note 198

199 Music can be vital information for many people as well. When Paradiso, de Balie and Press Now, were working with people in former Yugoslavia during the war, when Sarajevo was under siege for over 9 months, friends from Sarajevo told us that one of the things that made their isolation so hard to bear was that they were cut off from the world, they could not hear the new music anymore. The downloading of music was not yet possible. Via the network of independent radio stations, organized by B92 in Belgrade, people tried to address this need while at the same time providing independent news. The cultural dimension of life appears to be of crucial value to people who were satiated with political war propaganda and were experiencing hardship.