Search Results (6)

In his seminal comprehensive history of music(s) in the Balkan region, Jim Samson avoided the term “Balkan music” in favor of the less-binding title Music in the Balkans (Leiden: Brill, 2013). This, however, should not hinder us from probing the term “Balkan music” and its many connotations. In this editorial article for the Special Issue Balkan Music: Past, Present, Future, I aim to dissect the umbrella term “Balkan music” and its actual and presumed meanings and implications, while overviewing many different music traditions and styles that this term encompasses. I will also make a case for the establishment of Balkan Music Studies as a discipline and attempt to outline its scope and outreach. Full article

Defining the Balkans as a geographic, cultural and semantic entity triggers an interpretation of them as some idea, concept, oftentimes even a stereotype. The Balkans are usually interpreted as a singular entity, generalized and set in a single framework. That generalized view is often ambivalent. The Balkans are often interpreted and presented as a ‘powder keg’, a ‘bridge between the East and the West’, a part of Europe that is simply different, a place of strong emotions and attractive forms of music and dance, etc. However, the Balkans represent a set of cultural units that are in constant interaction, with each of the cultures of the Balkans being specific and authentic. Macedonia, as one of the pages of the ‘Balkan story’, will be presented at three levels—regarding its drama, music and dance. The specific characteristics of the music and the dance fields will be presented through their most significant features and examples, and the treatment of the topic of the Balkans in Macedonian drama will be covered as well. The analysis confirms that generalization is impossible even within a single culture, as each artist and medium of performance has its own unique expression. The cultural forms of Macedonian culture are only part of the wider pluralistic representation of the Balkans. It may be offered under the Balkans as the common denominator, but the truth is that this/representation/concept is polyvalent, multicultural, polysemic and extremely rich. Full article

In this article, I discuss the persistence of Byzantium as a cultural model in the arts, and in music in particular, in the countries of the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople. By examining ways in which the idea of Byzantium persisted in Balkan artistic cultures (and especially in music) after the fall of Byzantium, and the way in which this relates to the advent of modernism during the later construction of the Balkan nation-states, I illustrate not only the pervasiveness but also the strength of Byzantinism as a pan-Balkan characteristic. Full article

In this article, I discuss the use of the term “Balkan” in the regional popular music. In this context, Balkan popular music is contemporary popular folk music produced in the countries of the Balkans and intended for the Balkan markets (specifically, the people in the Western Balkans and diaspora communities). After the global success of “Balkan music” in the world music scene, this term influenced the cultures in the Balkans itself; however, interestingly, in the Balkans themselves “Balkan music” does not only refer to the musical characteristics of this genre—namely, it can also be applied music that derives from the genre of the “newly-composed folk music”, which is well known in the Western Balkans. The most important legacy of “Balkan” world music is the discourse on Balkan stereotypes, hence this article will reveal new aspects of autobalkanism in music. This research starts from several questions: where is “the Balkans” which is mentioned in these songs actually situated; what is the meaning of the term “Balkan” used for the audience from the Balkans; and, what are musical characteristics of the genre called trepfolk? Special focus will be on the post-Yugoslav market in the twenty-first century, with particular examples in Serbian language (as well as Bosnian and Croatian). Full article

In this article, I will address issues of race using the “Romani question” in Serbia’s Guča trumpet festival as a case study. I will specifically consider a selection of Guča-related themes pertinent to the question of race, while simultaneously discussing the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of this complicated concept vis-à-vis issues of national identity representation in post-Milošević Serbia. Informed by previous critical studies of race and popular music culture in South/Eastern Europe within the larger postcolonial paradigm of Balkanism, this work will seek to illustrate the ambiguous ways in which the racialization of the Serbian Self and the Romani Other is occurring in the Guča Festival alongside the country’s and region’s persistent denial of race. Using the above approaches, I will conduct a critical cultural analysis of selected racial issues in the festival with reference to eclectic sources, including more recent critical debates about race and racism in South/Eastern Europe within the broader context of postsocialist transition, EU integration, and globalization. My final argument will be that, despite strong evidence that a critical cultural analysis of the “Romani question” in Serbia’s Guča Festival calls for a transnational perspective, earlier Balkanist discourse on Serbia’s indeterminate position between West and East seems to remain analytically most helpful in pointing to the uncontested hegemony of Western/European white privilege and supremacy. Full article

Since the early 1990s, interest in various forms of traditional music among middle-class urban ethnic Macedonians has grown. Known by some as the “Ethno Renaissance”, this trend initially grew in the context of educational ensembles in Skopje and gained momentum due to the soundtrack of the internationally acclaimed Macedonian film Before the Rain (1994) and the formation of the group DD Synthesis by musician and pedagogue Dragan Dautovski. This article traces the development of this multifaceted musical practice, which became known as “ethno music” (etno muzika) and now typically features combinations of various traditional music styles with one another and with other musical styles. Ethno music articulates dynamic changes in Macedonian politics and wider global trends in the “world music” market, which valorizes musical hybridity as “authentic” and continues to prioritize performers perceived as exotic and different. This article discusses the rhetoric, representation, and musical styles of ethno music in the 1990s and in a second wave of “ethno bands” (etno bendovi) that began around 2005. Drawing on ethnography conducted between 2011 and 2018 and on experience as a musician performing and recording in Macedonia periodically since 2003, I argue that, while these bands and their multi-layered musical projects resonate with middle-class, cosmopolitan audiences in Macedonia and its diaspora, their avoidance of the term “Balkan” and associated stereotypes constrains their popularity to Macedonian audiences and prevents them from participating widely in world music festival networks and related markets. Full article