he is now composing a piece for a string quartet to be played at a music festival in Kraków, Poland, in summer.

"I live alone, with no people around, but I have six friends — my two dogs and the four street dogs I feed every day," he says. “I don’t eat meat, because I don’t like to kill animals, not even my chickens, but I do eat their eggs,” he adds. 

"I write music in my attic and I read [Swiss psychologist] Carl Jung. I read [Roman philosopher] Seneca,” Mengjiqi says. “I follow the news a bit, but I try to stay far from politics, because it upsets me.

“I have found solace in nature. The hills here are so beautiful in spring, the grass is so green and the wild flowers are so pure,” he adds. 

But for all his self-imposed isolation, Mengjiqi is a consummate European. He studied in Sweden and Poland (under the famous Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki) and speaks English, Italian, Polish, Serbo-Croat, and Swedish, as well as his native Albanian. 

“It’s like [Roman philosopher] Marcus Aurelius said: ‘My city is here, it is Rome, but since I’m a man, it’s also the whole world’,” Mengjiqi says. 

And the anthem he wrote, which is entitled Europe, was his contribution to EU enlargement, as it sought to bring reconciliation to a people still traumatised by one of the most cruel ethnic wars of modern times. 

“Most anthems have a martial theme, but that’s not my taste, I don’t accept that, and my ‘Europe’ has the same musical scale as the European anthem, the Ode to Joy [by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven],” he said. 

“Penderecki told me something I’ll never forget: ‘Your music is rooted in the Balkans, but cultivated in European schools’,” Mengjiqi said. “Music is everything to me. It brings peace. In any culture where music is not developed, people are more aggressive,” he adds. 

“EU enlargement in 2004 never threatened anyone. Nobody forced Poland or the Baltic States to join, but Putin’s sickness made them fearful of Russia”

He also loves Poland, partly for its history of eminent scientists and artists, but also for the humanitarian values that he sees in Polish society. “Polish people will never accept that someone is treated unjustly. They’re always on the side of the good”, he says. 

But turning back to the politics which so disappointed him, he says: “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought even Russia would open up to Europe, that we could live together in a continent with no visas or hard borders, that one day we’d all unite, but then this cretin [Russian president Vladimir] Putin came along with his imperial ambitions and divided everybody”. 

“In Russia, many people don’t have indoor toilets, but Putin has golden toilets in his palace, and that shows the kind of country this is,” Mengjiqi tells EUobserver. “EU enlargement in 2004 never threatened anyone. Nobody forced Poland or the Baltic States to join, but Putin’s sickness made them fearful of Russia,” he says. 

The enlargement process continues amid the Ukraine war, with Ukraine itself, as well as Georgia and Moldova, now official candidates to join, alongside the six Western Balkan states and Turkey. 

But Kosovo is the last in line, since five EU member states still don’t recognise its sovereignty, while Serbia is increasingly drifting back into Russia’s sphere of influence. 

Meanwhile, for Mengjiqi, strict Islam, as well as Putin, is holding back the unification he dreamed of when he was a young man in the 1990s. 

People in Europe have become scared of Muslim fanatics and of Arab migrants by association, he says, in a trend which feeds far-right EU identity politics and “helps only Russia”.

Aside from Roman philosophy, Mengjiqi also admires the 13th century Persian poet Rumi, he says, but he cant’ relate to the mystical Sufi Islam sect of Bektashism that Rumi inspired, which is now based in Albania, for instance. 

“Islam has done a lot of harm in Kosovo. Democracy is freedom to believe or say what you want, but not to do what you want,” he adds. “European culture and values come from Judaeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions and Muslims need to adapt to this if we are to live happily together,” he says. 

“Some people pacify their souls in nature, some in art, others in religion - and wherever you find this peace, that’s where you belong,” the musician says. 

“The problem is that too many Serbs find this comfort in their historical ties with Russia, while too many Albanians find it in their links with strict Muslim societies in the Middle East. Until we can renounce this, it will be hard for either of us to integrate with Europe,” he warns.   

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