ANDRRA

In 2015, Kosovo was thrust into a deep economic crisis – shortly thereafter, a new wave of migration emerged. Young people from rural areas, mainly male and under the age of 20, fled the country. In less than three months, around 20,000 citizens emigrated with Europe as their destination, chiefly Germany. Migration remains an important element in the personal as well as collective histories of the Albanian population in Kosovo, having touched almost every family for generations. It’s often the women who stay behind with their children, and the men who find themselves (often undocumented) in Western Europe, away from their family and friends, displaced and alone. The stories of her own relatives, along with lyrics about migration from old traditional songs, moved Kosovo-born, Bavaria-raised ANDRRA to work on her new EP. She is performing a selection of these stories in pieces composed especially for Pop-Kultur.