Turbo Folk and Dance Music in 1990S Serbia: Media, Ideology and the Production of Spectacle Ivana Kronja University of Arts, Belgrade
103 Turbo Folk and Dance Music in 1990s Serbia: Media, Ideology and the Production of Spectacle ivana kronja University of arts, belgrade “Media contents consolidate the mythological background of a community by producing metaphors which are to be used in the domain of the popular. For a totalitarian power the colonization of media space is the most effective shortcut to everyday life.” —Snježana Milivojević, The Nationalization of Everyday Life (Nacionalizacija svakidašnjice), in: “Serbian Side of War” (“Srpska strana rata”), Samizdat B92, Belgrade 2002, p. 230. Turbo-folk and dance music and sensibility significantly style and, in a wider context, a worldview. ‘Turbo-folk’ is marked the era of war, chaos and despair in 1990s Serbian a neologism created from two words: the word ‘turbo,’ politics, life and culture. [1] Moreover, these musical genres which originally comes from the world of automobiles, and their total media presentation proved themselves where it signifies the type of cars whose motors’ power had to be one of the most powerful ideological weapons of been improved by a special turbine, turbo, turbo-diesel and Milošević’s regime. Forming a popular culture counterpart turbo diesel injection cars, and the word ‘folk,’ which stands to the unscrupulous ideological propaganda of RTS (Radio- for the popular, people’s or folk music. [2] Figuratively, Television of Serbia), which used nationalist and chauvinist ‘turbo’ referred to a challenge, speed, fearlessness and par- rhetorics to justify and support involvement of Serbia in ticipation in the upcoming, fashionable trends, ascribed to civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia, and later in Kosovo, turbo- turbo-folk artists and audience, while ‘folk’ signified that folk and dance music promoted the life-style and system of ‘turbo-folk’ represents one of the genres of Serbian popular, values of the new Serbian elite formed during the nineties: folk music.
[Show full text]