“What kind of music do you listen to?” can be a loaded question. Based on your taste in music, others will invariably place you in a specific (sub)culture, class, lifestyle, and even speculate about your political commitments. Your taste in music can make or break a friendship, produce feelings of camaraderie as well as of repulsion.
For some time now, scholars have viewed popular music as a dynamic cultural field, where various social meanings—attached to race, nationality, gender, and sexuality—are constantly being produced, contested, and negotiated among different communities of listeners.
This insight into music as crucial site of political struggle and collective identity formation will be the starting point in our analysis of popular music genres in the Balkans, a region of Europe that has undergone sweeping historical changes in the 20th and 21st centuries, including the fall of Communism and—in the case of former Yugoslavia—the formation of seven new nation-states through a series of bloody and brutal wars. We will begin the class by examining the emergence of Western pop genres, such as punk and new wave rock, in late socialism (in the 1980s), which became associated with urban youth subcultures, sophisticated irony, and liberalization of the one-party state. From there, we will move to the analysis of “turbo-folk,” a curious mixture of contemporary electronic and traditional folk music that became extremely popular in the 1990s, when the conflict in Yugoslavia was at its peak. Featuring extravagant and scandalous Balkan divas, roughly equivalent to Rihanna and Lady Gaga in the U.S., turbo-folk was (and still is) connected with nationalism, the new mafia elite, and general cultural decline. We will watch videos, examine arguments for and against turbo-folk, and try to pin down its political functions, cultural meanings, and recent transformations. We will end the class by examining new trends in Balkan popular music, such hip-hop and Balkan brass, and their relationship to recent protest movements, minority politics, and claims of cultural (in)authenticity.
In addition to scholarly literature, we will make a substantial use of a class Tumblr blog, featuring music videos, song lyrics, links to other blogs, album covers and other visual and audio materials, which will allow us to fully immerse ourselves in different sounds, scenes, fashion styles, and communities we will be studying throughout this course.
Learning Objectives:
By examining the changes in the production and consumption of popular music in the Balkans, students will gain an understanding of larger historical shifts both in the region and on a more global scale. Additionally, students will refine their analytical and critical thinking skills by situating cultural objects in a dynamic historical and political context and by reflecting on the social effects and assumptions surrounding the consumption of popular music more generally. Our discussion of Balkan popular music will be guided by the following questions:
- How does popular music shape collective identities?
- What is the role of popular music in large-scale social and political transformation?
- How is popular music used as medium of political mobilization by the state and civil actors?
- How do musical tastes produce, reflect, and reinforce social differences and hierarchies?
- Why are claims of cultural authenticity often attached to popular music? Who makes these claims and why?
- How do different music genres function in different political and cultural contexts?
Readings:
Readings in the course pack include selections from:
Simon Frith (ed.), Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, (Harvard UP, 1998).
Jennifer C. Lena, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music (Princeton UP, 2012).
Sabrina P. Ramet, Social Currents in Eastern Europe (Duke UP, 1995).
Eric Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia (The Pennsylvania State UP, 2001).
Catherine Baker, Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War and Nationalism in Croatia since 1991 (Ashgate, 2010).
Carol Silverman, Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (Oxford UP, 2012).
Marina Terkoufari (ed.), The Languages of Global Hip Hop (Continuum, 2012)
Grading:
10%-class participation and attendance
10% map quiz of the Balkan countries/major historical events
25%-weekly discussion post (250 words or more)
25%-take-home midterm exam (short essay format)
5%-abstract and outline of long essay
25%-one long essay (8-9 pages) or multimedia project