Is Ricky Martin Montenegrin?

Looking for a good night out Balkan-style?

Montenegro will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the restoration of its independence today, 21 May, with a giant free concert on the aptly named Trg Nezavisnosti (Independence Square) in the centre of the nation’s capital Podgorica. It promises to be a huge event!

The headliner?

Of course, that champion of Montenegrin independence, Ricky Martin.

By the way, there will also be a slew of Montenegrin pop singers – the usual suspects and many of them having represented Montengro at Eurovision: Sergej Ćetković, Nenad Knežević Knez, Bojan Marović, No Name (wow!), Daniel Popović, Andrijana Božović, Nina Žižić, Milena Vučić, Isak Šabanović, Tamara Živković, Baryak, Samir Ramović, Bubnjivi & Psi.

This being a “respectable” event means there are no turbo folk singers invited, nor are there any Belgrade-based Montenegrin singers in this line-up. Perhaps big names such as Boban Rajović, Dado Polumenta, Šako Polumenta, Vlado Georgiev or even Rambo Amadeus (who coined the term “turbo folk” and even represented Montenegro at 2012 Eurovision) would have been there.

Interestingly, no Jadranka Barjaktarević, a controversial Montenegrin turbo folk singer who had the honour of being banned from entry into Serbia. The irony is that she was most famous for coming third on the second season of the most popular singing audition show in the region, the Belgrade-based Zvezde Granda. She has worn her Montenegrin-ness on her sleeve ever since, such as with this number Dupla s čemerom (A Double with Sadness) from 2012 featuring the gusle, the instrument most symbolic of Montenegro. But in 2020, Barjaktarević earned her ban from entering Serbia, and effectively cutting herself from her biggest market, from the outrage after she sang popular 1980s Neo-Folk song Ne može nam niko ništa (“Nobody Can Do Anything to Us”) but changed the line after to jači smo od Srbije (“we are stronger than Serbia”). The ban has since been lifted, but in a defiance emulating that of Croatian superstar Oliver Dragojević, Barjaktarević has vowed never to step foot in Serbia ever again. Many others had said that before… and relented when huge amounts of money have been thrown at them. Still, you’d think that with patriotic songs like Crna Gora je moj dom (“Montenegro is my Home”) that Barjaktarević would’ve been up there shaking her bon-bon with Ricky Martin…

So why have Ricky Martin there?

This is part of Balkan practice for blowing budgets on big-name stars to appear at major public events in a classic case of bread and circuses. While there never seems any taxpayer-funded public budgets to tackle some of the most pressing of issues such as fixing critical infrastructure – public roads, facilities or transport, there always seems to be money for lavish celebrations often engaging a high-profile star to perform in front of the unwashed masses for free in the central square or local stadium of villages, towns and large cities for some big event. New Year’s Eve is the primary night of the year for this, where in the lead-up to the najluđa noć (“the craziest night”) of the year, the media in the Balkans provide non-stop reporting on which big-name star is performing in which city or town… and the mouth-watering appearance fees they’ll be earning. Turbo folk superstar Ceca and rock star turn brass band showman Goran Bregović always end up cashing in the most, with both of them earning up to 200,000 euros on the night.

Many of these cities justify spending so much on these stars claiming that many people from neighbouring cities and even countries will come just to see these singers perform, pumping the local economy with good money into accommodation and hospitality venues. However, considering many of these visitors usually just drive in for the concert of their favourite star and then just leave once it’s over, such justifications are often quite feeble.

One place that can rightfully claim that they get a return for their investment here is Montenegro, and particularly the coastal resort towns. Budva, one of the most established of these towns, has its tourist infrastructure primarily catering for regional tourists, and that includes being the site of some of the biggest discos in the Balkans playing local music and hosting big-name stars to lure visitors. Getting in big names to perform there for the New Year period right in the middle of the winter, an otherwise dead season for coastal tourism, ensures that the main towns on the Montenegrin Riviera are all-year destinations and keeps the local economy pumping. This Serbian tabloid’s report from October 2025 announced who’ll be singing for New Year’s Eve that year in Budva – all big regional names with big appearance fees.

Otherwise, the reverse in seasons happens at some ski-dominant resorts in the Balkans, where places like Bansko in Bulgaria or Zlatibor in Serbia will hold concerts of huge names during the summer months.

But in most cases, getting these big stars to perform in their non-descript town can be used for one-upmanship purposes and to show off how much more influential the town, and ultimately its mayor, are in stature in relation to, or despite, population size. Locals then can laud their town is better than rival nearby towns because they get bigger stars to perform at their town’s special day, giving them something shallow to be proud of. An example of this is the small town of Hadzhidimovo, population 4500, located in a forgotten corner of southern Bulgaria within earshot of a forgotten corner of northern Greece, whose mayor loves boasting how he’s such close friends with some of the biggest singing stars in the Balkans that he’s been able to get them to come and do concerts in his fair town – something bigger towns in the vicinity and beyond can only dream of.

So getting someone as internationally famous as Ricky Martin to sing in Podgorica now is a bit of a coup and will get people from all over Montenegro and from neighbouring countries to come and visit the Montenegrin capital. However, there has been some backlash from the Montenegrin public regarding the expect huge amount of money spent on today’s event. The Montenegrin government, though, has countered this, as stated on the Podgorica tourism website, by claiming: “This extraordinary artistic event is envisioned as a gift from the state to the citizens of Montenegro. The arrival of an artist whose name symbolises top-level production and a universal musical language confirms the intention to mark two decades since the restoration of independence in a truly magnificent way.” Isn’t that nice of them!

But any mention that Ricky Martin is gay? OK, that’s the topic for another article altogether… but to sum it all up, it’s been conveniently muted.

So of all stars, why have the Montenegrins managed to rope in Ricky Martin?

A friend of mine did ask whether then he has some sort of Montenegrin connection?

No, there’s no apparent personal connection between Montenegro and Martin, apart from both names starting with M and the former will be paying the latter.

But then again, if we apply the logic that Serbian writer Dragoslava Koprivica used to claim that Fidel Castro is Serbian, no-one has ever proven that Ricky Martin isn’t Montenegrin.

And if all that fails, do what one overzealous Macedonian Shakira fan did when in the mid-2000s they edited her IMDb and Wikipedia entries to say she’s part Macedonian. This was immediately accepted as fact, no questions asked. Even The Guardian quoted she has Macedonian roots. However, in February 2007, at a press conference in Berlin, Germany, on the second European stop of Shakira’s Oral Fixation tour, Macedonian TV radio presenter Zhivkica Gurchinovska was chosen out of field of over 500 journalists present to ask one of the four questions Shakira’s people had allowed time for her to answer. Gurchinovska simply asked Shakira whether she has Macedonian ancestry on account that IMDB claims she is of Colombian, Lebanese and Macedonian origin. Shakira answered with a laugh saying that she is the great, great, great-grandchild of Alexander the Great... but then added that the information on IMDB is sadly not true, but did she say she really would love to have Macedonian origins – very diplomatic of her. Still, the damage has been done and a quick internet search of “Shakira Macedonian” will still bring up many articles based on this false link.

There’s actually a whole industry of pseudo-history in the Balkans, filling up local tabloids with articles of how everyone and anyone of note has some sort of [insert ethnicity] origin. And no ethnic group can claim the moral high ground here – they all do it!

Bulgarians insist that the Macedonians claiming Alexander the Great as their own is laughable and a sign of their “blind nationalism”, using the books written by fringe amateur historian Aleksandar Donski as evidence... though it’s perfectly fine when a Bulgarian in all seriousness claims that Jesus was Bulgarian and all the stories from the Bible happened in the Balkans, or when any of the crackpot historians on extreme-right-wing Bulgarian TV station SKAT (yes, that’s its name) have something to say. Hey, according to one Bulgarian “academic”, every Russian luminary, from Peter the Great to Pushkin to Putin, are of Bulgarian background. It’s all very “take the red pill, sheeple!” stuff.

Just a quick look into the comments for anything related to Albanian politics and history will get commenters claiming that everything is Albanian. Well, many do firmly believe that they were the first people in the Balkans and everyone else are jolly-come-latelies. The Slavs being in the Balkans for 1400 years is the equivalent of an overnight stay, apparently. That means all of the characters from Ancient Greece you know are all Albanian. After all, one of the theories behind the name of Albania’s currency, the lek, is that it’s named after Alexander the Great, otherwise known as Leka i Madh in Albanian, as the Albanians claim him as their own. The first 1 lek coin featured Alex on one side and the reverse showed him on his horse Bucephalus.

But the ultimate in internet stars in claiming everything comes from their ethnic group is the late Jovanka Jolić, whose whackadoodle claims ranging from the Serbs being the oldest people on Earth to Elon Musk being from Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, made her the butt of many a joke amongst the level-headed in the region.

It’s to the point that brilliant Belgrade-based satirical news portal njuz.net even did its own (deliberately false) claim – that Lady Gaga is actually the pseudonym for Dragana Miladinović, and really originates from the town of Kruševac in Serbia. And how did they come to detecting such a link? Well, Gaga is the diminutive for the common Serbian (and Balkan) female name Dragana, so how could she not be Serbian? And for an article from 2010, Njuz.net were very much ahead of its time by claiming their source as an anonymous person with the initials A.I. While their Zagreb satirist colleagues newsbar.hr had their own spoof article claiming Croatian archaeologists have yet to confirm that Jesus was a Croat, though they’re still working on it, but they are absolutely certain that Judas was a Serb given he kissed three times (Serbs traditionally greet with three kisses, Croats greet with two).

Of course, all this is wrong because everything and everyone is Greek. Just ask Helen and Stelios. And my Greek uncle fully endorses this! This is a true story – he once told my mother, with full conviction and with no irony whatsoever, that the Moon is Greek, and the reason being is because he saw it first in the night sky in Greece.

How about you? Are you really from the Balkans just that you haven’t realised it? Then we can get one of our distinguished “historians” to prove it based on the most spurious of notions. And then we can celebrate with a giant free Ceca concert in the middle of town. Sorted! Ne može nam niko ništa!