During the World Cup, as the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team has made it to the knockout stage of the competition for the first time in their history, they’ve also picked up their own World Cup anthem. Bosnian band Dubioza Kolektiv’s 
song “I am From Bosnia, Take Me to America” was originally written 15 years ago under the title “U.S.A.” but following a joke during World Cup qualifying, it has become a rallying cry from fans at home and beyond, growing from a song about disillusionment with the American dream into a picture of pride in Bosnian soccer.

Vedran Mujagic, one of their founders and a current bassist in the band, opened up about becoming an overnight sensation and how their song became one of the driving soundtracks behind the team pushing to make history at the World Cup. 

“It all started basically as a very Bosnian type of joke, because we didn’t have anything to do with it. We just received a call from one of the guys who is active in the BHFanaticos supporters group…’It will be happening the day before the playoff game against Wales in Cardiff,’ and they said, like, just watch the game, we have a surprise for you, and we didn’t know what it was,” Mujagic said.

“The national anthems were played, and then the cameraman just took the camera to the stands, and there’s this bunch of Bosnian guys with this huge 20-meter banner that says I’m from Bosnia, take me to America, and in that moment you know the qualifying for the World Cup looked practially impossible, because we have to beat Wales and couple days later, Italy…so it was kind of this dark humor, this liberating joke on our own camp. There’s no chance that we’re gonna win, but let’s have fun. Take us to America.”

What began as a joke continued to grow because they did get past Wales and then defeated Italy on penalties with Esmir Bajraktarevic, who was born in Wisconsin and represented the United States at youth levels, scoring the decisive penalty. Since then, Bosnians haven’t had a bad day as they’ve been able to support their soccer team getting to new heights. Now they’ll face off against the United States men’s national team in what has become a full-circle moment, with the match taking place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, a fitting venue for a song which includes the line “Take me to Golden Gate. I will assimilate.”

Although with lyrics like that, Mujagic hastens to point out that it’s a repurposed version of the original song we’re all hearing. 

“People are listening to this supporters football themed version that we recorded after all of this happened, just as a nod to the footballers and to the tournament and people are discovering by this chant, and then you know in the second step they go back and they listen to entirety of the song.

“Because everyone says, ‘take me to golden gate, I will assimilate’ it’s very submissive like we go to America and we assimilate but in the original song, it’s the complete opposite because we like we really like to play with stereotypes with these black and white representations and predjudices and everything esle that is contected with worldview especially how the rest of the world is seeing Bosnia and Balkans in general and also how we see ourselves,” Mujagic said. “So this song is a thing that describes a very typical and very naive worldview of a person who is not satisfied in his own country and wants to go find his American, or any other dream, abroad.”

It highlights just how complicated the world can be, especially at a moment when Bosnian refugees are increasingly choosing to play for the national team even if they can represent other countries. A song that represented one thing in the shadow of a tragic chapter in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina can represent something else 15 years later. When the song was first written people didn’t have to look far to see family members lost due to the Bosnian War and genocide from 1992-95, but the next era of the country is being written now. More members of the team are currently children of refugees, as opposed to being refugees themselves. It’s helping people see that the country is more than just its relatively recent past.

“The song was written 15 years ago during the US administration that was far less hostile to immigrants to this one, and sometimes songs as well, and this one really is getting another life and after this World Cup, will get another one because in reality, I’ve heard dozens of stories of people actually returning from their quite successful American dream in the States and they’re going back to Bosnia becuse they realized that some things can only be felt in your own country,” Mujagic said.

At the World Cup, the team is based in St. Louis, where there is a large Bosnian diaspora in the United States, a great marriage between team and community.

“This is something that we hope will have a positive result because when people stop having the first association when they hear the word Bosnia and Herzegovina, being war and being these horrific things that happened in the 90s, and they realized that Bosnia is associated with good football players, crazy supoorters which are your neighbors, and as a very fun, loud, and crazy positive group of people,” Mujagic said.

Soccer at the World Cup does, in some ways, become a way for a country to introduce itself to the world. People were able to find Curacao on the map after they scored a goal against Germany, and behind this World Cup anthem, Bosnia and Herzegovina are experiencing a similar impact. They were exclusively associated with the war, but through soccer, people are realizing that there’s more to the Balkans than tragedy, and that’s the type of stuff that the World Cup is about.