Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.52328/t.7.1.3
Ceca ante portas: turbofolk in Serbo-Croatian relationship
Irena Šentevska
; Independent Scholar, Belgrade
Abstract
The author discusses the wide popularity and influence of turbofolk in Serbia and Croatia, stressing its importance and role in the regional popular culture and media. This phenomenon has already been acknowledged and observed from various academic perspectives. Still, it is routinely placed at the margins of institutional culture. Turbofolk has its roots in the so called “newly composed folk music”, which had been criticised and disparaged in former Yugoslavia, but was nevertheless very successful in terms of economic performance and absolute domination in the music market. In Serbia, turbofolk became the dominant form of popular music – both in the media and everyday life of its mass audience. In Croatia, despite the war traumas, nationalist implications that associate turbofolk with its “country of origin” (Serbia), and various stereotypes on the Balkans, turbofolk has made a symbolic progression from “provincial kafanas” to “elite city clubs”, and finally – to the Zagreb Arena. The author concludes that turbofolk as a bone of contention between Serbia and Croatia has an enormous potential of a “diagnostic instrument” in the analysis of political and cultural relations between the two countries.
Keywords
turbofolk; newly composed folk music; new nation-states; identities; relations between Serbia and Croatia
Hrčak ID:
319023
URI
Publication date:
9.7.2024.
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