Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v58i1.36974
Popular Music Murals in Croatia: Mnemonic Aesthetics and Strategies of Cultural Memory
Diana Grgurić
; Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
*
Vjeran Pavlaković
; Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
This article examines murals depicting popular music in Croatia as intermedial sites of cultural memory that visually materialise the lived and embodied experience of music. The analysis is based on a corpus of thirty-eight murals documented through fieldwork and supplemented by secondary sources during 2024. Using a geo-cultural approach, the murals are classified into two mnemonic zones: a regional zone and a supraregional zone.
The analysis explores strategies of memorialisation through musical genres and their normative cultural functions, treating genre as an analytical category for understanding the spatial embeddedness of musical memory. The findings reveal distinct mnemonic patterns. In the Dalmatian zone, murals reinforce local identity by commemorating performers associated with the Dalmatian chanson tradition, whose cultural significance is rooted in collective singing practices and shared forms of social participation. By contrast, the supraregional mnemonic space is dominated by rock musicians, who are represented as figures of cultural conscience and authenticity. In this context, rock music functions as a symbolic resource for Croatian national self-understanding, with ideals of individualism, critical engagement, and resistance becoming markers of cultural maturity.
The study further identifies a process of selective reinterpretation of the Yugoslav popular music legacy within contemporary Croatian national memory, as well as a pronounced gender imbalance in the choice of commemorated performers. By conceptualising murals as material anchors of dynamic mnemonic systems, the article contributes to the understanding of street art as an important medium through which collective memory is constructed, negotiated, and spatially embedded in contemporary Croatia.
Keywords
murals; popular music; cultural memory; memorialisation; Dalmatian chanson; rock music; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
350882
URI
Publication date:
10.9.2026.
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