Turbo-folk is a genre of popular music in the Balkans that developed in Serbia in the 1990’s at the height of Slobodan Milošević’s regime. It is a hybrid genre combining elements loosely based on authentic folk music and elements from a variety of genres - electronic, hip-hop, reggaeton and more. It developed from a Yugoslav genre novokomponovana narodna muzika (newly composed folk music; henceforth NCFM). Across the Balkans there are equivalent regional variations of hybrid genres such as chalga in Bulgaria, manele in Romania, muzika popullore in Albania and laïko in Greece. All of these genres combine local variants of traditional folk music and imported, globally popular genres.
Across the Balkans there are a variety of derogatory names to describe regional forms of these pop-folk genres. Regardless of the differences in names and melodies, there is a persistent perception of these genres as lower cultural forms that pollute true national cultures.
As a case study, this literature review will focus on sources writing about the Yugoslav hybrid pop-folk genres - NCFM, turbo-folk and trapfolk. Although these are different musical genres, they are part of the same musical experimentation between ‘folk’ (traditional music forms) and imported musical forms.
From the beginning of the pop-folk musical experimentation, the presence of these styles has been called into question by cultural elites. Throughout their history, the meaning of these genres had been argued through a series of cultural oppositions through which collective identities were articulated. 1 The purpose of this literature review is to establish the origins of those meanings ascribed to pop-folk genres and how those meanings severed the formation of collective identities.
Many regional public debates about the most popular of these genres, turbo-folk, focus on its contested cultural value as a music genre or its emergence and popularity during the Milošević regime (1989-2000). Across the former Yugoslav nations, turbo-folk is persistently referred to as šund (garbage) and in some instances it is seen as a cultural export of the failed Greater Serbia project, polluting ‘true’ national cultures (including Serbian national culture). The typical accusations are that it is kitsch, nationalistic and pornographic.
Despite the controversies that surround it, turbo-folk has outlived the Milošević regime and continues to grow in popularity across the region. In some instances, it is described positively as contributing to peace and stability in the precarious environment of post-Yugoslav wars.
In the 1970’s, at the height of NCFM’s popularity, debates revolved around the notions of taste and kitsch. Central to this is a divide between rural and urban population. Here, NCFM represented transitional peasants’ musical taste which was not deemed to be on par with urban conceptions of culture. In the 1980’s NCFM performers’ experimentation with the ‘Oriental’ melos was perceived as a threat to the purity of Serbian national identity, focusing most of the efforts on removal of 'Eastern’ influences from Serbian music. During the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, the internal debate in Serbia revolved around provincialism (embedded in Serb nationalism) and Europeanism (embedded in the urban opposition to the Milošević regime). 2 In the new millennia, the continuous debate is centred around larger concepts of Balkan and Europe. Here, transnational ‘Balkanness’ represents a regional Balkan identity which sits in opposition to neoliberal global capital. 3
NCFM is a pop-folk genre which combines traditional folk music instrumentation and instrumentation from a range of genres including schlager, rock, pop, Mexican, Spanish and Greek music. The genre started in the mid-1960s, achieving the height of its popularity in the 1970s. Lyrically, NCFM performers express the hardships of a life as a gastarbeiter (guest worker, typically in West Germany) through patriotic longing for places of origin, be it Yugoslavia or rural places of origin. Other themes include love, family, patriotism and the everyday, including many heartfelt experiences of kafana - low-cost local bistros with live music serving alcoholic beverages, also a typical venue where NCFM is played. 4
Published in 1995 by Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, ’From Source to Commodity: Newly-Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia’ has been (and continues to be) a widely-influential piece of writing for scholars writing about the development of turbo-folk. The article is an in-depth market analysis of the commercial rise of NCFM. Rasmussen critically examines the dominant and official lines about what was considered ‘culture’ and the exclusion of NCFM from the same.
According to Rasmussen, Yugoslav writers have accredited the emergence of NCFM in the context of post-WWII urbanisation and mass industrialisation. 5 Ramussen expands on this observation by placing the rural to urban migration from 1945 onward as central to the genre’s artistic and commercial development.
This transitional population made up of rural migrants (peasants) was in search of a new identity, modelled on ‘privileged models of urban culture’ that would rid them of their rural origin. 6 As they sought to self-define through popular culture, modernity was seen as hindrance to their genuine integration into urban culture. 7
Irena Šentevska similarly writes that: ‘Traditional peasantry was expected to depart from their traditional ways and embrace modern(ised) and urban(ised) modes of cultural consumption, but also to develop appreciation for artistic value.’ 8
NCFM emerged as a cultural product of an attempt of the peasant population to assimilate to the dominant culture, while still retaining what was familiar to them. While retaining the accordion as a ‘quintessential’ folk instrument (a link to rural music practices where the accordion is a staple instrument), NCFM performers took instrumentations from various European and North American genres which signified modernity.
From the outset, the rise of NCFM caused a public moral outcry as it was seen as the music of uncultured, uneducated and backwards people. 9 The main opposition came from Yugoslav intelligentsia which deemed NCFM as kitsch and not on par with their notions of culture. Criticism was not only reserved for performers, but their audiences too, as the binding value of both is their rural social origin. 10
While Rasmussen never ascribed social or class identity to this dichotomous debate between taste and kitsch (warning that it might be manipulative to do so, as it can serve a particular theoretical interest) 11, she quotes American ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin who suggests a variety of non-class distinctions such as internal hierarchy, generational and changing group alliances as well as the (often ignored) factor of individual choice. 12
Although Rasmussen never explicitly says that enjoyment of NCFM is a class experience, she writes that 'liking a particular song or a singer is not a culturally inconsequential choice’. 13 An individual’s musical preference is tied to their socio-cultural identity and precisely this individual pursuit of cultural self-definition has a class-conflict at the basis of it. Rasmussen writes that music-as-identity is celebrated, but ‘in an anti-proletarian fashion within an ideological scheme of reviving primordial ethnic ties and historical myths in order to feed claims for the cultural superiority of one group over another.’ 14
Although Yugoslavia was dedicated in its political programme to the liberation of its working people, a class divide certainly existed in the split between urban centres and rural provinces. While enjoyment or distaste of NCFM is not necessarily a class experience, Yugoslavia’s cultural ideals were patterned after Western Europe and NCFM (as a local ‘Balkan’ music expression) could not meet those idealised values of Yugoslavia’s national culture.
Rasmussen attributes the very existence of the taste-kitsch dichotomy to Yugoslavia’s unresolved East-West cultural continuities.
Although it was the most contested one at the time, NCFM was not the only form of hybrid music created in Yugoslavia. Another such genre is zabavna muzika (entertainment music) which interestingly avoided accusation of inauthenticity and backwardness.
Due to an influx of European pop music post- WWII (mainly German Schlager, but also American jazz and rock and roll) and the subsequent popularity of Mexican and Greek music 15, Yugoslav zabavna music acquired a distinct ‘Western' character while being sung in local languages.
Šentevska also notes that zabavna music composers could become members of the Union of Yugoslav Composers, while the makers of NCFM were denied access. She continues to write that the suppression of NCFM - aside from claims that it is inauthentic - was due to suppression of cultural differences between Yugoslav republics. 16
The key difference being articulated here is the difference between Yugoslavia’s ‘Western’ (Croatia, Slovenia) and ‘Eastern’ (BiH, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia) republics. The ‘Western’ republics had been integrated into European networks more due to their history as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the ‘Eastern’ republics lacked European integration due to their history as a part of the Ottoman Empire.
Yugoslavia emerged (first as a kingdom and then as a socialist federation) after World War I to protect the South Slavic national interest. During the Cold War, it developed a distinct character because of its idiosyncratic economic, political and cultural position. To show its liberal character, in comparison to the Soviet Union, it welcomed Western popular culture since the 1960s. 17 Yugoslavia sought to unite a multiethnic and multi-religious population through its founding ideology ‘brotherhood and unity’. This meant suppression of national differences in all aspects of life, even culture and entertainment, while promoting a distinct Yugoslav national culture.
The centuries-long rule of the Ottoman Empire in the region had significantly shaped musical practices in ‘Eastern’ republics, particularly Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia and southern Serbia. 18 This distinct ‘Eastern’ melos would be seen as a regressive force, one sitting in opposition to Yugoslavia’s national culture. Yugoslavia encouraged influences from Western popular music and recognised those hybrid forms as distinctly Yugoslav and progressive. 19
Although the majority of NCFM performers came from ‘Eastern’ republics, Rasmussen is critical of circumscribing NCFM as an exclusively southeastern cultural phenomenon. She criticises this view as reinforcing the perception of an East-West cultural dichotomy. Instead, she suggests this fact merely provides a demographic picture reflecting a broad stylistic pattern of the music with national dimensions. 20
Šentevska wrote that the bulk of NCFM production was located in ‘Eastern' republics, with marginal visibility in ‘Western’ republics. 21 However, this seems to be a contradiction to Rasmussen’s claims. She writes that both Slovenian and Croatian record companies, which have been traditionally Western pop-oriented, have also had a significant share in the NCFM market. Zagreb, Croatia’s capital is used as an example. 22 In spite of media attitudes ignoring the genre as being irrelevant or in some instances it being seen as a culturally ‘illegal’ practice, NCFM performances had become a popular and regular form of entertainment (although venues were located on the outskirts of the city), with established radio stations dedicated to it. 23
While Western influences in music never posed an issue, according to Rasmussen, what is referred to as NCFM’s ‘Oriental’ trait had come to the centre of 1980s debates occurring at the height of performers experimentation with music from Turkey, Iran and Iraq. This main distinguishing stylistic characteristic of NCFM - ‘Oriental’ style - is described by Rasmussen as ‘richly-ornamented melodies with various trill patterns used both decoratively and structurally, and minor modes featuring augmented seconds.’ 24
Unlike the welcoming gesture of Western pop-styles, this would be seen as penetration of ‘foreign music’ into Yugoslavia’s national label. 25
Rory Archer wrote ‘Assessing Turbofolk Controversies: Popular Music between the Nation and the Balkans’ in 2012. In the article he writes about the emergence of pop-folk styles across the Balkans in the 1990’s. While Archer’s work introduces larger, important theoretical frameworks - Balkanist discourse and nested orientalism - the scope of his work is quite limiting. Focusing on particular frameworks offers insight into negative responses grounded in the internalised Balkanist stereotype. However, it does not explain the popularity of said genres despite Archer’s criticism of academia’s lack of engagement and no agency-attribution to turbo-folk audiences. He sees the emergence of manele, chlaga, muzika popullore, etc. as a Balkan-wide phenomenon originating from Serbia’s turbo-folk. Precisely because of Yugoslavia’s comparatively liberal character, the music it produced was perceived by those in Bulgaria, Romania and Albania (where communists regimes were oppressive) as an attractive ‘Western’ model sought to be emulated. 26 According to Archer, these genres had spread in the post-socialist period following the end of state supervision in cultural production, democratisation and the introduction of the free market. 27 The consequent popularity of techno and dance music in the 1990s shifted NCFM’s mixed meter to dance and techno beats, transitioning the genre into turbo-folk. 28
Claiming that Balkan pop-folk styles belong to the wider post-Ottoman cultural legacy, this work has a Balkan-wide scope. Archer attributes the elite opposition to pop-folk genres as rooted in the process of de-Ottomanization. 29 This constitutes removal of Ottoman influences from all aspects of societies’ fabrics, including the marginalisation of folk styles which draw inspiration from Ottoman musical practices. According to Archer, those politicians and intellectual elites that were politically Western-oriented (this also means Western cultural orientation) had come to see Ottoman cultural and political legacy as an issue. According to them, national culture had to be free from foreign influences. 30
Maria Todorova’s work Imagining the Balkans (1997) had been a widely influential piece of work, forming the basis of the Balkanist discourse. Todorova developed the concept of Balkanism based on Edward Said’s Orientalism. While there are discrepancies between the two, both the Balkans and the Orient have served as a repository of negative characteristics against which a positive and self-congratulatory image of ‘Europe’ and the West has been constructed. Central to the discourse is the examination of the Balkanist stereotype which portrays the region as animalistic, violent, primitive etc. The stereotype first emerged after World War I during which Balkan nations had defeated their imperial rulers - Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Because of Balkan’s geographical proximity to Europe’s imperial centre, European imperial forces feared the same would happen to their colonies across Asia and Africa. Balkan successes of overthrowing their imperial rulers were therefore deemed as subsiding into barbarism. From this, a pejorative term emerged describing the political dissolution of said empires - Balkanisation. The term is typically defined as a breakup of a larger unit into smaller and mutually hostile parts. The Balkanist stereotype would be employed again during the 1990s dissolution of Yugoslavia, deeming the wars as primordial tribal conflicts.
Archer’s observation of pop-folk genres in the 1990s can be understood as a continuation of ‘Oriental threat to national culture’ debates which started in the 1980’s. Although NCFM occupied 58 percent of Yugoslavia’s music industry by the 1980s, 31 pop-folk genres still had a peripheral position in the cultural space, being perceived as a ‘social ill’. 32 Following the death of Yugoslavia’s president Josip Broz Tito in 1980 - commonly referred to as the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia - there was an emergence of specific national consciousnesses amongst Yugoslavs.
Frequently referenced among academics 33 is an event which occurred during a 1994 July session in the Serbian parliament. Pavle Aksentijević (a singer of traditional Serbian music and a member of the parliament) first played a song by a popular turbo-folk performer Dragana Mirković, after which he played a near-identical sounding Iranian pop song. He then accused the establishment of polluting “Serbdom” with oriental tunes. 34 Archer assesses this event within the frame of ongoing anti-Ottoman efforts, in accordance which, national cultures should be freed from the influence of the ‘Turkish yoke.’ He writes that the resistance to turbo-folk in Serbia is in part due to taboo Turkish aspects of Serbian identity. The opposition had come to see performers’ experimentation with Oriental melodies as a throwback to these taboo aspects as Serbian nationalistic mythology is deeply entangled with Ottoman legacy and the erasure of the same. 35
While regional pop-folk styles across the Balkans were met with near-identical accusations of aesthetic inferiority and failed modernisation, the presence of an internal Orient (Ottoman musical legacy) had remained a pivotal issue. 36
In Bulgaria, there have been public debates since the 1990s with similar accusations of chalga endangering Bulgarian national identity due to its perceived primitivism and backwardness. Archer deems this as a symbolic exclusion of Bulgaria’s largest national minorities Turks and Romas from what is considered national culture. 37 Bulgarian chalga had developed from wedding music performed mainly by Roma musicians and continues to be performed, at large, by Turks and Romas. Similarly, manele in Romania developed from Romani wedding music and Yugoslav NCFM. Muzika popullore, an Albanian form of pop-folk - popular in Kosovo, Montenegro and parts of North Macedonia - had incorporated elements of Ottoman-derived traditional music with Romani tallava music. 38
According to Archer, significant opposition to pop-folk genres during socialism came from national elites, while in the post-socialist era it came from both pro-European liberals and conservative nationalists. He deems both adversaries as an explicitly Balkanist construct due to associations of turbo-folk with violence, barbarity and backwardness. 39
For opposition, these musical forms ‘represent unnatural and peripheral elements that ‘should not’ manifest in national culture.’ 40 Šentevska attests this too, writing that ‘Oriental’ does not stand for foreign elements within national music, nor are the ‘Orientals’ representative of the otherness. Instead, the true bearers of otherness are “those ‘among us’ who cannot adequately appreciate national values’’. The Other is represented by national minorities. 41
Archer attributes this to the internalised Balkanist stereotype. Here, he draws on the concept of nested orientalism (variation on Said’s Orientalism) developed by Milica Bakić-Hayden. Bakić-Hayden had described this phenomenon within Yugoslavia, while Archer applies it regionally. Nested orientalism explains how those who are subjected to Balkanism and Orientalism perpetuate the same mechanism in order not to be stigmatised themselves. Following the framework of these mechanisms of othering, an internal gradation within national cultures occurs where true national subjects are set apart from those who are unable to fully participate in the appreciation of said national cultures. For example, in Serbia, this ‘Orient’ is considered Turkish or Islamic, while the internal ‘Orient’ is Serbia’s south. In Croatia, it is the insubordinate Serbian minority. For Albanians, it is Turkish or Roma. While in Kosovo, muzika popullore is deemed as imposed by Serbs to ‘orientalise’ Kosovar Albanians. 42
Although Šentevska’s article ‘Turbo-Folk as the Agent of Empire: On Discourses of Identity and Difference in Popular Culture’ has been referenced a few times in this review to make overall points, the article’s overall contribution to this discussion is a wider post-colonial framework to observe negative attitudes to pop-folk genres. Drawing on Alexander Kiossev’s work, Šentevska introduces the concept of self-colonising cultures. This applies to small nations which have never been invaded or colonised, but have given way to the cultural powers of colonial Europe. This entails recognising foreign cultural supremacy, voluntarily absorbing the cultural values and ideas of Europe proper. In this precarious environment, local elites strive to turn themselves into modern Europeans by importing models and institutions from the colonial centre. 43 They dictate what classes as official high culture (imported from the West) while alienating local cultural forms (such as pop-folk styles) deeming them as un-European and substandard.
In the 1990’s, NCFM’s mixed meter was replaced with dance and techno beats, transforming it into turbo-folk. Although it is a continuation of the same musical experimentation as NCFM, what sets it apart is the ideological context in which it appeared - amid the 1990s independence wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina (’92-’95) and Croatia (’91-’95). While NCFM performers lyrically romanticised their rural origins and struggles of migrant life, turbo-folk took a new direction, addressing contemporary themes (fashion, nightlife, infidelity, etc.) while combining folk elements with synthesised sounds, dance beats and style inspired by vastly popular MTV. 44 This new direction combined pop-folk with images of the consumer life, something which had come with the transition from socialism to capitalism amid the break-up of Yugoslavia.
In his book The culture of power in Serbia, written in 1999, Eric Gordy offers an in-depth analysis of the authoritarian regime of Slobodan Milosević and the politics of Greater Serbia. Although Gordy’s book has a precise focus, it is important in understanding how turbo-folk became commonly associated (and continues to be) with the Milošević regime and thought of as a cultural export of the Greater Serbia project. In this sociological and political analysis, he unpacks how the system legitimised and normalised itself, becoming the dominant political option through the destruction of political, information, social and musical alternatives. He demonstrates that the changes to the political structure also had cultural consequences, evidenced by turbo-folk becoming a legitimate and state-supported cultural form for a brief period of time.
While the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were happening, turbo-folk offered an escapist diversion to the native population in Serbia. Gordy explains how images of beautiful, large-breasted turbo-folk performers offered a strong escapist diversion with emphasis on various types of pleasure - be it musical, visual or emotional. 45 The good life presented by these performers was available to few generally considered the new criminal elite, given Serbia’s international isolation and general poverty. Through turbo-folk, the ascendance of the new criminal elite was presented in a glamorous and romantic light, making it appear normal and acceptable. 46
For a brief and state-pleasing period in the evolution of turbo-folk, during the Yugoslav wars, pop-folk performers on all sides of the battlefield had produced wartime songs. These were agitprop cassettes of patriotic and militaristic songs. Their cheap production and low quality, as pointed out by Gordy, implies they were produced hurriedly and toward specific preselected groups rather than any commercial market. 47
In the 1990s much of what defined urban youth culture was Rock and Roll. This was the case in all Yugoslav cities and in all of them, pop-folk styles had long been marginalised. Amid the rise of Milošević, that culture came under attack. Realising that the support for the regime was weakest among the urban youth (who were also least likely to cooperate in nationalist mobilisation, as evident by the 1991 and 1992 mass student protests 48), Milošević’s government turned to the rural population and recognised them to be most suited for their needs. 49 Because rural migrants were the core audiences of pop-folk genres, state-controlled media began promoting turbo-folk as a useful tool in their struggle for power. Symbolic of turbo-folk’s relationship to state media was the televised wedding of pop-folk performer Ceca who has been described as the Madonna of the Balkans and Arkan (leader of Serbian paramilitary group Tigers, largely consisting of volunteer football supporters). 50 Though regimes and governments have little to say about music, as noted by Gordy, they have a stake in the distribution of benefits, including cultural and broadly emotional ones to different parts of the population. For Milošević’s regime, turbo-folk became its cultural orientation. 51 Because pop-folk styles had drawn inspiration from traditional Serbian music, the regime implicitly associated it with national traditions 52 - at least for a brief period.
Besides indicating rural-urban inclination, music preferences were also telling of the orientation towards the regime. 53 Šentevska wrote that at the first anti-war concerts in Serbia, rock musicians expressed their rejection of Milošević’s politics with the message ‘Nećemo da pobedi narodna muzika’ (We don’t want folk music to prevail). 54 However, it is important to note that both Gordy and Šentevska challenge this oversimplification by bringing to light cases where rock musicians adopted ideologically opposite positions (most popularly Južni vetar). 55
Rock culture became a strong source of anti-regime identity for a minority urban population. Rockers resented pop-folk audiences and came to see themselves as the last line of defence of urban culture in the ascendance of pop-folk styles. 56 Gordy notes that rock culture’s strategy was to live outside of the system (which rockers had perceived turned against them), while turbo-folk found a place within it - imagining a better future and offering an escapist diversion in otherwise difficult conditions. 57
While R’n’R was never banned, Gordy points out that attitudes and activities of the R’n’R audiences were discouraged. The breakup of Yugoslavia also saw a breakdown of the inter-urban rock market, demoralising and isolating youth urbanities more inclined to resist the regime’s rhetoric. 58 Belgrade cultural spaces, once dominated by rock music, had been overtaken by pop-folk and their audiences. In the minds of rock audiences, the disappearance of these alternative spaces was the fault of peasant migrants. The structure of control of cultural spaces shifted in a short period of time and turbo-folk became an audible and the most recognisable symbol of this transformation. 59
Although it was a useful propaganda tool in the promotion of the regime and the 1991 nationalist mobilisation, frequent and increasing criticism of turbo-folk came from all sides: rock audiences, intellectuals and nationalists. For intellectual elites, turbo-folk was ‘Balkan’ and primitive, while those who enjoyed traditional music deemed it inauthentic and not truly Serbian. 60
With the end of state endorsement of international isolation and changes in the political stance on the Bosnia-Herzegovina war, turbo-folk culture no longer met the regime’s cultural needs. 61 In 1994 Serbia turned against turbo-folk, in an attempt to distance itself from overtly nationalist politics. The same year, the Serbian Ministry of Culture declared it would engage in struggle against kitsch, with a goal of affirming ‘true cultural values’. 62 The following year, in 1995, the government launched a public campaign, Lepse je sa kulturom (It’s nicer with culture), in efforts to undermine turbo-folk as a cultural form. 63
While the regime could control the production and distribution of turbo-folk, as Gordy notes, it could not control its potential. 64 Testament to this is turbo-folk’s vast and increasing popularity across the former Yugoslavia. He says: ‘if culture is genuinely popular enough to survive without state sponsorship it is able to become an autonomous cultural form.’ 65
Turbo-folk developed in conditions of international isolation and poverty, with a strong ideological character and nationalistic dimension. Although it was seen (across former Yugoslavia) as the music of Serbs, it was listened to by all sides even in the midst of Yugoslav wars. 66 Despite the ever-present opposition it faces, in the 2000s turbo-folk continues to grow in popularity and acts as a cultural form of reconciliation in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In his book Turbo-folk Music and National Identity in Former Yugoslavia, published in 2014, Čvoro considers the broader influence of turbo-folk by locating the music as a political and cultural mediator of national identity in former Yugoslavia. He deconstructs how the genre became a vehicle for the construction of national identity, while having various conceptions of said identity projected onto it. Čvoro argues that this projection didn’t only manifest in music, but in various aspects of culture such as art, film, sculpture and architecture. This wide scope of analysis differentiates Čvoro’s work as the most ambitious, deploying many disciplines - from philosophy, art history to politics - to unpack it. He introduces the term turbo-culture as an all-encompassing term for the totality of cultural manifestation which came as a byproduct of political changes amid the break-up of Yugoslavia. 67
Presenting his work as a study of a European culture at a particular moment in history, Čvoro deems turbo-folk necessary to help understand Balkan societies in transition and a useful framework through which to examine in Europe in general.
Čvoro contributes the popularity of turbo-folk to the cultural space leftover from Yugoslavia. For example, the duet was a staple of pro-communist music in Yugoslavia. As a way to symbolise transitional unity, performers of different ethnicities were paired up in duos. This tradition also continues in pop-folk genres with examples such as the pairing of Muslim Dino Merlin and Serb Željko Joksimović in the song Superman (2004). Čvoro claims the song’s commercial success was due to its ability to tap into the void left by the destruction of the shared cultural space in Yugoslavia. 68 According to Čvoro, this is not steeped in social nostalgia but in ‘an attempt to articulate a cultural language that speaks to the trappings of contemporary life in the region.’ 69
With the transition from socialism to capitalism came privatisation, mass unemployment, the dismantling of social safety nets and widespread corruption to name a few. 70 The key aspect of transition in the newly formed republic is the insistence on national identities and ‘national rights’ of the people, as opposed to the rights of the workers and lower classes. 71 In this process, the former working class (under socialism) is destroyed, enabling growing inequality between the systemic poverty and the new wealth. 72 Because this process happened across former Yugoslavia and the wider Balkan region, it contributed to the feeling of a shared ‘Balkan’ experience, one based on impoverishment, unemployment and increasing migration to Europe. Turbo-folk here serves as a common meeting point where, as Čvoro writes, the unemployed are turning to the notion of ‘we are down, but we can party like no one else’. 73
In ex-Yugoslavia, music was the stage on which collective identities were forged and national differences constructed. 74 While it was a sign of shared culture under socialism and an expression of nationalism in the 1990’s, in the new millennia it stands for New Balkanness. 75 Čvoro describes it as the process of appropriating ‘Balkan’ as an empowering gesture. While the Yugoslav wars enabled media to trigger Balkanist discourse and present the Balkans as Europe’s Other, labelling its people as irrational, wild and passionate, 76 in the post-war era this sense of cultural difference (Europe-Balkan) allowed for ‘Balkan’ to become an anti-nationalistic expression of a shared, transnational culture. Framed though explicit East-West and global-local relations, New Balkanness stands in opposition to the hegemony of the European Union and the neoliberal global order. The genuine ‘Balkanness’ of turbo-folk as a cultural form makes it a powerful source of resistance to the perceived threat of neoliberalism and cultural globalisation. 77
While academia has engaged extensively with turbo-folk, contemporary scholarly articles on the current state of the pop-folk genres are sparse. This was the critique of Marija Dumnić Vilotijević in ‘The Meaning of Autobalkanism in Regional Popular Music’, written in 2020. Dumnić Vilotijević focused on the music industry since the 2010s onwards with a special focus on Trapfolk. This is a newly-established form of music from the 2010s, which is vastly popular across the former Yugoslavia and diaspora communities. Currently in academic discourses and journalism this genre is ignored and under-theorised, while the role of diaspora as an audience is often overlooked.
In the continuation of experimentation with global genres, Trapfolk’s most recognizable parameters (vocal timbre and ornamentation) are merged with instrumentation from hip-hop and trap music. Dumnić Vilotijević critically notes that although trapfolk sounds technically progressive, it must preserve some of its ‘folk’ remnants in order to be commercially viable to Balkan audiences. 78 She deems Trapfolk’s commercial success a result of diaspora communities, who this music is designed for at large. Performers have recognised diaspora (mainly in Germany, Switzerland and Austria) as a large and viable market in need of music from migrant’s home countries. 79 While following global trends, Trapfolk is sung in local languages, using familiar musical elements from the Balkans. While being very critical of the artistic quality and lyrical content (the main critique is the glorification of the 1990’s conflicts), she recognises the social relevancy and the impact this music has on the youth in the 2010’s. 80
Across the Balkans, pop-folk genres have been consistently marginalised by various cultural and political elites (socialists, pro-European liberals, nationalist conservatives). They have been deemed lower, inadequate cultural forms and never on par with the official notions of high culture.
The meanings of these genres have been articulated through a series of cultural oppositions that served the formation of collective identities. Meanings projected onto pop-folk shifted over time as follows: taste - kitsch (’70s), ‘Oriental’ - national (’80s), urban - provincial (’90s) and Balkan - Europe (’00s and beyond). Throughout their history, pop-folk genres acted as a mediators between modernity and tradition, allowing performers to face modernity on their own terms by appropriating global music trends.
Pop-folk genres are telling of Balkan’s marginal position between the East and the West - something that Balkan nations never fully reconciled with. Internalised Balkanist stereotypes and self-imposed ideals hailing from colonial Europe enacted marginalisation of those cultural forms perceived by the elites as Others. Currently, the Balkanist paradigm is changing in the favour of the perspective from the Balkans. 81
While the official political and cultural stances are clear, turbo-folk and their audiences are embracing Balkan as a positive and empowering symbol. Framed through explicit East-West relations, Balkan is a symbol of a shared, anti-nationalistic and transnational culture, or as Uroš Čvoro calls it, New Balkanness.
Turbo-folk performers have succeeded in ‘turning the lowermost picture of the Balkans upside down and converting the stigma into a joyful consumption of pleasures forbidden by European norms and taste.’ 82
Endnotes
1 Čvoro, ‘Turbo-folk,’ 14.
2 Ibid., 14.
3 Ibid., 14.
4 Rasmussen, ‘From Source,’ 249-250.
5 Ibid., 241.
6 Ibid., 241.
7 Ibid., 253.
8 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 415.
9 Čvoro, Turbo-folk, 10.
10 Rasmussen, ‘From Source,’ 253.
11 Ibid., 251.
12 Ibid., 252.
13 Ibid., 251.
14 Ibid., 254.
15 Ibid., 245.
16 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 422.
17 Čvoro, Turbo-folk, 23.
18 Rasmussen, ‘From Source,’ 247.
19 Ibid., 249.
20 Ibid., 247.
21 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 422-423.
22 Rasmussen, ‘From Source,’ 246.
23 Ibid., 252.
24 Ibid., 247-248.
25 Ibid., 249.
26 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 190.
27 Ibid., 190.
28 Čvoro, Turbo-folk, 11.
29 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 179-180.
30 Ibid., 189 - 190.
31 Rasmussen, ‘From Source,’ 246.
32 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 190.
33 It was referenced by Archer, Šentevska, Gordy and Čvoro
34 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 189.
35 Ibid., 189-191.
36 Ibid., 201-202.
37 Ibid., 193.
38 Ibid., 190-191.
39 Ibid., 192.
40 Ibid., 194.
41 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 425-426.
42 Ibid., 425.
43 Ibid., 427-428.
44 Gordy, Power in Serbia, 133.
45 Ibid., 134-136.
46 Ibid., 134-135.
47 Ibid., 130-131.
48 Ibid., 126.
49 Ibid., 104.
50 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 185.
51 Gordy, Power in Serbia, 136.
52 Ibid.,, 130.
53 Ibid., 111.
54 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 419.
55 Ibid., 419.
56 Gordy, Power in Serbia, 145.
57 Ibid., 128.
58 Ibid., 126-127.
59 Ibid., 140-142.
60 Ibid., 151-153.
61 Ibid., 155.
62 Ibid., 105.
63 Šentevska, ‘Agent of Empire,’ 419.
64 Gordy, Power in Serbia, 163.
65 Ibid., 163.
66 Čvoro, ‘Turbo-folk,’ 7.
67 Ibid., 26.
68 Ibid., 13-14.
69 Ibid., 4.
70 Ibid., 4.
71 Ibid., 4.
72 Ibid., 4.
73 Ibid., 22.
74 Ibid., 20.
75 Ibid., 22-23.
76 Ibid., 7.
77 Ibid., 22-24.
78 Vilotijević, ‘Autbalkanism,’ 5.
79 Ibid., 7-8.
80 Ibid., 2.
81 Ibid., 10.
82 Archer, ‘Nation and the Balkans,’ 195.
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