Secer – Not Yet Sweet Enough

Belgraders love to boast of ‘Belgrade firsts’ and Secer, so the legend goes, was not only the first discotheque in Serbia, but also the first in Yugoslavia, the Balkans, Southeast Europe, and the USSR.

The club opened in 1967 and was originally just called ‘Diskoteka’, but it became known as ‘Laza Secer’s place’, a reference to the owner of the club.

Secer didn’t last too long as, back in those days, it wasn’t acceptable for kids to be out and about seven days a week into the early morning hours listening to The Rolling Stones and the Moody Blues. It was closed within a year of opening.

Older Belgraders remember it fondly and have many anecdotes to share with the new generation of club-goers. Secer was the ‘it’ place and it was definitely a thing of prestige to be seen out there. The club has opened it’s doors again for the first time in over 40 years and in this incarnation is simply called Secer.

Interested to see what the new owners had done with the place, and what their concept was for resurrecting this legendary disco, I found myself out on a Wednesday night, climbing down the stairs to the basement of a residential building just behind the Atelje 212 Theatre.

Basement clubs, of which there are many in the city, are hard to maintain and revitalise. It takes some time and effort to get rid of the dank and mildewy smell, and this is the case in Secer.

The air is damp with a slight touch of mould in the air, and worst of all, there is absolutely no ventilation. Even though there were only about 20 people in the club on a Wednesday night, the whole place reeked of cigarettes and within an hour, the smoke was biting at my eyes.

The club is divided into three main rooms, one with a DJ stage and two that are loaded with sofas and chairs where most of the guests were having a drink and chat.

The decor is uninspired at best, with pasty, dark green walls, but at least the sofas are comfy. Some of the walls are covered in a weird rubbery material, which may be a good idea for collapsing drunks but otherwise seems to serve no real person other than to look a little ugly and frumpy.

Wednesday night was pretty uneventful, with a DJ playing tunes and most of the people either sitting on the sofas or at the bar. At a quarter to two in the morning no one had been brave enough to venture onto the dance floor and bust a move. It’s quite a shame, because the club itself looks like it could be great place for dance parties as the area by the DJ is the most spacious part of the club and would allow people to get their grooves on without bumping into each other.

The prices are the usual fayre for this type of not-so-exclusive club, and the people are pretty much those that you’ll see in other clubs of the same profile, such as Muf or the Povetarac and 20/44 riverside clubs – late 20s, early 30s, with an aversion to folk music.

Talking of which, the musical programme is not yet clearly defined, but from what I could tell from this night and what I’ve heard, the club will be focusing on styles like jazz, funk, neo-soul, underground funky house and oldschool Yugoslav disco, funk and soul from the 60s and 70s that has been getting a lot of play in trendy clubs over the past two years or so.

All in all, the club needs some time to get its act together, but if and when it does, given its great location, it should be a popular place to either start or finish off a night of clubbing as the autumn and winter clubbing season rolls on.