Duka’s Mission: Collaborate With Musicians From Every Country On Earth

Cologne-based musician and film producer, Damir Bašić aka Duka decided to try to collaborate with recording artists from all over the world in his new project. Originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, he finished last year putting their former band’s songs into a 40-minute feature film Delta wave (2019) with English subtitles and started to look for a new music film challenge. Propeler, with one Bosnian ‘l’, had to move on with a new drummer, and Duka wanted to find himself a new music project in his new town, Cologne, Germany.

He is now making a series of songs, where he is the author of all music and lyrics, but he is inviting recording artists from all over the word to make recorded audio and video performances. He gives much freedom to the performing artists to interpret his songs the way they like, and he dreams that one day, when the pandemia is gone, he will be able to perform the entire set live. These songs are released on all platforms that Distroid covers under the name Duka Base (see for example Spotify here)

Duka was initially struggling with the same problem as we do in Data & Lyrics when we try to explain our Listen Local or Music Observatory projects. “It was hard at the beginning to convince artists to take a part in the show, because it was hard to describe the whole idea. After the first show, everything went better, because the artist could see exactly what I wanted from them. Now, the response is way better of course.”

And then it started to go smoothly. “All those artists have had their own home studios, and it went quick and well. But it’s a bit harder to record the video, because all the artists with whom I worked are musicians, and not filmmakers. All in all, I am very happy with the willingness of the artists to do it as best they can, and at the end, I am happy with the outcome. It’s interesting for me how I talked with everyone the same way I would talk with someone in Cologne. The core of producing something is the same, or at least very similar no matter where you live.”

In spite of the global ambition, Duka does not make a living from creating music. He has a dayjob as a motion designer at Denkwerk, which is not connected to his musician career. He just moved to Cologne in 2018, so he is not yet integrated in the scene of the German town while he continues to follow the Sarajevo scene as much he can — though, of course, his musician friends are as much stranded as anybody else in Europe in 2020.

Other artists

• Robin Kestner
• Katarzia
• Duka Base
• Twentees
• Willemijn de Krey
• Youniverse
• Marie de la Montagne

And a label:

• Tiny Rooms