Čvoro, Uroš - Turbo-Folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia

Turbo-folk Music and Cultural
Representations of National
Identity in Former Yugoslavia
For Ena and for Marijana, from Toowoomba to Banja Luka
Turbo-folk Music and Cultural
Representations of National
Identity in Former Yugoslavia
Uroš Čvoro
UNSW Australia
© Uroš Čvoro 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Uroš Čvoro has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Cvoro, Uros.
Turbo-folk music and cultural representations of national identity in former Yugoslavia/by
Uros Cvoro.
pages cm. — (Ashgate Popular and folk music series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-2036-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4724-2037-4 (ebook)—
ISBN 978-1-4724-2038-1 (epub) 1. Popular music—Political aspects—Former Yugoslav
republics. 2. Turbo-folk music—Former Yugoslav republics—History and criticism. I.
Title.
ML3499.Y8C86 2014
781.6409497—dc23
2013047650
ISBN 9781472420367 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472420374 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781472420381 (ebk-ePUB)
IV
Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD
Contents
List of Figures vii

General Editor’s Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: The Three Stories of Turbo-folk 1
Part I Turbo-nation: Turbo-folk and

Representations of National Identity
in Former Yugoslavia, 1970–2010
1 The People’s Eastern Kitsch: Self-management, Modernisation

and ‘Newly Composed Folk Music’ in Yugoslavia 29
2 Remember the Nineties?: Turbo-folk as the Vanishing

Mediator of Nationalism 55
3 Beyond Serbia: Turbo-folk across Cultural

and National Boundaries 81
Part II Turbo-culture: Cultural Responses

to Turbo-folk
4 Turbo-art: Music and National Identity in the Work

of Contemporary Artists from Former Yugoslavia 105
5 They Can Be Heroes: Popular Culture and Public

Sculpture in Former Yugoslavia 129
6 Singin’ in the Film: Turbo-folk and Self-exoticisation

in the Films of Srđan Dragojević 155
Conclusion 179
Bibliography 185
Index 195
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Figures
2.1 Ceca, Sydney 2010 (Dragana Marinković – One Love

Photography) 59
4.1 Zoran Naskovski, Smrt u Dalasu, installation view. The American

Effect Exhibition, Whitney Museum of Art, 2003 (photograph
provided by the artist) 109
5.1 Rocky Balboa, Sculpture, 3 metres. Žitište, Northern

Serbia, 2007 (photograph by the author) 132
General Editor’s Preface
The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the
twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music
alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. A relativistic
outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international
ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution
of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context,
reception and subject position. Together, these have conspired to eat away at the
status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has
arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new
genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes
authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of
free, individual expression.
Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the
Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series presents some of the best research in the
field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings
in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed
in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. The
series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It
is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco,
whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary
or traditional.
Professor Derek B. Scott,

Professor of Critical Musicology,
University of Leeds, UK
Acknowledgements
Research for this book was funded by a two-year Discovery Grant from the
Australian Research Council (ARC). A version of Chapter 2 appeared in Cultural
Politics as ‘Remember the Nineties? Turbo-folk as the Vanishing Mediator of
Nationalism’. It has been substantially expanded and revised.
My ideas about cultural representations of national identity and nationalism
have benefited from my ongoing intellectual engagement with valued colleagues
and friends at the UNSW’s National Institute for Experimental Arts (NIEA), in
particular Jill Bennett and David McNeill. I would like to thank Zoran Naskovski
for his generosity and willingness to discuss his work. I owe gratitude to Tim
Gregory and Chrysi Lionis for their friendship and humour, as well as their
enthusiastic help with the preparation of this manuscript. The editorial team at
Ashgate has been extremely professional. In particular I would like to thank Heidi
Bishop for being so quick and efficient.
List of Abbreviations
EPP Economic Propaganda Program

ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
JUL Yugoslav United Left
KFOR Kosovo Force (NATO)
KLA Kosovo Liberation Army
KPJ Yugoslav Communist Party
LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCFM Newly Composed Folk Music
NDH Independent State of Croatia (Nazi ally during WWII)
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
RASMC Rambo Amadeus World Mega Tzar
SKJ Communist Association of Yugoslavia
SKS Central Committee of the Serbian Communist Party
SOTS Socialist Art
SSJ Serbian Unity Party
UN United Nations
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Introduction
The Three Stories of Turbo-folk
Turbofolk is tacky, high-octane techno with melodies based loosely on traditional

Balkan folk music. Which would make it the same as popular music in pretty much
any country in Europe if it wasn’t also paid for by the Serbian and Croatian mafias
(sometimes the Montenegrin) and served as the soundtrack to some of the most
heinous war crimes since the Holocaust.1
This description accompanies Part 2 of ‘The Vice Guide to the Balkans’ – an

episode of the highly popular The Vice Guide to Travel documentary series. The
episode is dedicated to the music scene in Belgrade and filled with fast cars, fake-
tanned women with large breast implants, excessively loud music, and ‘men who
look like murderers’. At one point in the episode, the narrating journalist is shown
inside a turbo-folk nightclub, heavily intoxicated, and complaining about how
much brandy he and his local companions have consumed: ‘All I did was drink
brandy and listen to music that felt like I was being punched in the face!’.
The report provides the historical context for turbo-folk, which peaked in
popularity during the nineties. This was during the time of the civil wars in Bosnia
and Croatia, and at the time of international sanctions against Serbia that caused
hyperinflation and a steep decrease in living standards. The report mirrors the intrigue
that surrounds turbo-folk’s populist celebration of hedonism and consumerism. It
also captures the patriotic overtones of turbo-folk that provided an escape from grim
reality, and aligned the music with the interests of Serb nationalists. However, within
the engaging style and abundance of humorous and insightful situations, there is a
striking absence in The Vice Guide’s account of turbo-folk.
The Vice Guide’s report fails to mention that, despite its history, turbo-folk
has survived the political fall, incarceration and death of Slobodan Milošević and
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of Serbia. Further still,
it has risen in popularity, crossing ethnic boundaries throughout Bosnia, Croatia
and Slovenia. The Vice Guide’s decision to ignore the popularity of turbo-folk
across the Balkans in the post-Milošević era is significant because it reinforces
the view of turbo-folk as ‘a soundtrack for genocide’ financed by criminals and
performed by hyper-sexualised femmes fatales. This view not only oversimplifies
the relationship of turbo-folk to national identity in ex-Yugoslavia, but also
presents it as a dangerous form of music whose threat extends beyond popular
1
The description and documentary are available at: ‘The Vice Guide to the Balkans –
Part 2’, Vice (February 2012), accessed 20 October 2012, http://www.vice.com/the-vice-
guide-to-travel/the-vice-to-the-balkans-part-2.
2 Turbo-folk Music and National Identity in Former Yugoslavia
culture to a range of political and historical issues, such as ethnic violence, crime
and a recent bloody history.
Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former
Yugoslavia is an investigation of the significance of turbo-folk beyond the music.
It considers the broader influence of turbo-folk by locating the music as a political
and cultural mediator of national identity in ex-Yugoslavia. With a musical make
up consisting of high-energy electronic pop music synthesised with folkloric
elements and themes from Slavic, Oriental and Mediterranean music, turbo-folk
speaks volumes about the place from which it has sprung. While the mixing of the
electronic pop form (‘turbo’) and the local musical tradition (‘folk’) stylistically
varies very little from a range of similar genres in the region (such as Laïko-pop in
Greece, Chalga in Bulgaria and Manele in Romania), turbo-folk is distinguished
by its cultural and political lineage, and particularly by its historical proximity to
the political rise of Milošević and nationalism in Serbia in the late eighties. Though
its historical lineage extends far further, turbo-folk remains the most consistently
popular genre of music in the territories of ex-Yugoslavia since the nineties.
By tracing the history of turbo-folk from the seventies to the present, this
book analyses the connections between the cultural and political paradoxes of
turbo-folk. The paradox of turbo-folk can be evidenced in reports such as that by
The Vice Guide, where it is described as ‘backwards’ and ‘kitsch’ music, whose
iconography represents a cultural threat to cosmopolitan culture and identity.
Within this view, ‘turbo-folk’ is often used as a negative label that conflates the
pathologies in Serbia under Milošević during the nineties. That is to say, it is
perceived as part of a popular culture that was an ideological construction of the
Milošević regime and a direct expression of Serb nationalism; a mass-produced
media spectacle that fosters mindless consumerism, sexism and criminality; and
a triumph of the primitive and backwards Balkan over its cosmopolitan European
counterpart. However, in contrast, turbo-folk’s iconography is also perceived by
the public as a ‘genuinely Balkan’ cultural form of resistance to the perceived
threat of cultural globalisation and neoliberalism. The political paradox of turbo-
folk rests in the absent centre of ‘The Vice Guide to the Balkans’. Put simply,
although turbo-folk is closely connected to the Serbian nationalism of the
Milošević regime, its popularity transcends nationalist animosities – particularly
in Croatia and Bosnia – and effectively acts as a cultural form of reconciliation.
Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former
Yugoslavia traces the shifting political and cultural attitudes towards turbo-folk
as a way to think through representations of national identity in ex-Yugoslavia.
It shows that different reactions to turbo-folk reveal the slippages in the space
between state and culture and between conceptions of national identity and its
cultural expressions. These relationships are described in this introductory chapter
as the three histories of turbo-folk: the musical background, the ideological
background and the cultural influence.
Divided into two parts, this book consists of three chapters that comprise Part
I, and three chapters that comprise Part II. The first part provides an account of
Introduction 3
the intersection of music and ideology between seventies Yugoslavia and the
present. The second part follows the political and cultural influence of turbo-folk
beyond music to show how conceptions of national identity that were projected
onto turbo-folk become concepts that are manifested in different cultural avenues,
such as art, sculpture, architecture and film. Visual artists use folk music as a
ready-made way to problematise notions of ‘national representation’ in art, and to
demonstrate the volatile and complex position of popular music in the history of
Yugoslavia and its successor states. Public sculptures that appear in post-Yugoslav
public spaces feature popular culture icons that recall the socialist public sphere
and the entertainment industry. Films reference both the shared cultural legacy of
Yugoslavia in popular music and articulate the demise of the country through the
violent struggle over the meaning of that legacy. Taken together, these constitute
a trajectory of a cultural memory of a country that goes beyond just music or
political organisation.
In one sense then, this book is an intervention into the meaning of cultural
populism at a time of political remapping of Europe, and a powerful resurgence
of various forms of nationalist populisms. These populisms range from the
nationalism of Greece’s anti-austerity movement, anti-immigrant nationalisms
across Western Europe, and the religious fundamentalism rising in the wake of
the Arab Spring; to the populist movements in ex-Yugoslavia from the growing
presence of radical Wahhabis in Bosnia, and Serb nationalists protesting against
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) trials of
Radovan Karadžic, Ratko Mladić and Vojislav Šešelj. This book should thus be
viewed as a study of European culture at a particular moment in history. This
moment is one where history seems to be catching up to post-ideological Europe,
and when Francis Fukuyama’s notion of the ‘End of History’ – an optimistic view
of the world at the end of the Cold War tensions – now causes one to wince at its
bittersweet irony.
The historical proximity between the appearance of turbo-folk music and the
rise of nationalist populism in Yugoslavia is relatively well known, and certainly
not an isolated phenomenon in light of the events in Europe since the end of the
Cold War. It is for this reason that this book seeks to highlight an often-overlooked
aspect of the rise of turbo-folk as popular culture in the context of post-Yugoslav
societies: the simultaneous disappearance (or the destruction) of the political,
social and cultural spaces of the working class. Socialist Yugoslavia was a society
that, at least on an official level, was for most of its history dedicated to the
modernisation and emancipation of its ‘working people’. This included active and
genuine attempts to foster and promote a pan-Yugoslav culture ‘for the people’ that
received support from all of the political space. This also included a relatively high
degree of tolerance of popular culture and openness to influences from Western
popular culture, film in particular, and especially in comparison to the approach
of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. As Chapter 1 shows, it is precisely because of
this idiosyncratic economic, political and cultural position of Yugoslavia,
that the popular culture that developed also had a distinctive and peculiar
character. The popular culture in Yugoslavia was located between a divergent

and often contradictory network of influences: between the historical roots in
Eastern tradition (Ottoman and Byzantine) and Westward leanings; politically,
it was socialist and yet it was consumerist, like its capitalist counterparts; and
aesthetically, it was caught between socialist realism and Western postmodernism.
This popular culture survived the death of Yugoslavia, and its most popular and
visible continuation is turbo-folk. As the cultural inheritance of ‘people’s music’
in former Yugoslavia, turbo-folk is the most popular remainder of the cultural
heritage of socialism (some other forms are discussed in Chapter 5). Crucially,
and in contrast to other cultural forms, the popularity of turbo-folk is not steeped
in socialist nostalgia but in an attempt to articulate a cultural language that speaks
to the trappings of contemporary life in the region.
Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the bloody wars of the nineties, the
post-Yugoslav mini-states find themselves in the process of so-called ‘transition’:
an official buzz word used to describe the shift into neoliberal capitalism,
privatisation, growing inequality between systemic poverty and new wealth, mass
unemployment, and the rapid dismantling of established social safety nets. In the
newly formed ‘national’ states, a key aspect of this process is the highlighting
of, and insistence on, national identities and ‘national rights’ of the people, as
opposed to the rights of the workers or lower classes. In the case of turbo-folk
then, the framework for our analysis is the destruction of both the former socialist
working class and its political, social and cultural spaces of expression. Analysing
turbo-folk, as well as its surrounding debates and controversies, marks an attempt
to shed some light on the way in which the working class, or ‘the people’, no
longer exist in the Balkans, despite the ongoing existence of its (very loud and
very popular) music.
This analysis draws on the work of Slavoj Žižek, who has provided not only
the most critically insightful articulation of events in nineties Yugoslavia, but also
positioned these events within a broader political context. Žižek’s articulation of
enjoyment as an excess of meaning in the symbolic universe provides a way to open
up the discussion of turbo-folk. Turbo-folk has, in most cases, been articulated and
understood as a point of excess – a signifier of something that cannot easily be co-
opted into the political or cultural space in the Balkans. Žižek describes enjoyment
as the fusing of pleasure and pain into an unbearable intensity to suggest how
ideological formations work as economies of directing and commanding enjoyment.
Ideology takes hold of the subject at the point of excess outside the meaning that the
ideological formation provides. While Žižek never explicitly refers to turbo-folk, his
discussion of nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia frequently references the cultural and
political landscape that produced this music. For instance, he suggests that Serbia
under Milošević worked as a carnival state of permissive nationalism in which
everything was permitted (other than challenging the leader).
This understanding of national identification through permitted excess recalls
Žižek’s account of the way communities organise their enjoyment through cultural
practices: ‘A nation exists only as long as its specific enjoyment continues to be
Introduction 5
materialized in a set of social practices and transmitted through national myths that
structure these practices’.2 Žižek argues that a key component of enjoyment is that
it is conceived as something inaccessible to the Other, while at the same time is
threatened by the Other. He explains the rise of nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia as a
network of thefts in which each nationality has constructed its own mythology about
how other nations deprive it of some essential part of enjoyment.3 Žižek’s articulation
of nationalism as steeped in stolen enjoyment recalls the persistent perception of
turbo-folk as a ‘Serb thing’ that seduces all other ethnic groups in the region.
This articulation of enjoyment helps explain the nexus of cultural mythologies
that have generated perceptions of turbo-folk, while accounting for the malleability
of those perceptions, which range from politically charged self-exoticisation, to
self-victimisation, to self-empowering defiance. This can include the perception
of turbo-folk as what Žižek calls the ‘Balkan ghost’ – a symbolic attribute that
designates a position of mindless and excessive enjoyment.4 This can also
include the way representational strategies of turbo-folk were appropriated by the
Milošević regime in the nineties and during the anti-NATO demonstrations in 2000
in Belgrade as a ‘collective Bakhtinian carnivalisation of social life’.5 However,
this can also include seeing turbo-folk as what Žižek calls ‘postmodern’ or ‘reverse
nationalism’ that celebrates the exotic authenticity and lust for life of the Balkans,
in contrast to the inhibited anaemic and emasculated Western Europeans.6
Žižek’s articulation of the mythologies of the ‘theft of enjoyment’ also
helps explain the way that the antagonisms that shaped perceptions of turbo-
folk were already structured into the socialist state apparatus. This includes
the ideologies and mythologies that influenced the views of Yugoslavia,
such as self-management. Self-management introduced a shift to a market-
based economy, which enabled the growth of the entertainment industry and
development of popular culture in Yugoslavia. Popular culture not only came as
a direct consequence of socialist modernisation in Yugoslavia, but was also due
to Yugoslavia’s shift away from Stalinism and towards political independence.
This shift coincided with the global explosion of pop music, which continued
to play a crucial role in Yugoslavia in the seventies, during the political turmoil
of the eighties and nineties in ex-Yugoslavia, and during the previous decade.
Following from this, it is possible to extend Ante Perković’s suggestion that
socialist Yugoslavia was itself a pop creation, and thus it can be argued that
2
Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying With the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 202.
3
Ibid., p. 204.
4
Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting
For? (London: Verso, 2000), p. 5.
5
Slavoj Žižek, “Against the Double Blackmail”, in The Universal Exception: Selected
Writings, Vol. 2, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (New York: Continuum, 2006),
p. 265.
6
Žižek, The Fragile Absolute, p. 5.
the role of popular music as a cultural mediator of identity remains key to

understanding Yugoslavia’s dissolution and the states that appeared in its wake.7
It was because of the idiosyncratic structure of self-management that the
popular culture developed into one that had a distinctive and peculiar character. As
Žižek argues, the ‘fundamental paradox’ of Yugoslav self-management socialism
was that the official ideology could be continually emphasising one message while,
between the lines of the propaganda, it could suggest that its official solicitations
were not to be taken too literally and that a cynical attitude towards its ideology
was deliberately cultivated.8 As Chapter 2 illustrates, this double coding of official
language was manifested in reactions to popular music at particular moments of
socialist development in Yugoslavia. Further, Žižek’s account of the shift from
a shared culture of socialism into separatist-nationalist capitalism – through
the concept of the vanishing mediator – also helps explain the way leftovers of
that shared culture remain in the social field. The vanishing mediator describes
a process of historical transformation in which the agent of that transformation
‘vanishes’ once the change is completed. Here, it is used to describe the way
turbo-folk acted as the agent of change from Serb nationalism in the nineties to
transnational ‘Balkan’ regionalism in the first decade of this century.
Although Žižek’s analysis provides a powerful lens through which to consider
turbo-folk, it is also important to note that Žižek has now become almost a staple
of any critical or theoretical engagement with the Balkans. In this regard, one
must be wary of the way in which Žižek has increasingly been positioned as
the spokesperson for the Balkans, and the way Žižek’s critical insight often
exoticises and ‘Balkanises’ the Balkans, as well as himself. While the increasing
influence of Žižek’s work in studies of the Balkans is largely indicative of his
broader popularity in the academic community, the frequent slavish embrace of
his insights runs the risk of generating a field of ready-made theory that simply
reproduces, rather than engages with, Žižek.
The starting position of this book, then, is that turbo-folk as a form of cultural
nationalism and Žižek’s conception of nationalism originate in the same socio-
political coordinates and appeared at around the same time. While this explains
the almost illustrative relationship between the representational strategies of
turbo-folk and Žižek’s reading of self-exoticisation in the Balkans, it also draws
attention to Žižek’s own relationship to Western academia, which often works
through a similar process of self-exoticisation. His position as a ‘wild man of
theory’ who actively provokes his audience with Eastern European idiosyncrasies
and endless dirty jokes comes dangerously close to the performance of the ‘Balkan
carnival’ of which he is so critical.
7
Ante Perković, The Seventh Republic: Pop Culture in the Dissolution of Yugoslavia
(Zagreb: Novi Liber, 2011), p. 27.
8
Slavoj Žižek, “Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism”, in The Universal
Exception: Selected Writings, vol. 2, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London:
Continuum, 2006), p. 142.
Introduction 7
It is often easy to forget that what hides behind this ‘Balkan carnival’ is the real
tragedy of the Yugoslav Wars that resulted in the deaths of over 140,000 people,
the displacement of millions of other people, and the destruction of a multiethnic
country. The Balkans were always presented as the ‘wild East’ of Europe, and the
war enabled the media to amplify this discourse of ‘European other’ by labelling
its people as irrationally wild and passionate. This is important to consider when
seeking to understand the broader context of turbo-folk (even if it is beyond the
scope of this book) and possibly to explain why Žižek is so often characterised the
way he is. This sense of cultural difference that is channelled as nationalism in a
region where shared identity is fraught suggests an idea of ‘impossible identity’.
The impossibility here refers to the inability, or refusal, to identify with any of the
ethnic identities that have emerged in the wake of Yugoslavia. This idea of the
impossibility of identity in the region forms the connection between this book and
my own personal experience.
Accordingly, in the interest of full disclosure, my personal investment in this
project can be summarised as an attempt to think through the question of collective
identity as it plays itself out through discussions and perceptions of turbo-folk.
Turbo-folk emerged during a particularly dark episode in Yugoslavia’s history –
one that affected me and all those living in the region. In 1992, my hometown,
Mostar, was caught in a bloody civil war, and I was caught in this war for several
months. After leaving Mostar in September 1992 (and not returning for 20 years),
I lived in Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, before finally moving to Australia. During
every step of my travels, I was perceived as the outsider: in Mostar, we were one
of the ‘unpatriotic’ Serbs who stayed in the besieged city; in Croatia, we were
Serbs; in Slovenia, we were Balkan Southerners; and in Serbia, I was accused of
being a Muslim. Somewhat refreshingly, in Australia, I was just a refugee. These
experiences not only personally illustrate Žižek’s notion of the ‘Balkan ghost’,
but also sparked my interest in constructions and perceptions of national identity.
While living in Serbia between 1993 and 1995, during the worst years of
international sanctions, hyperinflation and nationalism, turbo-folk remained a
constant. These were the years of media saturation with turbo-folk, cheap soap
operas, fortune tellers and all sorts of show business swindlers. Turbo-folk was
seen as the music of the Serbs despite the fact that it was listened to by all sides
at the time. As such, it was connected to ideas about nationalism and belonging.
However, turbo-folk was also the music of ‘peasants’ and the sound of the ‘Orient’.
No one openly admitted to enjoying it – rather, everyone stated, ‘I only listen to
it when I am drunk’ or ‘I only listen to the good kind, not the trash’. Yet the clubs
were full and the tours were sold out.
I did not listen to turbo-folk, but most of my friends did. I still do not listen to
turbo-folk (although researching this book has created a new kind of unsettling
familiarity with it), yet many of my friends and relatives do. For those who were
willing to discuss their enjoyment of turbo-folk, when I asked them what was
so attractive about it, the reply was usually similar to: ‘it speaks to my soul’,
‘it touches my emotions’ and ‘it helps me get over hard times’. However, and
importantly, these conversations always went beyond the music, and inevitably
resulted in heated debates about politics and national identity. These conversations
reinforced the importance of two key questions about turbo-folk: first, how
it figures within national identity and belonging as defined through music, and
second, how it relates to one’s cultural affinities.
These heated debates about politics and national identity illustrate that the
cultural memory and history of socialist Yugoslavia and more recent times are
latent in turbo-folk music. When considering turbo-folk as a cultural mediator
of national identity, there are three histories that can be told: the musical history,
the ideological history and the cultural history. While the first two have been
at the centre of much of the available scholarship on turbo-folk, Turbo-folk
Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia
presents a third story of turbo-folk that explains the influence of turbo-folk music
and representations of turbo-folk music in other cultural fields: art, sculpture,
architecture and film. However, before exploring that history, it is first necessary
to outline the (interconnected) musical and ideological histories of turbo-folk.
The Musical History of Turbo-Folk
Many of the Balkan region’s cultures are poised between the East and West. However,
in the case of Yugoslavia, there is a distinct political difference regarding how this
position was perceived and articulated through reactions to the music. Although a
number of accounts suggest that the origins of turbo-folk’s mixing of ‘Eastern’ and
‘Western’ influences can be traced much earlier, I argue that the history of turbo-
folk should begin in seventies Yugoslavia. While the perception of Yugoslavia
East/West crossroads did exist much earlier, the discussion of this perception
through music became a culturally and politically pronounced mythology from
the seventies onwards. It is precisely the economic structures, state policies and
political shifts in this period that made the mythology of the music possible. The
common approach of projecting the narrative of ‘Newly Composed Folk Music’
into earlier history only serves to amplify this mythology and obfuscate the fact
that it is intrinsic to the socio-political makeup of seventies Yugoslavia.
While Yugoslavia was always the crossroads of a variety of cultural influences,
the mixing of those influences in popular culture, as well as the political reaction to
this process, only properly took shape in the seventies. As Chapter 2 will show, this
is because this decade witnessed the birth of the entertainment industry and popular
culture in Yugoslavia, which became the Hollywood of the Eastern Bloc. Thus, I
argue that the mixing of cultural influences in turbo-folk cannot be separated from
the particular way in which they were mixed: through the aesthetics and stylisation
of Western pop music.
Introduction 9
Newly Composed Folk Music
The seventies saw the rise of Newly Composed Folk Music (NCFM), which
took the postmodern approach to folklore. Drawing on folk tradition, such as
village singing in small groups or ritual-tied instrumental music, authors started
experimenting with pop music idioms in terms of song structure and lyrical
themes that dealt with the contemporary trappings of life. It is crucial to point
out that this was not only happening in Yugoslavia, but was part of the broader
global emergence of so-called ‘world music’. In Yugoslavia and beyond, folk
music was being transformed by a number of rock and jazz musicians who began
to incorporate elements of folk as a way to experiment and expand their sound.
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen provides the most succinct and accurate description
of the formal structure, harmonic basis and performance format of NCFM, which
was crystallised by the late sixties:
Adopted were the verse–chorus–verse structure of the pop song, with an

extension of the I–IV–V harmonic framework to include augmented and
diminished chords. Along with occasional acoustic instruments characteristic
of regional traditions (e.g. tapan and darabuka drums), new instruments were
introduced: electric guitar and bass, keyboards and electronic drums. The
accordion was retained by band musicians as the quintessential folk instrument;
a material and symbolic link with music in the folk spirit.9
NCFM combined pop sensibilities with ‘regional codes’, such as a distinctive

rhythmic pattern, a melodic sequence and an instrumental or textual motif
associated with local traditions. The resulting music functioned as a sum of
recognisable songs framed around motifs of love, regional belonging, family and
everyday life.
A good illustration of NCFM is the hit single ‘I Loved A Girl From The City’
(‘Voleo Sam Devojku Iz Grada’, 1972) that skyrocketed the career of Serbian
performer Miroslav Ilić. The song’s soothing melody and soft 2/4 rhythm is
driven by Ilić’s baritone vocals. Violin and accordion accompany the main vocal
melody, which is embellished with instrumental breaks between the verses. The
lyrics speak about the cultural divide between the countryside and the city. The
idyllic rustic setting is contrasted against the moral corruption of the unnamed
metropolis. The song is told from the perspective of a young man from a village
who is seduced by an urban girl. She takes advantage of his naïve affectations
and deserts him for another lover. The song finishes with his return to the simple
ways of the village and rejection of the city. This is reinforced by the video for the
song, which is a juxtaposition of the youthful Ilić singing, dressed in traditional
Serbian village attire, against shots of the femme fatale city girl dressed in trendy
9
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, “From Source to Commodity: Newly-Composed Folk
Music of Yugoslavia”, Popular Music 14/2 (1995): 245.
(seventies) clothes, played in the video by Belgrade actress Sonja Savić – an icon
of liberal and urban youth in Yugoslavia. ‘I Loved A Girl From The City’ thus
represents NCFM’s emphasis on regional codes and captures the common motifs
of love, belonging and everyday life that were prevalent in the music.
However, in one sense, the musical and lyrical experimentation that
underpinned NCFM, as evidenced by the Ilić song, was barely distinguishable
from a number of similar music genres occurring around the world. Thus, what
is crucial here are not the musical distinctions between different genres, but
the cultural attitudes that were attached to each genre. From the outset, NCFM
was seen as the antithesis to progressive modern Yugoslavia. It was seen as the
domain of the uncultured, uneducated and generally backward people. This set
it in opposition to the Yugoslav state that actively sought to promote and project
an image of a progressive liberal society through openness to Western influences.
As Chapter 1 will show, these influences included Hollywood films, postmodern
art and popular music from the West. Consumption of popular music became one
of the key points around which cultural identity and difference was structured in
Yugoslavia. While this was initially articulated around the question of taste, soon
the objections to NCFM took shape around one particular aspect of the music,
described by Rasmussen in the following terms:
The distinguishing stylistic trait of NCFM, however, is what is ambiguously

referred to as the ‘oriental’. This style, which is historically associated with
Turkish cultural dominance under the centuries-long Ottoman rule in the
region, has evolved into a unifying framework for distinct musical practices
throughout Bosnia, Macedonia and southern Serbia. In simplest terms, the
characteristics of the oriental style are richly-ornamented melodies with various
trill patterns used both decoratively and structurally, and minor modes featuring
augmented seconds.10
This ‘oriental’ trait became the key defining musical feature of NCFM. In
particular, as Chapter 2 will show, the Belgrade musical group and production
team Southern Wind became synonymous with the perceived orientalisation of
music. Despite this, Southern Wind was also the musical bridge to what eventually
became known as turbo-folk.
Turbo-folk
Turbo-folk can be considered the next step in the musical evolution of NCFM
because it fused world music and Euro-pop in cultural isolation with a national
profile. It expanded the fusion of ethno music with electronic pop that had been
happening for a decade in Yugoslavia. It substituted the folkloric lyrical motifs and
instrumentation with synthesised sounds, MTV-style presentation and pictures of
10
Rasmussen, “From Source to Commodity”, 247–8.
Introduction 11
urban hedonism. In terms of musical characteristics, the key difference was in turbo-
folk’s substituting of the mixed metre of NCFM with techno or dance beats.11 The
music is layered over this beat, and mainly includes the electronically processed
sound of instruments such as guitars, trumpets, violins or accordions (the token folk
instrument). Like NCFM, turbo-folk songs usually feature an instrumental ‘dance’
break in which a particular melody is further developed and can intermingle with
other instruments. The style of singing is a continuation of NCFM melismatic vocals
(Southern Wind in particular), with a higher degree of embellished melodies. Like
NCFM, turbo-folk vocalists use a variety of local melodic codes (Roma, Serbian,
Bosnian and Macedonian), as well as international styles, such as Swedish pop,
Italian canzone and, in some cases, rapping with English lyrics.
There is little in terms of musical distinction that can differentiate turbo-folk
from NCFM, and they generally have more or less identical audiences. In most
respects, turbo-folk was a continuation of the same musical experimentation,
but it allowed more pop and electronic influences to be introduced to the music.
However, what did distinguish turbo-folk was the broader ideological context in
which it appeared, which defined its national profile. As Ivana Kronja argues:
Turbo-folk celebrated materialism, hedonism, excess and sexual innuendo

during the worst years of war and sanctions against Serbia, presenting a rosy
and escapist picture of reality.12
This included songs that indirectly addressed the grim reality of war and sanctions,
in many cases by singing about the good life.
The archetypal turbo-folk song and video that provided the blueprint for much
of what followed was ‘200 mph’ (‘Dvesta Na Sat’, 1994) by Ivan Gavrilović.
Released in the year that saw the continuation of the bloody conflict in Bosnia,
including the Markale massacre in Sarajevo less than 300 kilometres away from
Belgrade, ‘200 mph’ is an upbeat ode to speeding. Its lyrics refer to ‘getting out
of the city’ by pressing ‘the pedal to the metal’, and its video is filmed in a car
mechanic shop and features dancers in car mechanic outfits. The song opens with
the shout ‘techno-folk!’, yet much of what follows is difficult to differentiate from
the plethora of dance pop of the period. However, around one minute into the song,
one can hear a few seconds of synthesised accordion played in folk style. This
suggestion of folk through a momentary rupture became the trademark of turbo-
11
I am drawing on Jasmina Milojević’s succinct explanation of turbo-folk: Jasmina
Milojević, “Turbo-folk: World Music ili postmoderni Vavilon?”, Jazzy Mco Yu, accessed 22
October 2012, http://www.jazzymcoyu.page.tl/Turbo_folk.htm.
12
Ivana Kronja, “Turbo Folk and Dance Music in 1990s Serbia: Media, Ideology and
the Production of Spectacle”, The Anthropology of East Europe Review 22/1 (2004): 112.
folk. Thus, the ‘folk’ of turbo-folk is mainly a suggestion of folkloric instruments

through synthesised sound.13
The escapism with overt or less overt references to the surrounding crisis was
also evident in other major turbo-folk hits from the nineties. Svetlana Ražnatović
‘Ceca’, who will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2, experienced major success
with her song ‘Coward’ (‘Kukavica’, 1993), which laments the breakdown of a
relationship between a married man and his young mistress. The song fuses the
cult of female victimhood suggested by lyrics that describe the longing for an
unrequited love, while also managing to appeal to female emancipation through
sexuality. However, the song’s emphasis on female independence is undermined by
its implicit appeal to patriarchy. Despite its challenge to the institution of marriage,
‘Coward’ is ultimately about missing the opportunity to marry the right man.
While sexuality is implicit in ‘Coward’, it is blatantly explicit in Jelena Karleuša’s
‘Diamonds’ (‘Dijamanti’, 1998). Featuring the line, ‘I like doing gentle things in
the dark, but quickly I get bored, that’s why I love diamonds, they are my best
friends’, the song sounds equally awkward in Serbian. ‘Diamonds’ celebrates the
objectification of women as a good business venture, where sexuality is a means
of becoming rich quickly, and the intentional embrace of excess is promoted. The
appeal of the aesthetic content of turbo-folk hits such as the two aforementioned
songs is evident in the way it was materialised in everyday social practices. A
large proportion of the female turbo-folk audience were ‘sponsored girls’, who,
following the central premise of many of these songs, knowingly used their looks
and sex appeal to get close to rich and powerful men.
This celebration of excess and escapism was not only equally championed
by male performers such as the singer of the aforementioned ‘200 mph’, but also
complemented by the cult of criminality. ‘Blackout’ (‘Mrak, Mrak’, 1992) by
Džej Ramadanovski is an example of such a song that enthusiastically celebrates
aggressive outbursts of male jealousy. With the line, ‘If I knew, baby, who touched
you, I’d shoot a bullet straight through his heart’, sung with an upbeat electro
rhythm, ‘Blackout’ combines retrograde patriarchy with the mythos of the male
warrior protecting ‘his territory’. While this song also suggests that the girl in
question is very young (he refers to her as ‘little one’), this fantasy of owning a
teenage girlfriend is the subject of Nino’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy Little One’ (‘Hajde
Mala Da Pravimo Lom’, 1994). This song begins by establishing the age disparity
between the couple, only to dismiss it with the chorus exchange between Nino
that proposes, ‘Little one, let’s go crazy’, and the female voice that responds
enthusiastically, ‘Why not?’.
13
Eric D. Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of
Alternatives (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 134.
Introduction 13
Pop folk
If there is little that differentiates turbo-folk from NCFM musically, there is perhaps
even less distinction between turbo-folk and what followed it. The main way to
draw a historical line between turbo-folk and what can be called ‘pop folk’ is
the year 2000, and the political overthrow of Milošević through mass protests in
Serbia. Thus, the key difference is ideological rather than musical. The music that
was produced after 2000 continued to incorporate even more pop elements into its
sound, and, due to better production technologies, the records were packed with
more highly produced and polished tracks. Despite this, the core ‘folk’ signifiers
remained in melismatic vocals and the use of particular melodies. Once the ideology
was removed, the line between turbo-folk and Western/European pop was made
more ambiguous than ever. The music was purged of its nationalist content and
completely left to the working of the market, thus becoming little more than a highly
popular subculture of the Balkans. However, as Chapter 3 will show, the process by
which the nationalism in turbo-folk vanished proved crucial in repositioning turbo-
folk as an expression of a shared culture that I call ‘new Balkanness’.
The way turbo-folk has recreated the shared cultural space is evident in the
highly popular song ‘Superman’ (2004), recorded as a duet featuring a Serb
and a Bosnian Muslim. Quickly following Serbia’s return to Eurovision – after
not taking part from 1992 to 2004 because of international sanctions – Željko
Joksimović, who performed the song, was invited to contribute as a guest on
the album Burek (named after a Bosnian cuisine) by Dino Merlin. Merlin was a
successful performer in Yugoslavia, and his albums often featured guests. During
the war, he became a vocal Bosnian nationalist who recorded songs dedicated to
the Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegović. Merlin’s political orientation continued
to manifest through his music after the war, featuring distinctively Middle Eastern
instrumentation and lyrical dedications to Bosnia. Burek was an example of this,
including lyrics such as ‘who touches Bosnia should drop dead’ in the title song.
The choice to include a duet with a Serb performer (albeit one that was
not compromised by nationalist politics) was primarily an attempt to increase
marketability across the border. However, the form of duet also recalls one of
the most popular staples of pro-communist music in Yugoslavia. Duets paired
performers of different ethnicities as a way to symbolise transnational unity. Thus,
the two performers in ‘Superman’ were directly referencing a well-known and
highly popular form of shared culture in Yugoslavia. Further, the style of music,
while in the tradition of the turbo-folk fusion of folk instrumentation with electro
beats, is distinctively more melancholic. Musically, it retains a proximity to turbo-
folk, while suggesting a more refined and softer version of the style. Lyrically, the
song describes a singular experience (told from the two perspectives of the two
performers) of a man surrendering himself to the whimsical nature of his beloved.
The two perspectives come together in the chorus line: ‘I’ll forgive her everything,
I’m not Superman, so I can bear it all’.
The song employs a series of implicit signifiers of a shared past. First, both
performers share the same emotions – although they articulate them slightly
differently – towards an abstracted, gendered subject. Second, both performers are
only addressing the abstracted subject in the song, yet the interweaving of their
voices suggests a unitary message. Third, while it is never revealed who is the
subject in the song, ‘she’ is clearly positioned within regional history. The second
verse features the line ‘love is not written eye for an eye, tooth for tooth’, which
is closely followed by ‘every bridge is bridge on the Drina’. The song connects
the first line’s reference to conflict with the second line’s explicit mention of the
book The Bridge on the Drina, which is not only one of the most famous and
acclaimed literary works in Yugoslavia (written by Ivo Andrić, winner of the 1961
Nobel Prize in Literature), but also deals with inter-ethnic relations in Bosnia.
‘Superman’ thus features a series of floating signifiers of shared identity that are
articulated and shared with exalted melancholy. The song’s commercial success
was the result of its ability to tap into the void left by the destruction of the shared
space of ex-Yugoslavia.
The Ideological History of Turbo-Folk
The ‘meaning’ of turbo-folk has always formed the centre of contention around
the genre. Even before turbo-folk appeared in the early nineties, during the
seventies and eighties, NCFM in Yugoslavia served as a lightning rod for political
discussions in which music came second to ideology. It is interesting to note that
no musicologists have conducted any substantial research on turbo-folk, and
Rasmussen’s account of NCFM in Yugoslavia remains the sole systematic attempt
at historical analysis.14 As Chapter 2 will argue, NCFM and turbo-folk were
perceived through a series of cultural oppositions (urban–rural and rock–folk) that
shifted over time: in the seventies, they were anchored around the question of taste
and kitsch; in the eighties, they were framed around the question of the ‘oriental’
threat to national identity; in the nineties, they were split between good Europeanism
(urban opposition to Milošević) and bad Serb nationalism (provincialism); and in
the 2000s, turbo-folk became a signifier for transnational ‘Balkanness’ – a symbol
of a regional identity that stands opposed to the neoliberal global capital. The
important question here is not so much whether these perceptions were accurate,
but how they mediated between daily politics and perceptions of national identity
through culture.
14
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, Newly Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia (London:
Routledge, 2002).
Introduction 15
1970s to 1980s: Socialist Norms of Taste
Yugoslavia was a liminal space located between divergent and contradictory

historical processes: socially, it was oriented towards the East; politically, it was
non-aligned and oriented towards the developing world (at least after the sixties);
and economically – and politically, to an extent – it was oriented towards the West.
In much the same way, popular culture in Yugoslavia occupied a position between
the historical roots in Eastern tradition (Ottoman and Byzantine) and Westward
leanings. Politically, Yugoslavia was socialist, and yet it was consumerist like its
capitalist counterparts. Following from this, it was aesthetically caught between
socialist realism and Western postmodernism. NCFM played a crucial role in
Yugoslavia’s political and cultural dialectic as the cultural mediator between
the two sides and the ground on which cultural anxieties were played out. The
appearance of NCFM is thus not only synonymous with the appearance of the
entertainment industry, but is also deeply reflective of its ambiguities. Arriving
with sixties modernisation in Yugoslavia, NCFM used traditional folk music
instrumentation, while adding new elements, such as electronic instrumentation,
Euro-pop melodies, oriental melodies, Gypsy music, and Greek, Mexican, Spanish
and even rock elements. However, between the sixties when it first emerged and
the eighties when it reached its peak of popularity, NCFM moved further and
further away from anything resembling ‘folk’.
The shifting perceptions of NCFM and attitudes towards it can be identified
at different stages of ‘socialist development’: the instrumental indoctrinating in
the forties and fifties, the liberal populism of the sixties and seventies and the
politicisation of culture in the eighties. These three historical eras are punctuated
by two key moments in the history of NCFM, when the symbolic structure of the
state became apparent. Although, for most of the history of NCFM in Yugoslavia,
the state remained ambiguous towards NCFM (disliking it, but tolerating it because
it was popular and it generated tax money), there were two key moments at which
notions of identity implicit in discussions of NCFM became clear. These moments
were during the ‘Kitsch Tax’ debate in the seventies and during the ‘orientalisation’
debate over the band Southern Wind in the eighties. NCFM was discussed through
the frame of cultural values (kitsch) or ethnic identity (orientalisation) that
became key points around which collective identity was articulated. The meaning
of NCFM emerged in the interplay between conceptions of taste and cultural
identity translated into series of oppositions: cosmopolitan–primitive, rural–urban
and European–Balkan.
This interplay between notions of cultural taste also included the creation of the
rift between folk and rock as two key axes of sociocultural identity, encapsulated in
the (still present) question, ‘what music do you listen to?’. In Yugoslavia, enjoying
a particular song or performer ‘is not a culturally inconsequential choice; it is
an indication of musical preference that is tied to cultural affinity and one’s own
sociocultural identity’.15 In this respect, during the 1980s, one of key cultural lines
of demarcation in Yugoslavia was carved out between the urban, cosmopolitan
rock, punk and ‘new wave’ audience and the NCFM audience (and the middle-
ground consumers of ‘zabavna’ music). This division also marked the sociocultural
identity between the folk audience as generally from lower or working class
families with limited educations, and the rock/punk/new wave audience that was
perceived as the culturally sophisticated middle class. It is ironic to note that the
majority of the rock/punk musicians in Yugoslavia were army children, which
meant they were privileged and thus their adoption of the rock rebellion meant
something entirely different from their Western counterparts.
In this context, Ivan Čolović published the first theoretical account of
NCFM, entitled Wild Literature (Divlja Književnost).16 Drawing on the French
poststructuralist understanding of the symbolic structure of literature (namely,
Bourdieu’s account of class expressed through taste and postcolonial political
theory), Čolović articulates NCFM as the perspective of marginal identities. On the
one hand, Čolović demonstrates that the stylistic experimentation, transformation
and departure from the ‘ideal’ of folklore in NCFM was often perceived from
the top as a form of cultural degeneration.17 On the other hand, he argues that the
majority of NCFM performers came from poor and underprivileged backgrounds
with limited access to education. Čolović shows that the perceived aesthetic
inferiority of NCFM is expressive of a sociocultural differentiation between the
working class and the cultural intelligentsia in Yugoslavia.18 As became apparent
in the following decade, the elitist conception of culture that underpins this
understanding of the NCFM reflected a broader set of cultural distinctions that
only became more pronounced.
1990s: Critique of Brainless Nationalism
The appearance of turbo-folk in the early nineties caused something of a shock

in public and academic circles, which contributed to the perception that it was
uniquely Serbian music. The perception of turbo-folk as endemic to Serbia was
largely amplified by the cultural isolation of Serbia due to the international
sanctions. From the outset, turbo-folk was attacked as a social malady, which led to
public calls by Serbian politicians to limit exposure to this culturally toxic music.
Despite this, amendments to laws in Serbia ended the state monopoly on television
broadcasting, thus helping to launch private television stations, such as Palma
TV and Pink TV, both of which were dedicated almost exclusively to showing
turbo-folk. The remainder of the broadcasting schedule was filled with pirated
15
Rasmussen, “From Source to Commodity”, 251.
16
Ivan Čolović, Divlja Književnost: Etnolingvističko Proučavanje Paraliterature
(Belgrade: Nolit, 1985).
17
Ibid., p. 149.
18
Ibid., p. 147.
Introduction 17
Hollywood movies, cheap soap operas, fortune tellers and pornography. This
provided a context for the reception of turbo-folk videos – which, in many cases,
stylistically mirrored these television shows – that hinged on sexuality, escapism
and hedonism. Pink TV also established a music recording and publishing house,
City Records, that was staffed with experienced music producers and state-of-
the-art recording technology, thereby ensuring the high quality and high volume
of musical output. The hyper-production of turbo-folk and its association with
privately owned enterprises highlighted it as the main cultural form for the
nouveaux riches in Serbia.
The first published academic critique of turbo-folk was written by Milena
Dragičević-Šešić in 1994. Dragičević-Šešić draws on the connections between the
music and the criminalisation and militant nationalism in Serbia.19 Emphasising
the identity politics at play in the lyrics and aesthetics, Dragičević-Šešić suggests
that turbo-folk provided a form of escapism built on kitsch, nationalism,
retrograde patriarchy, traditionalism and cultural provincial backwardness. This
study established in many ways the critical paradigm for understanding turbo-folk
not just as music, but as a broader cultural construct, reflective of the nationalist
and criminal pathologies of the nineties. The dominance of this view of turbo-folk
became obvious when, in 1994, the Serbian state – seeking to distance itself from
overt nationalist politics – turned against turbo-folk. The year 1995 was announced
as the ‘Year of Culture’. This state campaign involved purging turbo-folk from all
state television channels. As Chapter 3 will show, the state’s turn against turbo-
folk had the effect of distancing it from Milošević and increasing its popularity.
Two other studies appeared in the nineties and largely reproduced the view
of turbo-folk advanced by Dragičević-Šešić. In 1999, Eric Gordy published The
Culture of Power, a sociological study of Serbia under Milošević. Gordy argues
that turbo-folk was enabled by the orchestrated destruction of cultural and social
alternatives (such as rock music), thereby effectively rendering turbo-folk the
official soundtrack to Milošević’s Serbia.20 Gordy’s study draws sharp distinctions
between the rock and turbo audience, arguing that they occupied entirely different
social spheres. In 2000, Ivana Kronja published The Lethal Glow, which made a
similar argument.21 While Kronja emphasises that turbo-folk was a synthesis of a
multitude of styles (including rock, punk and new wave), she claims that this was
done in the service of destroying traditional moral and ethical values.
In many ways, these studies – despite their highly localised character – reflect
the theoretical emphasis on identity politics that dominated academic humanities
in the nineties. Analyses of turbo-folk have focused on articulating the way it
19
Milena Dragičević-Šešić, Neofolk Kultura Publika i Njene Zvezde (Novi Sad:
Izdavačka Knjižarnica Zorana Stojanovića, 1994).
20
Gordy, The Culture of Power.
21
Ivana Kronja, The Fatal Glow: Mass Psychology and the Aesthetics of Turbo
Sculpture (Belgrade: Tehnokratia, 2001).
represented a narrativisation of experiences, some based on gender codes and

others centred on national identity.
2000s: ‘Cultural Decontamination’ and ‘Cultural Racism’
The year 2000 brought massive political changes to the region. Croatian nationalist
President Franjo Tuđman died and Milošević was deposed from power, creating
a space for new relations between the former Yugoslav republics. As part of these
changes, it was widely expected that turbo-folk would vanish as the primary
cultural signifier of the pathologies from the nineties. In Serbia, the state once
again moved to marginalise turbo-folk from being broadcast on all channels.
Pink TV became the most public target, and it was forced to substantially alter
its programme to exclude turbo-folk. Despite this, not only did turbo-folk not
disappear, it actually increased in popularity in the wider region including Croatia,
Bosnia and Slovenia.
The geographic and cultural spread of turbo-folk is crucial in understanding
its present position. The newly visible transnationality of turbo-folk brings into
question earlier interpretations that highlighted nationalism. New accounts of turbo-
folk have emerged that attempt to articulate the music as an expression of a broader
ethos. These accounts have largely followed the theoretical post-9/11 swing towards
anti-capitalist globalism. In his book, Dictatorship, Nation, Globalisation, Miša
Đurković advanced Gordy’s thesis that turbo-folk emerged in the void created by
the withdrawal of state support for pop and rock music, and by the deregulation
of the entertainment industry.22 Đurković articulates the class subtext in many of
these debates, arguing that the ‘cosmopolitan socialist elite’ despised the culture
of the working class and peasants. However, he adds that turbo-folk emerged as an
important cultural reaction in response to globalisation and the dilution of national
cultures. Journalist Zoran Cirjaković also draws attention to the fact that turbo-folk
is not unique to Serbia, but is a form of cultural syncretism that should be seen as
part of global world music that has been developing for over a decade.23
Art historian Branislav Dimitrijević articulates the term ‘cultural racism’ to
describe the systemic cultural elitism and hatred towards turbo-folk as synonymous
with all the pathologies of the nineties.24 Dimitrijević argues that cultural racism
towards turbo-folk is an extension of discrimination against larger social groups
(such as the working class) that are represented through turbo-folk. He also argues
in support of the subversive potential of turbo-folk to question the culture and
22
Misa Đurković, “Ideološki i Politički Sukobi oko Popularne Muzike u Srbiji”,
Filozofija i Društvo 25 (2004): 271–84.
23
Zoran Cirjaković, “Majka Druge Srbije”, Nova Srpska Politička Misao, accessed 11
September 2012, http://starisajt.nspm.rs/PrenetiTekstovi/2006_cirj_latinka1.htm.
24
Branislav Dimitrijević, “Global Turbo-folk”, NIN 2686 (20 June 2002), accessed 20
September 2012, http://www.nin.co.rs/2002-06/20/23770.html. Translation accessed 18
November 2011, http://www.ex-yupress.com/nin/nin139.html.
Introduction 19
moral codes of societies. In particular, he is interested in the way that artist Milica
Tomic’s introduction of turbo-folk into ‘high art’, discussed in Chapter 3, brings
these distinctions into question.25
In the wake of the widening theoretical understanding of turbo-folk, the
decade since 2000 has witnessed the emergence of a new wave of interest in the
subject. International conferences on post-Yugoslav social and cultural spaces
now routinely include panels on the role of popular and folk music, and several
postgraduate research projects have been written about turbo-folk. There have
been new studies that address representations of femininity, masculinity and
queer identities in turbo-folk.26 The departure point for these projects is a feminist
remapping of representations of sexuality and gender in turbo-folk as signalling
the possibility for emancipatory politics. Regarding sexuality, it is suggested that
the aesthetics of exaggeration in turbo folk, as well as its appropriation of marginal
styles, present an opportunity to read performer and audience identities as being
performed outside heteronormativity.27 This approach, derived from Judith
Butler’s work on gender and sexuality as performance, also suggests that gender
roles of turbo-folk female performers destabilise the limits of Serb-Orthodox
nationalism by consciously drawing on and performing queer aesthetics.28 This
new embrace of turbo-folk aesthetics as the vehicle for expressing progressive
sexual and gender politics is part of a broader shift that seeks to re-evaluate the
legacy of the turbulent nineties in the region, and in particular the position of
turbo-folk as the antithesis of progressive politics. While these are important
expansions of the critical literature, here, the focus is less on the political turf war
about the meaning of turbo-folk than on the way the contours of the debates have
shifted over time, and the way in which they help explain the uptake of turbo-folk
in different cultural fields.
The Cultural History of Turbo-Folk
What is severely lacking in the existing accounts of turbo-folk is an explanation of

the influence of turbo-folk on the broader social field. In addition to becoming an
ideological buzz term, in the last two decades, turbo-folk has become a descriptor
25
Branislav Dimitrijević, “Performans Milice Tomić: Ovo je Savremena Umetnost”,
Vreme 546 (21 June 2001), accessed 10 October 2012, http://www.vreme.com/cms/view.
php?id=290487.
26
For example see Ana Hofman, “Kafana Singers: Popular Music, Gender and
Subjectivity in the Cultural Space of Socialist Yugoslavia”, Narodna Umjetnost: Croatian
Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research 47/1 (2010); and Marijana Mitrović,
“The ‘Unbearable Lightness’ (of the Subversion) of Nationalism: Bodies on Estrada in
Postsocialist Serbia”, Institute of Ethnography SASA, Belgrade 59/2 (2011).
27
See Dimitrijević, “Performans Milice Tomić”.
28
See Mitrović, “The ‘Unbearable Lightness’”.
for a range of phenomena. One frequently finds references to turbo-art and

turbo-architecture that often have little explanation of what is intended with this
labelling. This ambiguity has meant that the term ‘turbo-folk’ can have a range
of meanings, including parody (it was coined by jazz musician Rambo Amadeus
as a parody of folk in Yugoslavia), derision (it is used as a negative label that
suggests backwardness, rural primitivism and nationalism) and value judgement
(it suggests kitsch, the nouveau riche and generally low culture). However, it
can also refer to intentional self-exoticisation as a marker of imagined Balkan
temperament and mentality, with a spontaneity, passion and emotion that contrasts
to the anaemic and lifeless West.
It is precisely the representational and conceptual fluidity of turbo-folk that
allows it to be framed as a cultural mediator. Catherine Baker acknowledges this
by suggesting that turbo-folk should be understood as a conceptual category,
rather than a stylistic description of music.29 Eric Gordy similarly highlights that
turbo-folk is not an ‘aesthetic’ category, but a construction derived from other
basic social oppositions.30 Even earlier, Ivan Čolović’s study from the eighties
articulated NCFM not in musical terms, but through the process of transforming
a perceived ideal form of folk that was ‘degenerated’ through experimentation.31
The title of this book is a reference to turbo-folk as a political and cultural
mediator. Following Fredric Jameson and Žižek, here, I take a mediator to be an
agent of historical transition that creates the conditions for change. As Chapter 2
will show, in some instances, the mediator vanishes or drops off once the change
takes place. However, as Chapters 4 and 5 will show, in some instances, the
mediator remains in various cultural forms after the change. Thus, as Žižek points
out, crucial to this understanding of the mediator is the gap between form and
content, in which content can change within the parameters of the existing form
and then emancipate itself of the old form, to reveal a new one.
Both ‘turbo’ and ‘folk’ can be understood as terms that describe the intersection
of political and cultural mediation in turbo-folk. Turbo-folk does not just formally
reflect or symbolise politics in the region; nor does it dictate the cultural content
that is consumed. It becomes tangled in politics and it is taken up in other cultural
fields in ways that make it possible to conceive of turbo-folk as a form of discourse
about identity in ex-Yugoslavia. As a political and cultural mediator of national
identity, turbo-folk demonstrates how, in ex-Yugoslavia, popular music was the
stage on which collective identity was forged and the premise on which national
differences were constructed. It remains as one of the only examples of shared
popular culture in the region.
29
Catherine Baker, “The Concept of Turbofolk in Croatia: Inclusion/Exclusion in
the Construction of National Musical Identity”, in Nation in Formation: Inclusion and
Exclusion in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Catherine Baker et al. (London:
SSEES, 2007), p. 139.
30
Gordy, The Culture of Power, pp. 135–6.
31
Čolović, Divlja Književnost, p. 148.
Introduction 21
Hence, turbo-folk as a political mediator describes the process through which

socialist discussions of NCFM, cultural taste and kitsch in Yugoslavia are absorbed
and appropriated into the nationalist rhetoric about turbo-folk and identity. It also
describes the process through which the nationalist pathology of turbo-folk was
historicised in the nineties, while preserving the emotionally charged attachment
to its expression of identity. Turbo-folk as a political mediator is addressed in Part
I: ‘Turbo-nation’. The first two chapters discuss the shifting representations of
national identity in ex-Yugoslavia between 1970 and 2010. However, turbo-folk
as a cultural mediator helps explain the way the leftovers of culture – whether the
shared socialist culture or the isolationist nationalist culture – remain in the social
field and are taken up by various other cultural forms. Turbo-folk as a cultural
mediator is addressed in Part II: ‘Turbo-culture’, which addresses the cultural
responses to turbo-folk through art, public sculpture, architecture and film.
An answer should be sought in terms of cultural theory and visual culture. While
other authors have investigated the social context and theoretical consequences of
turbo-folk, they fail to account for it seeping into other cultural forms. This book
argues that this form of mediation of cultural memory and history is crucial for
understanding the forms of culture that have emerged in the wake of Yugoslavia.32
In this sense, Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity
in Former Yugoslavia is less of a history than a case study of how turbo-folk works
in other cultural fields: art, sculpture, architecture and film.
In terms of its methodology, this book operates at the intersection of several
disciplines: cultural musicology, philosophy, critical theory and art history. It
employs theoretical terminology from these fields that bears explaining here.
Earlier in this chapter, I outlined the way in which I use Žižek’s theoretical
terms such as ‘enjoyment’ and ‘vanishing mediator’. We can qualify this further
by saying that Žižek’s terms often employ (and often very creatively) concepts
steeped in Hegelian dialectics. This conceptual gesture involves turning problems
‘on their head’ to reveal a previously obfuscated meaning. Notably, it includes
suggesting that something considered an obstacle to development (such as the
common perception that ‘turbo-folk is the antithesis of progress in the Balkans’) is
in fact the condition that makes that development possible (the perception of turbo-
folk as the antithesis of progress is what gives the idea of progress meaning). For
example, this includes the idea that history happens twice, first time as a tragedy
and second as a farce, a notion that is repeatedly raised in this book.
However there are ancillary theoretical terms that frame my approach to the
effects of globalisation and neoliberalism in the Balkans. In most cases, the way in
which this book uses particular theoretical terminology is in responses to the way
in which it has been used in the existing literature. Thus, it is crucial to remember
that when theoretically discussing turbo-folk what is at stake is not just what term
is being used, but also the way that term has been imported from a global (largely
32
For an example, see the collection of essays: Daniel Šuber and Slobodan Karamanić,
eds, Retracing Images: Visual Culture after Yugoslavia (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012).
Western) context and transposed into a local context. This is especially important
when considering the long history of ‘the Balkans’ in the imagination of ‘the
West’. In an important sense, Žižek’s success in explaining the rise of nationalism
as inherent to ‘the birth of democracy’ in the Balkans is partly due to the way he
applied a combination of Hegelian dialectic reversal with Lacan’s psychoanalysis.
In this regard, several terms that are employed in this book are appropriations
of existing terminology. One of the key terms that I employ in Chapter 2 is ‘new
Balkanness’. This term refers to a phenomenon that has been taking place for
over a decade and describes the process of appropriating the idea of ‘Balkan’
as an empowering gesture. There is a long history of thinking about the idea of
‘Balkan’ as the ‘Orient of Europe’. Balkan is seen as the gateway to the Orient, and
a place where there is evidence of backwardness, corruption and primitivism that is
associated with the mythology of the ‘Orient’. Maria Todorova has written at length
about the way in which modernist European writers have constructed the mythical
place of ‘Balkan’ with negative associations. There are almost an equal number of
contemporary work that construct this mythical place of the Balkans, the most recent
example being Angelina Jolie’s film In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011).
However, with the onset of globalisation and the inevitable destabilising
of identities, alongside the destruction of the social support nexus and the
fragmentation of the social sphere, the idea of ‘Balkan’ has gained new currency
in self-perceptions within the region. Across the region of former Yugoslavia
(and wider), there has been an increasing amount of cultural output that posits
‘Balkan’ as an empowering symbol of resistance to the perceived cold and rational
European Union. Furthermore, as traditional workers’ rights are being taken away
and people are increasingly pushed to the existential brink, Balkan has become
synonymous with precarity. The unemployed are turning to the notion of ‘we are
down, but we can party like no one else’. What I call ‘new Balkanness’ refers
to this perception of the passionate Balkans standing in opposition to the cold
hegemony of the EU and the neoliberal global order.
This idea of Balkan as a place of the perpetual carnival – problematically
adopted by Emir Kusturica – has been picked up in receptions of turbo-folk, but
also in other forms of music. Hugely popular Bosnian band Dubioza Kolektiv is the
best example of a progressive left-leaning band that speaks for the disenfranchised
but passionate Balkan.
While ‘new Balkanness’ is a term framed through explicit East–West/
global–local power relations, other terms used in this book are more specifically
positioned within particular fields of study. I use terms such as kitsch, performance
and the readymade, all of which traditionally belong to art history and speak about
the ongoing divide between aesthetic pursuits and everyday life. These terms
speak to the long and complex relation of art to everyday life, marked by desires
to distinguish between true and false culture. On the one hand, artists have long
sought to collapse art into the energy and naturalness of ‘ordinary people’ and
‘everyday life’ and to integrate art into life’s everyday spontaneity and reality.
Marcel Duchamp’s readymade is the clearest example of this. Yet on the other
Introduction 23
hand, these engagements have been marked by a fear of the contagion of commerce
and the debased values of the market. This anxiety has created an insistence upon
the distinction between the engagement with the unique, personal and significant
object and the mass-produced object that is merely consumed (kitsch).
However, to work effectively, this book moves between these fields, maintaining
that all disciplinary divisions are arbitrary and porous. There is a lot of overlap
between the spheres that I will consider, particularly in their relationship with
socialist popular culture. For instance, the influence of Western film in Yugoslavia
is evident in all three areas, and appears in various places. I have intentionally
retained this ambiguity to highlight the interconnected and overlapping nature of
the phenomenon. It is important to note the interconnectedness of the spheres of
influence of popular culture in these three fields. For instance, I will show how
the popularity of Western film played a key role in the formation of the so-called
‘turbo-sculpture’, and how the popular culture of the West became symbolically
synonymous with the Western culture that was available to the population under
socialism. However, Western popular culture (film and music in particular) also
play a crucial role in the filmic language of Srđan Dragojević, as well as the artistic
interventions of artists across the region that deal with the legacies of the nineties.
This overlap is also acknowledged in the Economic Propaganda Program
(EPP) sections in each chapter. Referencing the ideologically loaded name for
advertising breaks on Yugoslav state television, these are intended to complement
the larger text, providing a historical and theoretical context for the discussion.
They are also intended to mirror the introduction of the commercialised media
vocabulary in Yugoslavia that accompanied the rise of turbo-folk.
Book Outline
The first part of this book addresses the changing conceptions of turbo-folk
since 1970. The first part of this history emphasises that modes of consumption, the
use of cultural symbolism, and key cultural debates came to dominate discussions
of turbo-folk and were continuations of the cultural sphere under Yugoslav
socialism in the eighties.
Chapter 1 locates the cultural and political position of NCFM – the precedent
for turbo-folk – within the social, economic and political changes that occurred
with the introduction of Yugoslav ‘self-management’ socialism (1950–1987).
Self-management introduced a shift to a market-based economy, which enabled
the growth of the entertainment industry and development of popular culture
in Yugoslavia. However, because of the idiosyncratic economic, political and
cultural position of Yugoslavia, the popular culture that developed also had
a distinctive and peculiar character. As Chapter 1 shows, these peculiarities of
popular culture were never reconciled and the perception of NCFM demonstrates
how they were translated into a series of oppositions: cosmopolitan–primitive,
rural–urban and European–Balkan. Importantly, these distinctions were not based
on musical differences, but were purely cultural constructs born out of specific
sociocultural circumstances.
By tracing the relations of the Yugoslav state to NCFM, it can be argued that
NCFM occupied an ambiguous place within this system. This ambiguity enabled
the growth and flourishing of the music industry, while also ensuring that the music
remained at the margins of the official system of values. At particular moments of
‘socialist development’ – in the seventies and eighties – NCFM was discussed
through the frame of cultural values (the charge of music as harmful kitsch in the
‘Kitsch Tax’) and ethnic identity (in the orientalisation debates that surrounded
the recording group Southern Wind). These highly charged ideological frames
became key points around which collective identity was articulated. The cultural
signifiers of ‘kitsch’ and ‘oriental’ that were attached to the music were not only
crucial in the formation of cultural self-perception in Yugoslavia, but continue to
inform debates about NCFM and turbo-folk in the present.
The first part of this history provides a broad outline of the nineties and
beyond. The emphasis is less centred on history than it is on the historical shift of
turbo-folk as a mode of representing national identity. Using Žižek’s articulation
of the vanishing mediator, I discuss the way in which turbo-folk has moved from
nationalism to anti-neoliberalism.
Chapter 2 shows how the representation of Serb nationalism through turbo-
folk transformed into ‘new Balkanness’. I outline the three main phases of Serbian
nationalism, symbolised in songs from each phase, and discuss the changing public
personality of the biggest and most controversial turbo-folk star, Svetlana Ražnatović,
more commonly known by her stage name ‘Ceca’. Using the concept of the vanishing
mediator, this chapter will also discuss how the representation of Serb nationalism
through turbo-folk transformed into what I call ‘new Balkanness’ regionalism: a
self-exoticising, transnational anti-neoliberalism. The vanishing mediator describes
the process through which the nationalist pathology of turbo-folk is historicised into
the nineties, while preserving the emotionally charged attachment to its expression
of identity. Turbo-folk thus provides a broader framework for thinking through the
changing meaning of cultural nationalism as a symbol of resistance to globalisation.
The ability of turbo-folk to shift from a performance of nationalism to transnational
anti-neoliberalism reveals how such transformations are often accompanied by the
promotion of amnesia towards the (recent) past.
Chapter 3 examines the way turbo-folk exists as a genre in Slovenia, Croatia
and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This chapter also examines the reception of turbo-
folk in Australia as a case study of audience perception and national identification
outside the Balkans. In an important sense, stylistic or lyrical differences between
turbo-folk in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia are virtually
non-existent. In all cases, the performers follow the same basic formula of fusing
elements of folk sound – usually through an instrument that functions as a signifier
of folklore and of national identity – with the ‘base’ of electronic dance pop. Where
they exist, the differences operate at the level of micro-identity politics discernible
only to local audiences: through the use of a specific instrument or through the
Introduction 25
use of particular linguistic expressions. Taking these musical micro-politics as its

departure point, this chapter analyses Croatian and Slovene ‘homebrand’ turbo-
folk. It shows that the main way to distinguish between turbo-folk in Serbia from
Croatia and Slovenia is the performers’ attitude towards the representations of
national identity through the music. In both Croatia and Slovenia, there is an
ironic distance towards symbols associated with national identity. This kind of
ironic attitude towards symbols of national identity does not exist in turbo-folk
performers from Serbia. Taking Ceca as an example, this chapter raises how it is
impossible to imagine Serbian turbo-folk performers playing with codes of Serb
nationhood. This analysis shows the currency of passion and emotion as crucial
for understanding Ceca’s popularity outside Serbia. Despite the existence of local
turbo-folk in Croatia and Slovenia, and in spite of the stigma attached to Ceca’s
image and public personality, she continues to be considered the undisputed
diva of turbo-folk. This is because, in contrast to the critical and ironic attitude
of Croatian and Slovenian turbo-folk performers, Ceca’s music evokes extreme
affective states that suggest she is more sincere about her music.
The second part of the book analyses the way turbo-folk has been taken
up in the broader cultural sphere. Chapter 4 discusses the work of artists from
Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia that use turbo-folk as a signifier to critically
engage with the construction of ‘Balkan’ identity from a global perspective. I
argue that these artists use turbo-folk to upturn cultural expectations and carve
out critical positions for their practice on an international circuit. This tactical
engagement results from the artists’ intentional use of the most politically
loaded cultural ‘brand’ of turbo-folk, known for its connections to expressions
of nationalism and perceptions of the primitive ‘Balkan ghost’. These artists
use popular music to intentionally play into the perception of post-communist
societies’ ‘slavish’ embrace of pro-Western popular culture (as an expression of
democracy), platitudes about the violent and exotic Balkans, and perceptions of
art as a form of ‘national representation’. Within this understanding, the strategy
of artists such as Zoran Naskovski, Milica Tomić, Nada Prlja, Lulzim Zequiri
and Erzen Shkololli demonstrates a critical awareness of the specific and highly
complex position of popular music in the history of Yugoslavia and its successor
states. This awareness is drawn from the potency of music as a shared culture
under socialism, as an expression of nationalism in the nineties, and as a form of
post-nationalist national branding through culture in the new century.
Chapter 5 examines the relationship between popular culture and historical
remembering through the phenomenon of the ‘turbo-sculpture’ of popular culture
icons, such as Bruce Lee, Rocky Balboa and Bob Marley, that have appeared in
Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. I argue that these statues of commercial ‘Western’ popular
icons mediate aesthetic and structural legacies of socialism in Yugoslavia. The Bruce
Lee statue and other similar public statues that emerged across ex-Yugoslavia in its
wake suggest a relationship to historical remembering that is more akin to the role of
public art and popular culture in socialist Yugoslavia. While these statues might be
considered atavistic and even Yugo-nostalgic gestures, they might also be considered
an evocation of memories of socialism mediated through popular culture.
Chapter 6 examines the representation of turbo-folk in Srđan Dragojević’s
films Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames (1996), Wounds (1998) and The Parade
(2011). By closely examining these films, I argue that onscreen turbo-folk shifts
from a symbol of stolen enjoyment in Pretty Villages, to a symbol of pathological
nationalism in the nineties in Wounds, to a regional fear of globalisation in The
Parade. Pretty Villages positions music as the centre of the struggle over the
ownership of the cultural legacy and memory of the shared space of Yugoslavia. In
Wounds, enjoyment of turbo-folk is constructed as something that is inaccessible
to all ‘Others’ but the Serbs, and is also threatened by those ‘Others’. Yet, Wounds
also insists that the imagined threat to Serbs’ enjoyment is the consequence of
the pathologies of the nineties. The Parade completes this cycle by reversing
the enjoyment of turbo-folk into shared transnational enjoyment. The Parade
represents turbo-folk as ‘reverse nationalism’ that constitutes itself as stolen by
an external enemy represented through globalisation. This trajectory of turbo-folk
in Dragojević’s films follows the changes in broader conceptions of the music,
outlined in Chapter 2, and adds another layer to the history of the shifting position
of turbo-folk within the broad post-socialist culture of ex-Yugoslavia. Building
on the insights from previous chapters about the gradual ‘de-nationalisation’ of
turbo-folk, this chapter demonstrates the way Dragojević invokes the emotionally
charged expression of identity in turbo-folk as a signifier of ‘new Balkanness’.
By elucidating the way that turbo-folk music has been taken up in art, sculpture
and film, Turbo-folk Music and Cultural Representations of National Identity in
Former Yugoslavia provides a more nuanced reading of the often misunderstood,
misrepresented and sensationalised ‘turbo-culture’ that has been developing in
the Balkans in recent decades. This reading acknowledges that there are aspects
of the ever-growing and enduring popularity of turbo-folk that require attention;
however, to understand these issues only through the notions of taste, mindless
consumerism or nationalism is to overlook how they provide important insight
into the current political, cultural and social context. Turbo-folk helps better
understand the Balkan societies in transition and presents an important framework
through which to examine Europe in general.
If the Balkans have always been perceived as the ‘weird cousin’ of Europe,
caught in an inescapable deadlock of history and identity, then the cultural products
of that deadlock – such as turbo-folk – may shed light on contemporary Europe,
which is itself going through a major identity crisis. The current fragmentations
of the Eurozone, coupled with the effects of a world recession, have returned
to public discussions about both national rhetoric and ‘historical’ nationalist
resentments. As European economies crumble and entire societies are reduced
to mass unemployment and poverty, various forms of right-wing anti-capitalist
populisms are on the rise across Europe. As the European right-wing parties
harness populist identity politics as their core message, there is a vital lesson to be
found in the popularity of turbo-folk.
Part I
Turbo-nation: Turbo-folk and
Representations of National Identity
in Former Yugoslavia, 1970–2010
Chapter 1
The People’s Eastern Kitsch:
Self-management, Modernisation
and ‘Newly Composed Folk Music’
in Yugoslavia
Few performers in the history of popular music are as readily identifiable with
a cultural identity and a social and political system as Lepa Brena (‘Pretty
Brena’) is with socialist Yugoslavia. Brena’s story was the ‘Yugoslav dream’:
born underprivileged into a working-class Bosnian family, Brena (real name
Fahreta Jahić) moved to the capital city Belgrade to study, started singing to
support herself, and abandoned her studies when her career skyrocketed in the
early eighties.1 During the eighties, Brena became the undisputed star of Yugoslav
popular culture, with sold-out concert tours, record-selling albums, a series of
films, a celebrated and televised wedding to a famous Yugoslav tennis player
(Slobodan ‘Boba’ Živojinović), and even a Lepa Brena doll.
Several key factors can explain the phenomenon of Brena as the first (and
arguably only) pop culture icon of Yugoslavia. A large aspect of her popularity was
in Brena’s publicly declared Yugoslav orientation – something that was worked
into both her music and films, and was a key component of her branding as the
symbol of Yugoslav shared culture. Born into a Muslim family, Brena moved
from Bosnia to Serbia and spoke in a Serbian dialect. Regularly performing
musical duets with singers from all over Yugoslavia, her songs were distinctively
pro-Yugoslav, with titles such as ‘Long Live Yugoslavia’ (1985) and ‘Yugoslav’
(1989). Her cross-ethnic appeal made her an ideal figure to fit the image of the
entire Yugoslav socialist family.
Brena’s largest fan base was comprised of children who were drawn to her self-
deprecating ‘down to earth’ image and her humorous and simplistic lyrics. At the
same time, her revealing clothes and use of playful sexual innuendo in her lyrics
appealed to the male audience. In addition, her public personality and music also
reflected female empowerment and independence. Brena’s success and financial
independence were not only the perfectly suited cultural image for the popular
imagination of socialism, but were also a powerful symbol of upwards economic
mobility that addressed the anxieties of the largely working-class population
1
Đorđe Matić, “Lepa Brena”, in Leksikon Yu Mitologije, edited by Vladimir
Arsenijević, Iris Andrić and Đorđe Matic (Belgrade: Rende, 2005), pp. 223–6.
caught in the economic recession of the eighties. Her upbeat music about ‘the joys
of life’ provided a powerful cultural spectacle that contrasted with the shrinking
state economy and falling living standards.
However, most importantly, Brena redefined the music industry and market
in Yugoslavia through the successful commercial joining of two key elements of
socialist Yugoslavia. On the one hand, her show business aptitude maximised on
the liberties allowed to commercial enterprises under Yugoslav self-management.
Brena’s management and public relations team not only resembled those of top-
selling Western artists, but she also co-founded a production company that remains
one of the largest production companies in the region today. On the other hand,
her highly stylised pastiche of ‘Western-ness’ (use of rock music and clothing
style) and ‘Eastern-ness’ (use of folk music instrumentation and provocative lyrics
that deal with the urban–rural split) mirrored cultural divides between rural and
urban and East and West that underpinned the debates about so-called NCFM in
Yugoslavia, and defined the authorities’ relation to the music.
This chapter locates the cultural and political position of NCFM – the precedent
for turbo-folk – within the social, economic and political changes that arrived
with the introduction of Yugoslav ‘self-management’ socialism (1950–1987).
Self-management introduced a shift to a market-based economy that enabled
the growth of the entertainment industry and development of popular culture in
Yugoslavia. Coupled with the improvement in living standards in the sixties and
seventies, the spread of literacy, the investment in press, radio and later television,
and the development of recording and film industries, popular culture came as a
direct consequence of socialist modernisation. Yet, because of the idiosyncratic
economic, political and cultural position of Yugoslavia, the popular culture that
developed also had a distinctive and peculiar character.
Yugoslavia was a liminal space located between divergent and contradictory
historical processes: socially, it was oriented towards the East; politically, it was
non-aligned and oriented towards the developing world (at least after the sixties);
and economically (and politically, to an extent), it was oriented towards the West.
Much in the same way, popular culture in Yugoslavia occupied the position between
the historical roots in Eastern tradition (Ottoman and Byzantine) and Westward
leanings. Politically, it was socialist and yet it was consumerist, like its capitalist
counterparts. Following from this, it was caught aesthetically between socialist
realism and Western postmodernism. Writing in regard to the ‘Americanisation’
of Yugoslav popular culture in the sixties, Radina Vučetić argues that, although
after 1948 Yugoslavia began to turn increasingly towards the West, this turn was
never completed, which resulted in a ‘Janus-faced’ country with a Janus-faced
popular culture that was Eastern as much as it was Western.2
NCFM played a crucial role in Yugoslavia’s political and cultural dialectic,
becoming the cultural mediator between two sides and the ground on which cultural
2
Radina Vučetić, Koka-kola Socijalizam: Amerikanizacija Jugoslovenske Popularne
Kulture Šezdesetih Godina XX Veka (Belgrade: Sluzbeni Glasnik Srbije, 2012), p. 402.
The People’s Eastern Kitsch 31
anxieties were enacted. The appearance of NCFM is thus not only synonymous
with the appearance of the entertainment industry, but is also deeply reflective
of its ambiguities. Appearing with sixties modernisation in Yugoslavia, NCFM
used traditional folk music instrumentation, while incorporating new elements
such as electronic instrumentation, Euro-pop melodies, oriental melodies, Gypsy
music, as well as Greek, Mexican, Spanish and even rock elements. However,
between the sixties when it first emerged, and the eighties when it reached its peak
of popularity, NCFM moved further and further away from anything resembling
‘folk’. As Ivan Čolović demonstrates, the stylistic experimentation, transformation
and departure from the ‘ideal’ of folklore in NCFM was often perceived as a form
of degeneration.3
As this chapter will show, these peculiarities of popular culture were never
reconciled, and the perception of NCFM demonstrates how they were translated
into a series of oppositions that include cosmopolitan–primitive, rural–urban and
European–Balkan. Importantly, these distinctions were not based on musical
differences, but were purely cultural constructs born out of specific sociocultural
circumstances. By tracing the relations of the Yugoslav state to NCFM, it can
be argued that NCFM occupied an ambiguous place within this system. This
ambiguity enabled the growth and flourishing of the music industry, while
also ensuring that the music remained at the margins of the official system of
values. At particular moments of ‘socialist development’ – the seventies and
eighties – NCFM was discussed through the frame of cultural values (kitsch) or
ethnic identity (orientalisation) that became key points around which collective
identity was articulated. These cultural signifiers were not only crucial in the
formation of cultural self-perception in Yugoslavia, but continue to inform debates
about NCFM and turbo-folk in the present.
Self-management
The question of addressing the history of Yugoslavia after World War II and its
violent disintegration in the early nineties is a complex and difficult one. In a
region still coming to terms with its recent history, it is not sufficient to recount
what happened, and, in any case, this would be beyond the scope of this book since
the very act of reading and interpreting Yugoslav history is charged with political
implications. The process of recounting and interpreting history is marked by
ongoing questions of historical responsibility for the dismantling of a multiethnic
country, genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, economic collapse, the destruction
of the social support sphere, and the privatisation and criminalisation of the new
states by ‘national elites’. Equally, any attempt is characterised by the presence
of a network of mythologies that continue to surround perceptions of Yugoslavia
3
Ivan Čolović, Divlja Književnost: Etnolingvističko Proučavanje Paraliterature
(Belgrade: Nolit, 1985), p. 149.
and its history. These mythologies are vast, and range from the ‘cult’ leadership of
Josip Broz Tito, Tito’s split with Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia’s political neutrality
(non-alignment), liberalism, the economic system of self-management, and the
multiculturalism of Yugoslavia, to the political crisis following Tito’s death
in 1980, the historical role of the communists, the role of the international
community in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the media-generated stereotype
about ancient ethnic hatreds. Insofar as these mythologies continue to inflect
discussions of Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav states, it can be argued that they
constitute retroactive self-fulfilling ‘truths’ of cause and effect – namely, that
the violent civil war is the ‘truth’ of Yugoslavia, that nationalism is the ‘truth’ of
multicultural ‘brotherhood and unity’, and that the economic collapse is the ‘truth’
of self-management.4 The history of Yugoslavia emerges from the constellation of
these mythologies that are, crucially, generated in almost equal parts by local and
international perceptions.
In this sense, popular culture and music in Yugoslavia might be understood
as both a key part in the structure of these mythologies and as way of unlocking,
reading and rethinking them. As Ante Perković remarks, socialist Yugoslavia was
a pop creation, and the role of popular music and popular culture remains crucial
to understanding the political and symbolic structure of Yugoslavia.5 Popular
music played an important role of cultural mediator in the sixties and during
the political turmoil of eighties and nineties, and has continued to do so in the
last two decades.6 Popular culture, and popular music in particular, thus has a
more complex relationship with the mythological ‘truth’ of Yugoslavia. It is an
expression of mythologies, such as the liberalism, multiculturalism and nationalism
of Yugoslavia, and the only remaining ‘living’ trace of them. In particular, it is an
expression of the mythology of workers’ self-management. Self-management is an
important starting point in this discussion because it formed the framework for the
creation of popular culture in Yugoslavia, and because, according to Slavoj Žižek,
it remains one of the main mythologies that shaped the views of Yugoslavia.7
As Ian Parker argues, one of the structurally necessary founding myths of the
post–World War II Yugoslav state was that Tito had led a revolutionary movement
that defied Stalin and created a socialist transformation of society: ‘Tito steered the
4
Slobodan Karamanić, “Pervertitov (Postmarksistički) vodič kroz Jugoslaviju”,
Novosti: Samostalni Srpski Tjednik 591 (16 April 2011), accessed 23 August 2012, http://
www.novossti.com/2011/04/pervertitov-postmarksisticki-vodic-kroz-jugoslaviju/.
5
6
In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis placed on the importance of
cultural mediators in Yugoslavia. For example, see the collection of essays: Daniel Šuber
and Slobodan Karamanić, eds, Retracing Images: Visual Culture after Yugoslavia (Leiden
and Boston: Brill, 2012).
7
Slavoj Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)
Use of a Notion (London: Verso, 2001), p. 232.
Yugoslav revolution towards a more open, democratic form of self-management

socialism, during which it was necessary to break with Stalinist bureaucratic
traditions and adopt a third-way non-aligned position between capitalism
and communism’.8
For Parker, even though this characterisation could be argued to be wrong in
almost every respect, self-management is of interest because it is symptomatic
of how this representation of the Yugoslav state has generated a mythology. One
of key aspects of this mythology was the idea that Yugoslav workers should be
responsible for their means of production. Introduced between 1952 and 1954
by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia as a socialist version of autogestion – in
contrast to the Moscow-style central planned production – self-management was
promoted as the highest level of democracy.9 The split from Stalinist centralism
introduced a more decentralised political system, marked by increased international
mobility of its citizens and economic and cultural exchanges with the West as key
characteristics of Yugoslav socialism.10
Popular culture was a crucial symbol of Yugoslav socialism; however, it
was not the only one. In addition to popular culture, fashion played a significant
ideological role in promoting the openness of Yugoslav socialism:
Shopping trips to the West, known as shopping tourism, began in the 1970s, and
eventually developed into a complex activity that combined leisure, education,
rebellion, fun, and semiotic warfare, all on a mass scale … Yugoslavs who
crossed the western borders to buy … never openly protested against the system,
and hardly ever felt strongly against it. Shopping tourism effectively legitimized
the Yugoslav socialist system.11
If there was a ‘style’ of Yugoslav socialism, it can be argued that it was based
around commercialism and consumption. Accordingly, if the split from Stalin
was a politically motivated move seeking to create a new identity, this identity
developed around increased openness to consumption.
Thus, while self-management’s immediate effect was economic, its application
marked a shift in the entire field of government and society.12 Self-management
8
Ian Parker, Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2004), p. 12.
9
Edvard Kardelj, Democracy and Socialism, trans. Margot and Boško Milosavljević
(London: The Summerfield Press, 1978).
10
Breda Luthar and Maruša Pušnik, “The Lure of Utopia: Socialist Everyday Spaces”,
in Remembering Utopia: The Culture of Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia, eds Breda
Luthar and Maruša Pušnik (Washington: New Academia Publishing, 2009), pp. 1–36.
11
Đurđa Bartlett, Fashion East: The Spectre that Haunted Socialism (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. 271.
12
James Simmie, “Self-management in Yugoslavia”, in Yugoslavia In Turmoil: After
Self-Management?, edited by James Simmie and Jose Dekleva (London: Pinter, 1991),
pp. 3–9.
introduced a shift towards a market-based economy that removed government

subsidies because it expected the manufacturing industry to generate profit.
According to Zoran Janjetović, these changes in economic management shaped
popular culture in Yugoslavia for the next four decades. Cultural turning towards
the West and the general liberalisation of culture, coupled with a higher autonomy
in the operation of factories and companies, meant a heightened degree of
dependence on the market.13 This was particularly important for the entertainment
industry, which, in contrast to material production, could not depend on state
subsidies. The state subsequently decided to deregulate the entertainment industry,
which meant that recording companies, film production companies, newspaper
publishers and so forth depended on the income they generated in the market.
In addition, the increased liberalisation of Yugoslavia throughout the sixties
and seventies meant that the state allowed the population greater access to material
goods, which only served to bolster the entertainment industry. The rise in living
standards created disposable income, which many used to purchase radios,
gramophones and cassette players, thus providing a base for an entertainment
industry. The level of consumption of popular music and the level of music
production, packaging and presentation in Yugoslavia paralleled that in the
Western Bloc. While self-management only gave the semblance of democracy
and autonomy to the market in socialist Yugoslavia, this autonomy was almost
complete in the entertainment industry.
This autonomy can be explained through several key factors. In contrast to ‘high
culture’ (the arts and education), which were under closer scrutiny, popular culture
was seen as being of secondary importance in the operation of the political and
social system. Popular culture was also perceived as a useful vent for the working
class because, by providing an outlet for entertainment and respite, it was seen
as being able to stabilise the system. In fact, the party often enlisted the services
of entertainers for its important celebrations and public events. Additionally, the
relatively free entertainment industry, which also featured a significant number of
Western products, gave the impression of liberalism in Yugoslavia and improved
its international standing.14
Self-management’s economic deregulation of the market and competition
between enterprises created economic conditions in which the production of
popular music could thrive. The loosening of market regulations and control
over the distribution of the music recording industry meant that the production
of NCFM as a commercial genre established completely new market-based rules,
divergent from existing industry practices in Yugoslavia. While this did dismantle
the control imposed by the state, the music market in Yugoslavia was generated in
the degree of freedom made available to recording companies and performers. Also
contributing to the rise of the music market in Yugoslavia was self-management’s
13
Zoran Janjetović, From “International” to Commercial: Popular Culture in
Yugoslavia 1945–1991 (Belgrade: Institute for Modern Serbian History, 2011), p. 47.
14
Ibid., p. 50.
relaxation of laws to allow foreign investment and borrowing, which led to greater
investment in the entertainment industry. The resulting disparity between the slow
economy of Yugoslavia and the explosive rise of the entertainment industry can
at least partly be explained by the fact that Yugoslav citizens were spending more
than they could afford by using credits and loans. While this culminated in the deep
economic crisis of the eighties, it also established a cultural code of expression
steeped in hedonism and indulgence that became associated with music.
The Relationship of Socialism with NCFM
As explained in the introduction, turbo-folk is rarely, if ever, discussed as a

musical direction. It functions as symbolic point of condensation, whose meaning
is entirely contingent on the social, political and cultural circumstances of the
discussion. As will be demonstrated in this section, this politically and culturally
charged relationship with music already existed in Yugoslavia. As the musical and
cultural predecessor to turbo-folk, NCFM, on a number of occasions, became the
central point of discussion steeped in cultural values and the question of national
identity. Following from this, discussions of NCFM can be directly linked to the
way society symbolises itself.
To understand the ways Yugoslavia produced meaning about itself through
NCFM, it is useful to refer to Renata Salecl’s discussion of the way socialist
ideology structured itself around the ‘traumatic point’ of the youth:
Socialist ideology related to youth in the same way that it related to the
proletariat, by presenting it as a unified body while concealing the contingent
nature of the notion of the youth as such. In fact, no such thing as youth exists
in itself: youth by ‘nature’ is always mediated by the symbolic network, by the
ideology that defines it. But because of this very investment in the future through
youth, the youth was also a kind of ‘alien’, an agency that disturbed the socialist
symbolic universe. Socialist ideology therefore tried to symbolize youth so that
its traumatic character and its contingency became invisible. In this process of
symbolization, socialist ideology produced diametrically opposed definitions of
youth and of the goals society must have regarding its social role.15
Salecl’s insight can be extended more broadly to suggest that the official ideology
in Yugoslavia structured itself around a series of traumatic points, one of which
included the working ‘people’. This ‘imagined’ community (to borrow a phrase
from Benedict Anderson) provided a point through which the socialist ideology
tried to affirm its goals. Accordingly, NCFM – as the music that was enjoyed by
15
Renata Salecl, Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Ideology after
the Fall of Socialism (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 44.
the workers en masse – became the space through which a number of political
anxieties were played out.
In a sense, NCFM reveals the fundamental paradox that underpinned the
relationship of Yugoslav communists to popular culture. In objecting to ‘people’s
music’, which was mostly entirely apolitical and removed from any kind of social
critique, they manifested an understanding of music as part of a larger cultural
and political landscape.16 Put differently, the Yugoslav communists took NCFM
more seriously than the music and its performers took themselves. The meaning
of NCFM emerged in the interplay between conceptions of taste, cultural identity
and the political objections of the day.
In this regard, the political and cultural discussions around NCFM must
be understood not simply as manifestations of political interventionism, but as
reflective of a broader social project. The cultural politics of Yugoslav communists
were indoctrinating and emancipating in design and encompassed all cultural
spheres, including introducing literacy, building schools and universities, forming
workers’ associations, and influencing popular culture, including music.17 For
Yugoslav communists, emancipation and modernisation meant turning towards
(Western and Central) Europe, and any cultural form that even seemingly steered
away from this progress – such as NCFM – was seen as the antithesis of socialist
emancipation. Crucial here is precisely this concept of emancipation, which
was at the core of cultural politics in Yugoslavia. It included the emancipation
of youth, women, workers, the rural population and minorities. It also included
the industrialisation, education, urbanisation and modernisation of a country that
was severely undeveloped in comparison to the rest of Europe and that had been
heavily devastated during World War II.
The position of NCFM in Yugoslavia is thus not just an issue of music or
of cultural taste. It encompasses a broader and more complex process of
simultaneously creating a new collective identity on the foundations of a recent
bloody inter-ethnic war, while sharply differentiating this identity from the previous
regime. This would explain the profoundly ambiguous relationship of communists
to NCFM. The modernising–enlightening ideals of the authorities meant that they
consistently rejected NCFM as backwards and undesirable, and in many instances
acted to sanction it. However, at the same time, the authorities allowed the music
to be produced, recorded and consumed because of its popularity.
The position of NCFM in Yugoslavia remains debated in the literature, including
claims that the music and regime coexisted in harmony, that the authorities had
a much more governing and instrumentalised role, or that the communists were
16
Darko Delić, “Kritika kritike turbo-folka: Smrtonosni sjaj Koka-kole, Marlbora
i Suzukija u doživljaju domaće liberalne elite”, Teorija iz Teretane (2 February 2012),
accessed 8 September 2012, http://teorijaizteretane.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/kritika-
kritike-turbo-folka-smrtonosni.html.
17
Janjetović, From “International” to Commercial, p. 52.
outright totalitarian and manipulative.18 While these accounts provide detailed

narratives of the history of NCFM in Yugoslavia, amid the layering of histories,
they miss a crucial aspect of its relationship with the authorities by confining
the analysis to the identification of musical lineage, or sociological reading. A
further layer existed in the relationship of the communists to NCFM – namely, the
‘hyperbureaucratisation and hyperpoliticisation’ of self-management that created
a system of institutional and ideological cacophony.19
Although the significance of NCFM undoubtedly lies in its musical development
and the way it reflects the sociological changes of society, its significance also
lies in the way it reflects the internal contradictions and irrationalities of self-
management. This is visible when examining how these internal contradictions
informed the authorities’ relationship with the music, as well as how these
antagonisms continue to inform debates about the music (turbo-folk) two decades
after Yugoslavia. As Slavoj Žižek argues, the ‘fundamental paradox’ of Yugoslav
self-management socialism was that the official ideology could continually
emphasise one message, while, between the lines of propaganda, suggest that its
official solicitations were not to be taken too literally, and that a cynical attitude
towards its ideology was actually intended.20 Abdulah Sidran, a famous Bosnian
writer and poet, provides the best example of this official double-speak. Sidran
recalls a situation in which a cultural committee criticised his manuscript of poems
because certain lyrics painted a very bleak picture of socialism. The committee
recommended that ‘the book will be published on the condition that Sidran removes
any two poems from it’.21 The authorities forced Sidran into self-censorship under
the guise of self-management.
With this in mind, it is useful to consider the official language used by the
communists as a crucial element to understanding NCFM. The way the music
was spoken about reflected the ambiguity the authorities felt towards the music,
whereby concepts – such as ‘people’, ‘folk’ and ‘culture’ – were used as terms that
were not only evacuated of their content, but that often meant the reverse of what
was being said. State laws pertaining to music used terms such as ‘kitsch’, ‘true
culture’, ‘value’ and ‘taste’ as more than just semantic indicators. These functioned
as ‘ideological passwords’ and yardsticks with which to judge taste and cultural
18
The first view is advanced by Janjetović, the second by Rasmussen, and the third
by Đurković and Ivana Momčilović in: Ivana Momčilović, “Da li je (t)urbo-folk tigar o(od
papira)?”, Prelom 4/2 (2002): 53–66.
19
Alexei Monroe, Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK, Short Circuits Series,
edited by Slavoj Žižek (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), p. 6.
20
Slavoj Žižek, “Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism”, in The Universal
Exception: Selected Writings, Vol. 2, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London:
Continuum, 2006), p. 142.
21
Interview with Sidran in: Pjer Zalica, Orkestar (Artikulacika, 2011).
identity.22 They reflected ongoing attempts by the communists to differentiate

between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of popular culture, judged according to their
enlightenment ideals.23 This included the introduction of linguistic signifiers to
describe ‘entertaining’ (zabavna) music (as something positive, modern, urban
and international), ‘source’ (izvorna) music (as genuine folklore), ‘folk’ music
(narodna, which also translates as ‘people’), and ‘neo-folk’ or NCFM (as a
degeneration of genuine folklore). As Rasmussen points out, implicit in the term
‘newly composed’: ‘are novelty, temporariness, bricolage and kitsch; that is, a lack
of historicity, stylistic coherence, and aesthetic/artistic attributes’.24
While genre distinctions between these types of music were often porous and
arbitrary, the cultural values ascribed to each genre signifier entailed significant
assumptions. Terms such as ‘folk’ frequently slipped into categories that signified
national identity. Accordingly ‘folk’ music, or ‘the people’s music’, as well as folk
music performers, or ‘the people’s artists’, always implied the question regarding
to which ‘people’ this referred. Rasmussen elucidates the ongoing historical legacy
of the term ‘newly composed’ to suggest that its negative connotation is still used
as a label for corrupt and opportunistic politicians (newly composed politicians),
war criminals and profiteers (newly composed heroes) and the rapid destruction
of the social sphere in all of the newly formed ex-Yugoslavia ‘nations’ through
neoliberalism (newly composed democracies).25
Paying close attention to the language used makes it possible to trace the
shifting perceptions of NCFM at different stages of ‘socialist development’.26
These stages may be distinguished in terms of three sets of attitudes towards
music: instrumental indoctrinating in the forties and fifties, liberal populism in the
sixties and seventies and the politicisation of culture in the eighties. Tracing the
state’s relationship with NCFM reveals these three historical eras as punctuated by
two key moments in the history of NCFM, when the symbolic structure of the state
became apparent. Although for most of the history of NCFM in Yugoslavia the
state remained ambiguous towards NCFM (disliking it, yet tolerating it because
it was popular and it generated tax money), there were two key moments when
notions of identity implicit in discussions of NCFM became clear. These moments
were during the ‘Kitsch Tax’ debate in the seventies and the ‘orientalisation’ debate
in the eighties. These two moments are not only important for understanding the
position of NCFM in Yugoslavia, but their combined legacy continued to frame
the debates over turbo-folk in the nineties and continue to do so in the present.
22
Routledge, 2002), p. 165.
23
Miša Đurković, “Ideološki i Politički Sukobi oko Popularne Muzike u Srbiji”,
24
Music of Yugoslavia”, Popular Music 14/2 (1995): 241–56.
25
Ibid., 105.
26
I am drawing on Salecl’s discussion of shifting perceptions of youth in Yugoslavia.
1. Instrumental Indoctrination
Zoran Janjetović’s discussion of the birth and growth of popular culture in

Yugoslavia distinguishes between two periods in Yugoslavia’s post-war history of
popular culture: the years of Soviet influence and the years following the split with
Stalin that led to significant changes in cultural policies.27 At the end of World War
II, the Yugoslav Communist Party (KPJ) very quickly started implementing its
policies of building socialism. In these policies, culture played a crucial role in two
main ways – first, by spreading the communist ideology, and second, by lifting
the largely illiterate population out of centuries of backwardness. Folk music was
institutionalised to reflect the ideological project of building the Yugoslav nation.
In lieu of this, in the early years following the war, cultural activities were barely
distinguishable from political propaganda, and heavily relied on Russian-inspired
revolutionary songs. However, following the split with Stalin in 1948, Yugoslav
communists gradually turned towards the West, searching for an alternative
cultural model. The West was responsive because it was keen to find a way to
force a wedge between the Eastern Bloc; thus, in the years following the split, the
influence of Western culture grew. This influence could largely be attributed to the
commencement of economic aid from the West in 1949, which assisted much of
Yugoslavia’s trade deficit. It was this split from Stalin and the introduction of self-
management that enabled the growth of popular culture in Yugoslavia.
At this time, the KPJ had an ambiguous relationship with folk music. On
the one hand, folklore was an ideal form of cultural propaganda because of its
popularity and populism, and because it was steeped in existing cultural practices.28
Folklore presented a symbolically powerful component in shaping a new Yugoslav
identity. Therefore, the authorities helped establish cultural–artistic associations
and build performance spaces. On the other hand, these established cultural roots
of folklore also presented a problem because they were seen as leftovers from the
previous regime, carriers of backwardness and primitivism, and even potential
expressions of nationalism.29
The state attempted to resolve this deadlock by encouraging the production
of ‘gentrified’ folklore music that used classical music instrumentation and
vocalisation. It was hoped this would sufficiently decontextualise local folklore
enough to align it with socialist modernisation.30 However, this proved unpopular
with audiences and, during the fifties, the authorities resorted to pressuring radio
stations to cease playing this music, thereby marginalising the presence of folk
music – but also increasing its popularity. Due to its stubborn popularity, the
communists stopped attempting to censor folk music in the late fifties and early
sixties, and instead started using it in the service of propaganda. Performances
27
Janjetović, From “International” to Commercial.
28
Ibid., p. 86.
29
Ibid., p. 88.
30
Ibid., p. 90.
were at first combined with agitprop lectures in community halls and, by the late
fifties, a number of folk music festivals around Yugoslavia had been established.
These manifestations of folk became increasingly important cultural events
and soon also became key cultural exports of Yugoslavia.31 Folklore proved not
only to be a ready-made form of cultural branding for Yugoslavia, but was also
idiosyncratic on an international stage. Thus, folklore became a cultural promotion
tool for Yugoslavia and was used as a tourist attraction for the country.
2. Liberal Populism
While folklore was relatively well integrated with socialist ideals, a particular kind
of folk music appeared in the early sixties that presented a new challenge for the
communists. This music came from the fringes of society – from bars, taverns, small
towns and villages and the peripheries of big cities. Additionally, this music was
created by amateurs outside the institutional and academic framework of folklore
established in the previous decade. Despite being considered cultural ‘trash’, with
little or no artistic or musical quality, the music became increasingly popular, with
a strong presence on radio. This music eventually came to be known as NCFM. It
was ‘people’s music’ in every sense because it was created by amateur authors
(that is, it came from the ‘people’), it was performed by vocalists who looked like
their audience, and it dealt with everyday themes that resonated personally with
these audiences. Čolović notes that NCFM composers were comprised of people
from all professions, including farmers, miners, administrative workers, lawyers,
doctors, teachers and journalists.32 Most performers were from poor (and often
rural) backgrounds with a limited education.
From the outset, the audience of NCFM was perceived as consisting of poorly
educated post–World War II rural-to-urban migrants who had failed to assimilate
into the culture of the city, and whose intermediate status of ‘peasant urbanites’
was displayed through their (lack of) taste.33 However, as Čolović shows, the elitist
conception of culture that underpins this understanding of the NCFM audience
is in itself reflective of a broader set of cultural distinctions.34 In the sixties and
seventies, there were no sociological studies of NCFM’s demographic, and later
studies of NCFM and turbo-folk audiences were selective and often conceived
through a predetermined understanding of folk music as the ‘people’s taste’ of
31
Ibid., p. 92.
32
33
This term was adopted from a sociological study of rural to urban migration in
post–World War II Yugoslavia and applied to NCFM and later to the turbo-folk audience.
See: Andrei Simić, The Peasant Urbanites: A Study of Rural–Urban Mobility in Serbia
(New York: Seminar Press, 1973).
34
the lowest common denominator.35 Thus, there is reason to be suspicious of the

‘peasant urbanites’ tag insofar as its implicit cultural distinctions frequently allow
judgements based on personal taste. As Čolović argues, because of the great
popularity of NCFM (that only grew from the sixties to the eighties), it is safe
to assume that there was a large portion of the demographic with lower levels of
education.36 However, the very public cultural stigma of ‘trash’, projected onto
NCFM from its earliest beginnings, naturally meant that it would affect people’s
willingness to openly admit to liking the music.37 As Rasmussen points out,
in Yugoslavia, taste in music was closely tied to people’s cultural affinity, and
functioned as a marker of sociocultural identity.38 More importantly, these cultural
projections assumed that ‘peasant urbanites’ comprised the large majority of the
NCFM audience because the lyrics sounded as though they were addressed to
them. Hence, if this account of NCFM in relation to the Yugoslav state is to avoid
falling into cultural determinism, it is important to acknowledge that, in critical
discussions of NCFM and in the state’s view, the audience was perceived through
the music, which was seen as a degeneration of folkloric tradition.
In the sixties, the majority of NCFM song lyrics spoke about idyllic village life
and rustic regional nostalgia. During the seventies, there was a gradual shift away
from the village (although never complete) towards love and family relations
as key lyrical motifs, as well as the introduction of modernised language.39 A
particularly popular and significant type of NCFM included ‘functional’ songs
that addressed important personal events and landmarks in life, such as the birth
of a child or grandchild, birthdays, marriage, graduation from school, leaving
for or returning from army service, and Gastarbeiter songs, which addressed the
homesickness and nostalgia of Yugoslavs working abroad.40 These songs were
played in highly popular ‘wishes and congratulations’ radio shows and served as
a form of narration of everyday life for the NCFM audience. In many cases, it
was precisely the contemporary functional character of the lyrics that attracted
the audience, rather than the musical content.41 The attraction of NCFM came in
its recognition of the everyday experience of the people in Yugoslavia who found
themselves caught in rapid modernisation and large population shifts.
The state thus inadvertently helped the creation of NCFM through
implementing modernising policies that created gaps in the everyday experience
35
For instance, Eric Gordy’s study of turbo-folk in the nineties only includes
interviews with members of the public whose views are critical of the music.
36
37
Ibid., p. 148.
38
Rasmussen, “From Source to Commodity”, 251.
39
40
Ibid., p. 151.
41
of the population, which were filled by music.42 The state also unwittingly helped
integrate the language of NCFM into the system of symbolic communication.
Following the failed attempt to gentrify folk music, amateur authors took their cue
and started taking liberties with the folk music form. They introduced contemporary
themes (such as the rift between the village and the city, and the experience of
the working migration) and started using modern instrumentation – all of which
communicated the emotions of the displaced population and culminated in the
term ‘newly composed folk music’.43
During this period, the entertainment industry in Yugoslavia grew and,
between 1962 and 1969, the first generation of NCFM ‘star performers’ appeared.
In contrast to their predecessors, they were known by name and were both wealthy
and famous. Lepa Lukić was a significant figure in this group in several respects.
She was one of the first performers ‘from the people’ – a poor and underprivileged
girl who entered the entertainment industry and achieved significant success.44 The
appearance of Lukić marked the beginning of the market history of NCFM. Her
LP single ‘Two Roads Lead from the Water Spring’ (1964) sold 260,000 copies,
and Lukić appeared on the cover of magazines as the ‘queen of folk music’,
pictured wearing a crown and peasant shoes. The fusion of pop culture sensibilities
with rural nostalgia in ‘Two Roads’ tapped into the challenges of modernisation
experienced by Yugoslavs and, in many ways, provided the template for NCFM’s
lyrical approach.45 ‘Two Roads’ is a love ballad about a young woman longing
for her beloved, and wondering which of the two roads to take to reach him. As
Petar Luković suggests, ‘Two Roads’ evokes a ‘Serbian folklorist motif, based
on the basic melos, cleverly adjusted to pastoral, village landscapes … a melos
of Šumadija, singing, flamboyantly seductive, funny enough to tell the story of
cheerful love experiences’.46 The lament about lost love can also be read as a
reference to the first wave of migration of rural labourers from Yugoslavia to
Western Europe, which started in the sixties. The video for ‘Two Roads’ features
Lukić walking around the streets of Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower and the
Arc de Triomphe, dressed in urban clothes and a wig, both of which are signs of
modernisation. The scenes of Lukić performing in the streets of Paris are intercut
with scenes of her ‘impromptu’ performance inside a record store, with the audience
members miming the lyrics of the song. A large portion of the NCFM audience
consisted of migrant workers to whom ‘Two Roads’ was assumedly addressed.
42
Eric D. Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of
Alternatives (University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 133.
43
44
Petar Luković, Bolja Prošlost: Prizori iz Muzičkog Života Jugoslavije 1940–1989
(Belgrade: Mladost, 1989), p. 205.
45
Čolović suggests that ‘Two Roads’ was the first NCFM song, in: Čolović, Divlja
Književnost, p. 143.
46
Luković, Bolja Prošlost, p. 207.
Importantly, although NCFM was not overtly political, its interest in the
everyday experience of the working class drew attention to the inherent problems
of modernising socialism. Songs such as ‘Two Roads’ were about the trauma of
Yugoslav migrants and, although they reinforced the openness of Yugoslavia,
which allowed its citizens to work abroad, it also demonstrated economic disparity
under socialism. Other performers experienced problems because of their liberal
attitude to nudity. This is best evident in the case of censoring experienced by
Silvana Armenulić (real name Zilha Barjaktarević).47 Armenulić was a folk
music performer who emerged from the margins into stellar popularity, only to
be completely censored by the state media after she appeared in a bikini during a
television performance in 1972. Even after her fatal car accident in 1976, which
also claimed the life of her sister and bandleader Rade Jasarević, the state television
did not report her death.
Janjetović argues that, a few smaller excesses aside, the entertainment industry
in Yugoslavia largely remained loyal to the regime and its values (possibly because
the regime enabled them to earn well). Yugoslav self-management thus operated
with a significant degree of popular consent achieved through the authorities’
tolerance of popular music as a way to distinguish ‘progressive’ Yugoslavia from
the Eastern Bloc. As Sabrina Ramet’s account shows, the Yugoslav state – despite
occasional interventions – did not treat popular music as a form of dissidence.48
This embrace effectively defanged the critical potential of popular culture, which
could not attack the system that supported it. Despite this, the growing popularity
of NCFM in the sixties and seventies became a problem framed around the
question of taste. In an attempt to remedy this, the state responded by introducing
the so-called ‘Kitsch Tax’.
EPP 1: Kitsch Tax
Despite the absence of open censorship of music, the paternalistic stance of the state
cultural institutions meant that censorship existed in more insidious institutional
forms. While the 1948 split with Stalin prompted a degree of liberalisation in
Yugoslav communists’ approach to culture – namely, in the fact that they no longer
expected all cultural output to serve as propaganda directed towards socialist
doctrine of building a new society – they nevertheless remained interested in
culture.49 As will be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, in the realm of ‘high culture’ –
particularly, art, literature and theatre – artists and writers were allowed a degree
47
Momčilović, “Da li je (t)urbo-folk tigar o(od papira)?”, 57.
48
Sabrina P. Ramet, “Shake, Rattle and Self-Management: Making the Scene in
Yugoslavia”, in Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia,
edited by Sabrina P. Ramet (Colorado: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 103–140.
49
This discussion draws upon: Ivan Čolović, “Kultura i Politika u Srbiji”, Balkan
Sehara, accessed 18 August 2012, http://www.balkan-sehara.com/IvanColovic_KIPUS.html.
of freedom to experiment with Western aesthetics, so long as they did not question
the ruling ideology and the key principles of brotherhood, unity, socialism and self-
management. The ruling communists believed they had no reason to be suspicious
insofar as the aesthetics and stylistic experiments with ‘the Western form’ (such
as postmodernism) did not contradict the principles of communism. In addition,
the public presence of this art demonstrated the liberalism of Yugoslavia. Where
suspicion was raised, it was based on ‘ideological omission’ or ‘cultural sabotage’,
and the dissenters were marginalised and silenced by no longer having access
to funding from the state or opportunities to work. This unspoken arrangement
between artists and the authorities remained in place for two decades. However,
from the late sixties onward, as a consequence of the global events of 1968,
criticisms of the communists became increasingly vocal. Exemplary here is the
‘black wave’ in Yugoslav cinema, with directors such as Dušan Makavejev and
Želimir Žilnik accused of presenting a bleak image of Yugoslav socialism and
consequently banned from making films in Yugoslavia.50
Popular culture provides an even more accurate barometer of the Yugoslav
communists’ ambiguous attempts to control and regulate culture. This is clearly
manifested in the ‘Kitsch Tax’ (a literal translation would be ‘tax on trash’) that
was introduced in 1972. Reacting to the growing entertainment industry and
increased public presence of popular culture in Yugoslavia, including NCFM, the
Twenty-first Meeting of Communist Association of Yugoslavia (SKJ) sent out
an official letter demanding a more intense struggle for the ‘legally established
social norms and values’.51 Responding to this request, a ‘Congress of Cultural
Action’ (‘Kongers Kulturne Akcije’) was held in Kragujevac, Serbia in late 1971,
in an attempt to use culture as a ‘political battlefield’ to further ‘modern self-
management politics’.52 Chaired by Latinka Perović, the General Secretary of the
Central Committee of Serbian Communist Party (SKS), the Congress declared
a ‘war on kitsch’ in Yugoslav culture.53 At the Congress, all forms of popular
culture, including comic books, belletrist novels and folk music were harshly
attacked and declared as kitsch/trash, even resulting in certain members publicly
burning comics.54
50
Pavle Levi, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and
Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
51
52
Zoran Cirjaković, “Majka Druge Srbije”, Nova Srpska Politicka Misao, accessed 11
September 2012, http://starisajt.nspm.rs/PrenetiTekstovi/2006_cirj_latinka1.htm.
53
For a full transcript of the meeting, see: Kongres kulturne akcije u SR Srbiji:
Kragujevac, 28, 29 i 30. Oktobar 1971, Republicka Konferencija SSRN SR Srbije (1972).
Also see: Milivoje Bešlin, “Zaokret ka dogmatizmu svedočanstva I istoriografija o poslednjem
(neuspešnom) pokušaju reformi revolucionarne diktature u Jugoslaviji 1968–1972”,
Istraživanja 18 (2007), 313–31; Stevan Majstorović, Zavod za Proučavanje Kulturnog
Razvitka (Kongres Kulturne Akcije), Razvoj Kulture u SR Srbiji 1971–1980 (1971).
54
See interview with Latinka Perović in: Olivera Milosavljević, “Jugoslavija Je Bila
Naša Prva Evropa: Olivera Milosavljević, intervju sa Latinkom Perović”, Helsinski Odbor
Following the Congress of Cultural Action, a law was passed under the title
‘Law about changes and amendments to republic tax on small goods and services’
(‘Zakon o izmenama i dopunama o republičkom porezu na promet robe na malo’).55
This law took effect in Serbia on 1 July 1972 and introduced a 31.5 per cent
tax on sales of comics, books, magazines and music that were deemed ‘kitsch’,
of generally lower value or not in accordance with the socialist principles of
Yugoslavia. This law became known colloquially as the ‘Kitsch Tax’.
The Kitsch Tax included the formation of organising committees to monitor
the artistic qualities of record releases. While this was claimed to include all
musical genres, it was primarily targeted at folk music releases. The membership
of the committees included musicians, literary critics and ethnomusicologists.56
The official appointment of members of these committees was often contingent
on their observance of party lines, rather than their expertise in the field. The
assessment criteria included the literary value of lyrics, the musical patterns of
songs, and plagiarism. If the committee deemed a recording objectionable or
substandard, it would impose a mandatory higher rate of tax. In turn artists were
forced to sell their recordings at significantly higher prices than usual.
The Kitsch Tax was abolished in the early eighties, partly in recognition
of the fundamental unfeasibility of its governing body and partly in
acknowledgement of the impossibility of regulating an increasingly deregulated
entertainment market. As was also the case with art, literature and theatre, an
unspoken compromise was reached between the authorities and producers of
NCFM. This compromise meant that the producers and performers were free
to create music without official approval – or, indeed, without any meaningful
form of disapproval – as long as they were prepared to accept the higher tax (and
consequently the higher price) of their product.
The Kitsch Tax was an attempt by the communists to regulate and suppress
popular culture that stood outside their emancipatory values. While the tax
appeared to be a purely aesthetic upholder of taste with no real ideological or
political consequences, crucially it was also a tool for the systematic persecution
of marginal cultural groups. This persecution directly affected NCFM performers
who were considered contrasting to good taste and socialist values. The tax was
an extension of a longer process of the communists differentiating between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ forms of popular culture. Communists promoted Western popular music
by allowing it more radio airtime and organising festivals; however, neo-folk
remained the more commercially successful. The main reason for this was the
perceived class distinctions between the audiences, where ‘entertaining’ music
za Ljudska Prava u Srbiji. Svedočanstva 32 (2008): 144.

55
Zdravko Župan, “Strip u Srbiji 1955–1972”, Rastko (March 2006), accessed 11
September 2012, http://www.rastko.rs/strip/1/strip-u-srbiji-1955-1972/index_l.html#sund.
56
For a personal account of the workings of the committee from one of its former
members, see: “Ispovijest Člana Šund-Komisije”, Justarnji List (21 January 2006),
accessed 18 September 2012, http://www.jutarnji.hr/ispovijest-clana-sund-komisije/13019/.
was primarily seen as being aimed at the educated middle class, while the large
‘neo-folk’ audience was comprised of the rural population, working class and
‘peasant urbanites’.
The Kitsch Tax was thus a failed attempt by the state to exercise a means
of control that effectively served only to highlight the increasingly ambiguous
relationship between folk music and the state apparatus. The ‘quality control’ of
the Kitsch Tax did not stop the spread and popularisation of NCFM; however, it
did serve to distance folk as ‘bad’ and separate to the cultural space of the state.
Importantly, the fact that the Yugoslav state never took actual steps to remove
NCFM meant that the state positioned folk as a symbolic expression of music
running outside or parallel to the system. This relationship became crucial in
carving out the symbolic space for NCFM, and by extension, turbo-folk. The
distancing of turbo-folk from the official cultural space of the state helped maintain
the ideological cohesion of the cultural institutions of the state and bolstered their
power to indirectly control and channel ‘good’ cultural developments. Accordingly,
amorphous notions of cultural value and taste promoted by the state’s cultural
institutions became translated into personal definitions of culture and statements
about taste. Following the Kitsch Tax, folk music became a form of perceived
cultural deviancy that never ceased to incite ‘moral panics’. Folk music performers
and managers became inherently perceived as social outcasts and swindlers who
operated from within the ‘grey zones’ of a shady entertainment economy.
Despite today’s common perception of the Kitsch Tax as a historical curiosity
and one of many intrinsic irrationalities of the bygone era of Yugoslav communism,
it is vital to note that the two consecutive governments that followed prompted a
return to discussions of ‘kitsch’ in popular culture geared around popular music.
Discussions around notions of taste as representative of national identity first
returned during Milošević’s 1995 ‘Year of Culture’ campaign, which sought to
prevent turbo-folk being played on radio stations. As will be discussed in the
following chapter, after half a decade of supporting nationalist popular culture
(and turbo-folk in particular) by giving it unregulated and unlimited space in the
public media, Milošević attempted to transform his international image by turning
towards ‘true cultural values’ in contrast to the ‘trash culture’ of turbo-folk.
However, the ‘Year of Culture’ campaign was a completely superficial exercise in
public relations that only succeeded in increasing the appeal of turbo-folk. More
pertinent to the present discussion are the many repeated arguments and public
discussions of the Kitsch Tax that demonstrate a similarly manipulative attitude
towards popular music and turbo-folk in particular.
After the fall of the Milošević regime in 2000, the ‘second Serbia’ governed by
the Democratic coalition attempted to distance itself from the pathologies of the
nineties. Turbo-folk once again featured prominently in public discussions of the
‘decontamination’ of the cultural space of Serbia by attempting to reconnect with
the international community. Judgements of taste directed at the ongoing popular
support of turbo-folk became the authorities’ means of articulating an official
position towards the nineties via its cultural remainder. In 2010, reports emerged
that the then ruling Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) started pushing for the
implementation of a ‘programme for cultural rebirth’ that would include a Kitsch
Tax. This tax was to be enforced for reality television programmes, turbo-folk and
other programmes of ‘questionable value’, and would include financial penalties
for television shows that ‘play bad music’.57 The tax was intended to financially
burden the proprietors of bad taste, while the raised revenue would be invested
in ‘real culture’ and ‘real artists’ who could not earn income for their practice.
While this plan remains little more than a possibility, it suggests continuity – if
not a repetition – in the state politics towards folk music. The request to introduce
an archaic – and, for many, a draconian – regulation of popular culture garnered
significant popular support, suggesting that contemporary perceptions of turbo-
folk have been inherited from the era of Yugoslav communism and significantly
informed by communist modernising–emancipatory ideals.
3. Politicisation–Nationalisation
The orientalist concepts of ‘Islamisation’ and ‘Tehranisation’ emerged in public

discussions of NCFM during the eighties as a signal of a perception that cuts
across divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. In a shift from the cultural
parameters defined by the Kitsch Tax in the previous decade, the ‘Islamisation’
of NCFM debate engaged the music in terms of national identity. While these
concerns certainly existed in earlier discussions of NCFM, it was in the eighties
that the public discourse became saturated with calls for preservation of ethnic
purity. The fact that most of these ‘warnings’ came from Belgrade was, in one
sense, reflective of NCFM’s popularity in Serbia, but was also a signal of the
growing ‘nationalisation’ of the political space by political agitators in Serbia.58
The emergence of ‘Islamisation’ of NCFM is connected to three interrelated
factors. First, in 1980, Tito died, triggering a political leadership crisis. His
charismatic leadership was considered by many to be the glue that held Yugoslavia
together, and his death raised serious questions about the future of the country.
This crisis was economically exacerbated by the global recession of the eighties
and the cessation of foreign loans to Yugoslavia. Both factors caused Yugoslavia
to slip into a deep recession and contributed to rising political tensions between the
republics that eventuated in the outbreak of civil war in 1991.
Second, in a twist of irony, less than two years after Tito’s death in 1982, Lepa
Brena emerged into the public as a rising icon of popular culture and Yugoslavism.
In one sense, it is possible to interpret Brena’s meteoric surge in popularity as a
57
Jovana Papan, “Porez na silikone”, Nova Srpska Politička Misao (30 July 2010),
accessed 10 September 2012, http://www.nspm.rs/kulturna-politika/porez-na-sare-dare-i-
mare.html.
58
Jasna Dragović-Soso, Saviours of the Nation: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and
the Revival of Nationalism (London: Hurst & Company, 2002).
symbolic filling of the void left by Tito. His calls for ‘brotherhood and unity’
between the different nationalities became replaced with Brena’s ready-made
commercialised transnationalism. Tito’s renowned hedonism and lavish lifestyle
became replaced with her financial and commercial rise into a pop culture icon.
However, a distinction must be made because, during Tito’s life, Yugoslavia had a
relatively high living standard (albeit artificially), while Brena rose to fame during
rapid economic decline. Her albums sold in the hundreds of thousands and earned
her a fortune through local and international tours, thus sharply contrasting her
lifestyle to that of the struggling population. The increasing difference between
the wealth of Brena (and, to a lesser degree, other NCFM performers) and her
audience provided a form of escapism into the ‘Yugoslav dream’ that centred on
becoming successful without education or hard work. In addition, her rise to fame
also went against socialist ideals of modesty and self-improvement. Responding
to this, the state publicly criticised some of the NCFM celebrities, although Brena
was not one of them. Symptomatic of this critical approach to NCFM celebrities
was the 1982 Central Committee Meeting in Zagreb that drew attention to two
performers for publicly boasting about their wealth and bourgeois background.59
This criticism was based on the fact that their ‘trash music’ was seen as leading
towards trashy behaviour and the breakdown of socialist values.
While the growing crisis in Yugoslavia and the anti-socialist wealth of stars
played a part in the ‘orientalisation’ debate, they were both effectively conflated
into a point of complaint that focused almost exclusively on the musical properties
of NCFM. It is important to highlight that these musicological arguments were
constructed as a perspective projected onto the music because of the increasingly
politicised and nationalised public sphere. Musically, the experimentation in
Yugoslavia in many ways followed the global trend of ‘world music’ fusion in
the eighties, which included the introduction of ‘oriental’ elements; however,
it also included increased electronic instrumentation and rock fusion. Despite
these global trends, the musical experimentation of NCFM was seized upon in
Yugoslavia and read through the frame of orientalism that translated the music into
a question of national identity.
Ironically, Brena’s music was never an issue, even though this experimentation
is evident in her work both musically and in the lyrical content. The song ‘Hey
Sheki Sheki’ (‘Hej Šeki Šeki’) from her album My Kitten (1984) describes Brena
meeting a wealthy oil sheikh from Kuwait who proposes to ‘solve her problems’
with money. The song takes the form of a dialogue between Brena and the sheikh
with references to foreign finance, sexuality as a commodity, and the use of female
sexuality for empowerment. While the song indicates Brena’s interest in the sheikh,
it maintains that his obliviousness of her ‘true nature’ will ‘leave him bankrupt’.
The chorus ‘Hey Šeki Šeki, by Allah, I will leave you completely broke’ suggests
the swindling of a sexualised foreigner as a self-aware act of an opportunistic gold
digger. Yet, the song’s historical background of the early eighties recession, caused
59
partly by the global oil crisis, also suggests that the sheikh’s ‘help’ is a reference to
the extravagant foreign loans that bankrolled Yugoslavia throughout the seventies
and stopped in the eighties, causing an economic crisis. Despite the song’s grim
subject, its upbeat tempo and tongue-in-cheek orientalist lyrics create an image of
Yugoslavia defined through the nexus of sexuality and ideology. The references to
the sheikh’s help suggest that Yugoslavia was willing to ‘sell itself’ economically
to gain superficial ideological independence of non-alignment. It also suggests that
this was done willingly and aligned with the general self-exoticising perception of
Yugoslavia as a nation of opportunistic swindlers operating within the grey zone
of self-management.
Due to her playful attitude, her popularity and the considerable support she
received from the state, Brena’s music in the eighties generated little complaint,
while, around the same time, Southern Wind (Južni Vetar) – a group of musicians,
performers and producers organised around a recording studio in Belgrade –
attracted much critical attention. Emerging from a marginal position, Southern
Wind generated a large audience. Their substantial music influence led to charges
of the ‘orientalisation’ of music in Yugoslavia that eventually resulted in the media
boycotting their music.60
EPP 2: Southern Wind
The debates over Southern Wind symbolise the apex of cultural censorship of
NCFM in the context of the general economic decline and the nationalisation of
the political space in Yugoslavia. Despite the multiethnic composition of Southern
Wind – Muslims, Serbs and Roma performers – their ‘Islamist’ motives were
questioned on the grounds of their identities (particularly the Muslim core of the
singing team) and their music was kept off the air of major radio stations and
stigmatised in public discussions.
As Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen argues, the issue of the ‘orientalisation’ of
Southern Wind crystallised the political frictions of eighties Yugoslavia between
East and West:
the homogenization of ethnic and regional diversity of Yugoslav folk music and
the reference to an ‘eastern cultural model’. This model – which accounted for
NCFM’s greatest consumption and popularity with the audience in southeastern
parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro – highlights
the contentious issue of its national identity: the internal East/West duality of
Yugoslav culture as a projection of the Balkan/Western European distinction.61
60
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, “The Southern Wind of Change: Style and the Politics
of Identity in Prewar Yugoslavia”, in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and
Eastern Europe, edited by Mark Slobin (London: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 99.
61
Ibid., p. 100.
Southern Wind was transnational and apolitical; however, it was precisely this
characteristic that made them problematic. Fostering a shared cultural identity
between different ethnic groups became a state project in Yugoslavia following
World War II and popular music played a prominent role in this process. Thus, as
the state crumbled, the very projects that promoted Yugoslav identity became the
ground on which to play out difference. As Pavle Levi explains, this shift marked
‘the postsocialist radicalization of the collectivist resistance to, or denial of, the
society as inherently heterogeneous and antagonistic’.62
This radicalisation of difference implied more than just a rejection of shared
heritage because it focused on ‘the other within’ that was presumably revealed
through the music. The reductionism and stereotyping of ‘Islam’ as an inherent
threat in the music revealed the underlying logic of what Maria Todorova (following
Edward Said) calls ‘Balkanism’.63 The kind of stereotyping was associated with
the ‘otherness’ of the Balkans and its implications of barbarity, primitivism and
eroticism. Though this has a longer history, as discussed by Todorova and others,
it was with respect to NCFM that it became fully realised in the ‘civilisational
differences’ discussions of eighties Yugoslavia.
Similarly, the oriental musical influence in Yugoslavia has a substantially longer
history that was also explained through Balkanist discourse. Musically, Southern
Wind was largely a continuation of the NCFM style due to its combination of
the Serbian double metre, Bosnian melismatic singing and Macedonian irregular
rhythms. Southern Wind further accentuated some of these features – most
notably, the vocal embellishment of melodies and added electronic and synth-
based sounds.64 This eclectic combination of musical styles and ornamentation
recreated and capitalised on the syncretic music that symbolised the transcultural
and heterogeneous juncture of Yugoslavia. However, because Southern Wind
emerged into a musical context saturated with messages of regionalism, ethnicity
and East–West intersection, it was precisely the transnational elements of this
output that led their music to be labelled ‘southern’, ‘oriental’ and ‘Eastern’.65
While most commentators in the eighties did not differentiate or pinpoint the
location of the ‘East’ in the music, they frequently speculated that it was ‘imported’
through tourists, Yugoslav guest-worker immigrants in Western Europe and
musicians’ personal contacts in Istanbul. The orientalist charge was supplemented
with discussions of ‘Khomeini music’ – a reference to Ayatollah Khomeini, the
religious leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution – thus adding the element of global
political paranoia and religious manipulation as implicit in the music. The leader
and main producer of Southern Wind, Mile Bas, who was referred to in the media
as ‘Khomeini’, stated in an interview:
62
Levi, Disintegration in Frames, p. 6.
63
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
64
Rasmussen, “The Southern Wind of Change”, p. 102.
65
Ibid., p. 102.
I was lucky that the audience in this region liked us, because all the media was
turned against us … there were many ugly reports … that claimed I made a
fortune plagiarizing Turkish music.66
Despite these kinds of attacks, in a relatively short time, Southern Wind proved to
be highly successful commercially, with albums outselling most other recording
artists in Yugoslavia.
Dragana Mirković is one of the better-known Southern Wind artists. Her first
major commercial hit ‘Crush’ (‘Simpatija’, 1989) was an adolescent celebration
of a summer romance, with a strong hint of a first sexual encounter. The lyrics are
straightforward and upbeat, highlighting the youthful exuberance of a blossoming
romance. They focus on the traditional motifs of love at first sight that leads to
marriage and lifelong devotion. From the start of her career, Mirković symbolised
the ‘good girl’ from a small Serbian village, whose music also incorporated the
motifs of the urban youth lifestyle. Traditional family values are highlighted by the
song’s video, which was shot in Mirković’s family home. The young performer
cheerfully mimes the lyrics while preparing the morning coffee (presumably for
her parents – suggesting a traditional patriarchal upbringing) and slowly moving
towards the front door to greet her new suitor. These traditional values are balanced
against Mirković’s fashionable eighties hair perm and outfit consisting of jeans,
suspenders and t-shirt.
The song opens with electronic trumpets, followed by electronic drums and
accordion. It has a soothing melody and mid-tempo beat, with a verse–chorus–verse
structure. On the second repetition of the chorus, the last line is accentuated with
a melismatic melody that combines the voice, synth and accordion. The music
is characterised by the use of electronic instrumentation, with all traditional folk
instruments simulated. This is complemented by the introduction of a rhythm
machine that provides the sampled base, over which the vocals intertwine with the
synthesiser melody, while Mirković sings with a vibrato effect and distinct nasal
sounds. Also notable is the use of a Roland Juno 60 synthesiser, whose characteristic
electronic sound became the signature of all Southern Wind performers.67 The
electronic sound of the Juno 60 created the characteristic melismatic melody.
Accompanied with the melismatic vocals, it generated a sound that was similar
to the sound of a Zurna – an oriental wind instrument similar to the oboe, whose
origins are connected to the Ottoman Empire. This was the basis for the criticisms
of the Southern Wind sound as being oriental.
As Rasmussen maintains, this kind of criticism highlighted two related themes
of the orientalist discourse:
66
Radovan Nastić, “Južni Vetar – Muzika Naroda … Mile Bas, Intervju”, B92
Blog (23 December 2008), accessed 12 September 2012, http://blog.b92.net/text/6337/
JUZNIVETAR---muzika-narodaMile-Bas-intervju.
67
Nastić, “Južni Vetar – Muzika Naroda … Mile Bas, Intervju”.
denationalization of Yugoslav music and the regression of culture. Belgrade

commentators raised the issue of the national identity of Yugoslav folk music,
premised upon the homogeneity of older layers of Serbian folk music, being
subjected to orientalization of a new (Islamic) type, spreading from the South
Serbian/Bosnian hotbed. Sarajevo media authorities denounced the music as an
act of blatant borrowing and a marketing strategy playing upon the Bosnian
audience’s predilection for ‘café music’, understood as synonymous with
the crude, locally cultivated, melismatic vocal style of NCFM … the debate
recaptured a negatively stereotyped Ottoman legacy in the region – an antithesis
of the European conception of progress that shaped modern Yugoslavia.68
The attacks on Southern Wind demonstrated the ongoing rejection of NCFM as

‘bad’ popular culture by the authorities and the press. Although, in this instance,
the music was conceived less as ‘cultural trash’ – as was the case a decade
earlier – but as cultural otherness. The media ban and objections to Southern Wind
as ‘Islamisation’ did little to stifle the popularity of its performers; however, they
did supplement the public and critical discourse on NCFM with the secondary
charge. Together, the charge of ‘kitsch’ and ‘Islamisation’ will, from this point,
serve as two key frames for understanding and critically engaging with the music.
As time progressed, the two charges appeared less frequently as direct references,
but became implicit in the common phrase ‘newly composed’.
Although Southern Wind was apolitical, the band highlighted the increased
politicisation of music (and popular culture in general) in Yugoslavia during
the eighties. Their music invited a series of conflicting cultural interpretations
converging around the orientalist discourse about ‘Islam’ that served to further
the interests of particular nationalists. The prominent role of popular culture in
Yugoslav socialism meant that folk music was particularly crucial for establishing
a shared identity, partly because of its populist appeal, but also because of the
historic interconnectedness of the ethnic groups. In symbolising the moment
of the breakdown of this interconnectedness, Southern Wind also signified the
breakdown of Yugoslavia as a casualty of its own strategy: positioning itself
politically and culturally between the West and an imagined East, yet failing to
reconcile the resulting overlap internally.69
The attitudes towards NCFM in Yugoslavia provide an important insight into
the cultural politics of the Yugoslav communists. Shaped by conceptions of the
‘people’, modernisation and emancipation, the relations between NCFM and
the authorities shifted from utilitarianism in the forties and fifties, to ambiguous
to liberalisation in the sixties and seventies, and to rapid nationalisation in the
eighties. These perceptions of NCFM are significant regarding the degree to which
they were reproduced and redistributed in public discussions of the music after the
fall of socialist Yugoslavia, as will be discussed in the next chapter.
68
Rasmussen, “The Southern Wind of Change”, p. 104.
69
Ibid., p. 116.
NCFM was a by-product of socialism and, while its musical roots can be traced
prior to Yugoslavia and some discussions predate its emergence in the sixties, the
cultural perceptions and modes of consumption of NCFM are inseparable from
Yugoslav socialism. This is significant in several respects, which will be discussed
in further detail in later chapters.
The meaning of NCFM was always contingent on the social, political and
cultural circumstances. Thus, NCFM and its later incarnation as turbo-folk should
not be reduced to musicological analyses of changing trends, nor should they be
examined primarily through a focus on the audience.70 These movements created
cultural constellations between a subculture and a cultural phenomenon whose
scope of influence reached far beyond music. The musical character of NCFM
and turbo-folk was never the determining feature of the public discussions and
attitudes towards the music. Rather, a wider set of cultural values was projected
onto the music, which became the symbolic point of condensation for a range of
political and national anxieties. NCFM and turbo-folk, in this sense, can only be
properly understood in the context of these anxieties. The reactions to the music
have the effect of showing the intersection between state and culture and the
relationship between conceptions of national identity and its cultural expressions.
This is not to say that the musical aspect of NCFM and turbo-folk should be
ignored, but rather that they should be understood in the slippages that characterise
the intersections of the cultural divides between ‘high’ and ‘low’ and ‘East’ and
‘West’.71 As the following chapters will show, the way turbo-folk has been taken up
as a conceptual – rather than musical – category in a variety of cultural practices,
such as art, sculpture, architecture and film, is the manifestation of this slippage.
The cultural signifiers of ‘kitsch’ and ‘oriental’ were inscribed onto NCFM
under a particular set of socio-political and cultural values. The debate over
kitsch reflected the communists’ anxieties about the cultural denigration of
its population in the seventies, while the charges of ‘Islamisation’ reflected the
volatile political climate of the eighties, as well as the nationalist agitation and
calls for national–cultural distinctions. The eighties also revealed a new politically
mobilising role for music that would become fully realised under Milošević, as
will be discussed in the next chapter. All these cultural signifiers – kitsch, oriental
and nationalist – would later be repeated post-Milošević in different political
and social conditions. In turn, they also became conflated into what I describe
in the next chapter as ‘new Balkanness’: a reverse ‘postmodern’ nationalism
that celebrates the exotic authenticity and lust for life of the ‘Balkan other’ in
contrast to the perceived inhibited and anaemic Western Europeans.72 In a number
70
These approaches to turbo-folk are evident in Milena Dragičevic-Šešić, Neofolk
Kultura Publika i Njene Zvezde (Novi Sad: Izdavačka Knjižarnica Zorana Stojanovića, 1994);
and Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia.
71
Čolović, Divlja Književnost; Rasmussen, “The Southern Wind of Change”.
72
of studies of NCFM, and turbo-folk in particular, these signifiers are frequently

substituted for content, and the music is reduced to an expression of low taste,
banality, consumerism, orientalism and nationalism. While they are undeniably
an important aspect of understanding the music, to focus analyses only on these
characteristics is to ignore the broader expression that characterises a much
larger cultural field. It is also, according to some critics, a form of class-based
discrimination and cultural elitism directed against NCFM and turbo-folk as
the primary form of entertainment of the lower classes and marginalised social
groups.73 Chapter 4 returns to this question of NCFM and turbo-folk as the culture
of the socialist working class, and, in particular, their continuing presence in public
‘turbo-sculpture’ after the fall of Yugoslavia.
NCFM was part of a popular culture that thrived under socialism, and
subsequently became attached to conceptions of consumption, social interaction,
the public sphere and shared culture. I have indicated here that turbo-folk
should not only be viewed as a form of music; thus, in Part II of this book, I
shift my analysis to different modes of cultural expression: art, sculpture, film,
and architecture. Rather than only tracing the musical development of NCFM to
turbo-folk and turbo-folk to pop folk – which is covered in the next chapter – I
follow the cultural influence of turbo-folk beyond music. Each of the conceptions
that were present under socialism became the operative concepts that will be
examined as they manifested in different cultural avenues post-socialism. Turbo-
folk became an extreme postmodern reflection of the socialist way of life, with its
paradoxical values of hedonism and consumerism. Artists strategically used folk
music as a ready-made way to problematise notions of ‘national representation’
in art, and to demonstrate the volatile and complex position of popular music in
the history of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Public sculpture that appeared
across Yugoslavia after its demise features popular culture icons that recall the
socialist public sphere and the entertainment industry. Films reference both the
shared cultural legacy of Yugoslavia in popular music and articulate the demise of
the country through the violent struggle over the meaning of that legacy. Musical
parodies of NCFM and turbo-folk by performers not only exist ‘outside’ of these
genres, but also serve to invent new genres that satirise genre and the cultural
distinctions that underpin debates. Taken together, they constitute a trajectory of a
cultural memory of a country that goes beyond just music or political organisation.
73
Delić, “Kritika kritike turbo-folka”.
Chapter 2
Remember the Nineties?: Turbo-folk as the
Vanishing Mediator of Nationalism
Since the end of the bloody conflicts in the territories of ex-Yugoslavia, turbo-folk
music has emerged as a controversial shared culture across ethnic boundaries.1
Despite its common link to Serb nationalism under Milošević, turbo-folk has
outlived the regime to become one of the most popular contemporary cultural
forms in the region. Using the concept of the vanishing mediator, this chapter will
discuss how the representation of Serb nationalism through turbo-folk transformed
into what I call ‘new Balkanness’ regionalism: a self-exoticising, transnational
anti-neoliberalism.2 The vanishing mediator describes the process through which
the nationalist pathology of turbo-folk was historicised into the nineties, while
preserving the emotionally charged attachment to its expression of identity.
Turbo-folk thus provides a broader framework for thinking through the changing
meaning of cultural nationalism as a symbol of resistance to globalisation. In
recent years, in Europe and elsewhere there has been a significant rise of various
forms of nationalist populisms in response to economic problems. The debates
that surrounded the austerity measures implemented in Greece in 2010 framed
the issue around two key narratives that reinforced the presence of a ‘national
perspective’. On the one hand, the intervention into the collapsed Greek economy
by the Eurozone was seen as a corrective measure against the irresponsible and
extravagant spending of the Greeks. On the other hand, the economic measures
spearheaded by Germany were repeatedly framed in terms of economic neo-
imperialism (and fascism). What both perspectives demonstrated was not only
a deliberate blindness to the past, but a willingness to manipulate historical
stereotypes to justify the injustices of the present. The rise of turbo-folk as the
primary expression of ‘new Balkan’ resistance to globalisation should be seen in
this context. The ability of turbo-folk to shift from a performance of nationalism
to transnational anti-neoliberalism reveals how such transformations are often
accompanied by a promotion of amnesia towards the (recent) past.
1
An earlier version of this chapter was published as “Remember the Nineties?: Turbo-
folk as the Vanishing Mediator of Nationalism”, Cultural Politics 8/1 (2012): 121–37.
2
‘New Balkanness’ is a paraphrase of Richard Middleton’s term ‘new Europeanness’.
See: Richard Middleton, “Afterword”, Music, National Identity and the Politics of
Location, edited by Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knight (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 198.
This collection of essays is based on the premise that ‘the national’ occupies the position of
the vanishing mediator.
As outlined in the introduction, turbo-folk is high-energy pop mixed with

traditional folk music. It borrows elements of oriental and Mediterranean melodies
that are channelled through electronic dance rhythms and fused with MTV-style
video presentation. The music’s performers are predominantly scantily clad,
sexually provocative women singing about love, passion, death, sex and money.
Turbo-folk has a number of formal and stylistic similarities to other types of
‘world music’, such as Algerian rai, Indian bhangra and Mexican narcocorridos,
often to the point of sounding nearly identical. In this respect, turbo-folk looks
and sounds like a local manifestation of a global fin-de-siècle trend in music.
Despite this, turbo-folk originated in very specific socio-political coordinates
and at a very particular time. Namely, turbo-folk’s emergence coincided with
the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of Serbian nationalism, with
its rise in popularity paralleling the ascendance of Milošević’s Serb nationalist
regime. Consequently, its slide into obsolescence also seemingly followed the fall
of Milošević in 2000.
Notwithstanding the common perception that turbo-folk is largely a nineties
phenomenon, and despite its links to Serb nationalism, this kind of music and
culture enjoys considerable popularity in all ex-Yugoslav republics, albeit in
mutated form. Today, ‘turbo-folk’ is considered an obsolete term, and the music is
understood as apolitical. Pleas to the nation have been substituted with appeals to
the trappings of everyday life in language that conflates the constructions of identity
connected to turbo-folk: the shared culture of ex-Yugoslavia, Serb nationalism and
pan-Balkan regionalism. Turbo-folk as a transnational construction generates an
‘ahistorical perception’ that not only ignores (recent) nationalist animosities, but
also erases its own part in the history of those animosities.3
In studies of Serbia under Milošević, turbo-folk is commonly used as a negative
label that suggests nationalism, backwardness, rural primitivism, orientalism and
kitsch culture. However, it is essential to understand turbo-folk as more than simply
a promotion of the Serb agenda; to not do so is to ignore turbo-folk’s history in
relation to the changing social, economic and political conditions of the region.
As suggested in the previous chapter, most of the negative labels associated with
turbo-folk have roots in a concrete set of political conceptions of culture from the
seventies and eighties. In fact, locating turbo-folk on one side of the political divide
overestimates the capacity of music to influence debates over identity by virtue of
entertainment. It can be argued that, in most cases, the nationalist profile of turbo-
folk was driven by economic opportunism because the performers saw it as a
way to reach larger audiences in Serbia – similar to the way overt nationalism is
currently jettisoned to garner broader regional appeal. Further, approaching turbo-
folk as Serb propaganda underestimates the degree to which music is imbricated
in wider processes of transformation. Turbo-folk was nationalist, yet it was never
connected to a particular place and, even during the war, it was listened to in all
3
Turbo-folk as the Vanishing Mediator of Nationalism 57
the former republics of Yugoslavia. As a result, the popularity of turbo-folk can

be understood as being about much more than its seductive ability to ‘Serbify’ its
audience. Rather, turbo-folk has its roots in the Yugoslav social and cultural sphere
that negotiated national and transnational identities.
This highlights the need to first distinguish between turbo-folk and propaganda
‘war songs’ with openly nationalist and chauvinist lyrics, which had a distinct
presence in Serbia (and other republics) during the nineties. Turbo-folk was never
overtly nationalist, as evidenced by its transnational consumption; however, its
aesthetics aligned it with the interests of nationalists. It is important to draw
attention to the analysis of the ‘civilian’ and ‘apolitical’ character of turbo-folk,
and the way this character and subsequent aesthetics promote nationalism through
everyday social practices. The ‘reality’ of turbo-folk as popular music is less
important than the level at which it appears to its fans and its detractors. At this
level, turbo-folk is perceived by all sides as a limit text whose representation is
excessive. In the self-perception of ex-Yugoslav republics, turbo-folk functions in
the same way that Žižek refers to the ‘Balkan ghost’ – a symbolic attribute that
designates a position of mindless and excessive enjoyment.4 However, turbo-folk
is also its reverse in that it simultaneously describes an imagined passion for life
specific and unique to the region, in contrast to the ‘lifeless West’. Thus, analysing
the libidinal economy manifested through the reception and perception of turbo-
folk complicates the usual understanding of national rivalries and tensions, and
presents an important lesson for understanding identification through popular
culture. As demonstrated in the introduction, Žižek’s understanding of enjoyment
as a political category is perfectly suited to this task.
While Žižek never explicitly refers to turbo-folk, his discussion of nationalism
in ex-Yugoslavia frequently references the cultural landscape that produced it. He
suggests that Serbia under Milošević worked as a carnival state in which everything
was permitted (other than challenging the leader). Žižek points to Milošević
and Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadžić as symbols of permissive nationalism that
appealed to the basest urges of the population. However, the ultimate example of
self-exoticising nationalism in Serbia is, according to Žižek, found in the work of
Bosnian-turned-Serbian film director Emir (Nemanja) Kusturica – particularly in
his controversial film Underground (1995), which won the 1996 Grand Prix at the
Cannes Film Festival. Underground’s view of the shared culture of Yugoslavia
and causes for the war in the nineties generated significant public outcry against
its pro-Serb orientation.5 Žižek was also critical of the film, arguing that Kusturica
pandered to the Western gaze by presenting the Balkans as a timeless spectacle
of drinking, singing and fornicating.6 While Žižek’s reading of Kusturica’s
4
5
A summary of these discussions can be found in: Dina Iordanova, Cinema of Flames:
Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (London: British Film Institute, 2001).
6
Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 60–64.
work is astute, in the present context it is also interesting to note how Žižek’s
own relationship to Western academia works through a similar process of self-
exoticisation. His position as the ‘wild man of theory’ who actively provokes his
audience with Eastern European idiosyncrasies and dirty jokes comes dangerously
close to the performance of the Balkan in Kusturica’s work and in turbo-folk.
With respect to Kusturica, it can be suggested that Žižek’s vocal criticism of ‘the
carnivalesque Balkan’ at least partly demonstrates Žižek’s own ‘Balkan carnival’.
With respect to turbo-folk, Žižek may be its academic version.
However, more importantly, turbo-folk as a form of cultural nationalism
and Žižek’s conception of nationalism both originate in the same socio-political
coordinates and appear on the global stage at the same time. While this explains
the almost illustrative relationship between the representational strategies of
turbo-folk and Žižek’s understanding of nationalism, it also draws attention to
their common roots in the shared cultural space of Yugoslavia. This is significant
not just for understanding Žižek’s view of nationalism, but also for seeing how
his account of the vanishing mediator helps explain the way the leftovers of that
shared culture remain in the social field.
Turbo-folk as the vanishing mediator of nationalism demonstrates how, in ex-
Yugoslavia, popular music was the stage on which collective identity was forged
and the premise on which national differences were constructed. It remains the only
shared culture in the region. As was argued in the previous chapter, the significance
and meaning of turbo-folk’s ability to be a shared culture can only be understood
against the background of shared real-socialist sociability. The cultural space of
Yugoslavia was a failed attempt to forge a shared culture that could find its true
expression only in capitalism. Turbo-folk as a shared cultural heritage haunts and, at
the same time, makes possible all attempts to think about turbo-folk as a culture of
nationalism, just as turbo-folk as a shared culture is always haunted by nationalism.
Before discussing how turbo-folk operates as the vanishing mediator of
nationalism, it is important to examine Žižek’s understanding of the vanishing
mediator. Also vital is an understanding of what I consider the three main phases
of Serbian nationalism – roughly corresponding to the previous three decades – to
demonstrate how these phases correlate to the representation of nationalism in
turbo-folk. This allows for a theorisation of turbo-folk as the vanishing mediator
between nationalism and regionalism. A focus on Serbia is necessary because
Serbian nationalism, if not the catalyst for the violence in the nineties, was
certainly the most extreme example. This emphasis on Serbia uncovers turbo-
folk as the clearest evidence of the nexus between the political regime and its
cultural support. This is nowhere more apparent than in the figure of Svetlana
Ražnatović Ceca. As the most recognisable and popular performer of turbo-folk
music – with 10 million records sold and multiple tours across the region – Ceca’s
career, public personality and music are synonymous with turbo-folk. Ceca’s
musical popularity has been rivalled only by her political notoriety, deriving
from her marriage to the war criminal Željko Ražnatović Arkan, the allegations
of her involvement in the assassination of Serbian prime minister Zoran Đinđić
Figure 2.1 Ceca, Sydney 2010 (Dragana Marinković – One

Love Photography)
in 2003, her subsequent four-month imprisonment and, in 2011, the charges of

embezzlement and illegal possession of weapons that resulted in a one-year house
arrest. However, despite this notoriety – or perhaps precisely because of it – Ceca’s
popularity has consistently grown throughout the region, presenting an exemplary
case study of the shifts in turbo-folk’s representation of nationalism.
Ceca’s enduring popularity can largely be attributed to two key aspects of her
public personality: the highly personal ‘confessional’ aesthetic of her lyrics and
her femme fatale image. Ceca’s career has become inseparable from her private
life, and her music is perceived as a form of personal narration of history. As
is discussed below, her songs use direct language, violent imagery and thinly
veiled references to events in her life. Coupled with her highly emotional vocal
delivery and descriptions of extreme affective states – including death and self-
harm – Ceca’s public image and music have been framed through an emphasis of
authenticity and ‘real life’ experience. Further, Ceca’s image as a ‘fatal woman’
is the result of successful synthesis of her public and private life – including her
involvement with criminal underworld figures – and a romantic aesthetic in her
music that hinges on the symbol of being a misunderstood and wrongly demonised
woman whose only fault is being ‘guided by her heart’. Ceca’s image as a performer
has successfully coupled a celebration of the cult of militant patriarchy and self-
victimisation with an image of female empowerment.
Vanishing Mediator
The concept of the vanishing mediator was first used by Fredric Jameson to
describe an agent of historical transition that creates the conditions for change
then vanishes once the change is instituted.7 Jameson argues that the religion of
Protestantism was the vanishing mediator between feudalism and capitalism.
Before Protestantism, religion was separate from economics and consigned to
isolated institutions, such as monasteries. This changed with the universalisation
of the Protestant values of hard work and wealth accumulation. Protestantism
universalised the acquisitive work ethic that created the conditions for the
advent of capitalism and was reabsorbed into the social order as one of many
private religions.
Žižek further develops the idea of the vanishing mediator by highlighting
that a gap between form and content is crucial in this shift. In the vanishing
mediator, content changes first within the parameters of an existing form and then
emancipates itself from the old form, whereby the new form is revealed and the
vanishing mediator drops off:
The passage from feudalism to Protestantism is not of the same nature as the
passage from Protestantism to bourgeois everyday life with its privatized
religion. The first passage concerns ‘content’ (under the guise of preserving
the religious form or even its strengthening, the crucial shift – the assertion
of the ascetic-acquisitive stance in economic activity as the domain of the
manifestation of Grace – takes place), whereas the second passage is a purely
formal act, a change of form (as soon as Protestantism is realized as the ascetic-
acquisitive stance, it can fall off as form).8
Žižek identifies Hegelian dialectics as the underlining logic for the shift initiated
by the vanishing mediator. According to Žižek, there are three steps of the dialectic
movement: immediacy, negation of immediacy (the change of content to preserve
the form) and mediated immediacy (where the form drops off). The vanishing
mediator, as an extra step between the second step (negation of immediacy) and the
third (mediated immediacy), universalises certain values and then disappears after
it has prepared the ground for these values. In this way, the vanishing mediator
appears as an agent intended to strengthen the old form, while creating the ground
for opposite content.
The following section outlines the three phases of Serbian nationalism, which
will be discussed as corresponding to the three steps of this movement. Nationalism
7
Fredric Jameson, “The Vanishing Mediator; or, Max Weber as Storyteller”, in The
Ideologies of Theory Essays 1971–1986, Volume 2: The Syntax of History, edited by Fredric
Jameson (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 3–34.
8
Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor
(London: Verso, 1991), p. 185.
appeared towards the end of the eighties in Serbia as a negation of communism.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, nationalism was subsequently
negated, or rather displaced, by capitalism. Turbo-folk appeared as a particularly
powerful and popular form of cultural representation of nationalism that was used
to promote and strengthen nationalism. However, in doing so, turbo-folk and the
cultural milieu it produced universalised the neoliberal style of consumption that
displaced a particular Serbian nationalism, thus paving the way for the easier
advent of neoliberal capitalism in the region. With the influx and explosion of
capitalism in Serbia, turbo-folk was reabsorbed into the social order as kitsch and
perceived as a harmless form of popular culture.
Immediacy
The factor that enabled turbo-folk to become a cultural expression of nationalism

had as much to do with the music as it did with the socioeconomic factors
inherited from communism that were adapted to suit the nationalist agenda. As
outlined in the previous chapter, the popularity of turbo-folk was connected to the
post–World War II mass industrialisation in Yugoslavia that prompted a population
shift from rural to urban areas, without commensurate cultural and educational
infrastructure. The generally low education levels of the population, coupled
with the ongoing split between rural and urban identities, meant that folk music
played a crucial role in Yugoslavia’s ideologies of shared culture (brotherhood and
unity) and independent socialism. The Yugoslav state promoted a transnational
concept of folklore as a mix of local heritage and pan-Yugoslav identity.9 This
policy meant that the state – which controlled all significant cultural activities –
allowed folk music that was national in form, as long as it was socialist in content.
In line with this approach, the state also allowed a relative degree of openness
to Western influences, as long as they suited the ideological needs of socialism.
These two factors created the platform on which popular music could articulate
and promote a common heritage of multicultural communism, and do so through
experimentation and fusion between different musical styles. Yugoslavia was
characterised by a vibrant music scene that included folk and rock, which became
two defining points of identification in a country caught in rural–urban tensions. In
both cases, music was crucial in establishing a sense of a shared Yugoslav identity
based on patterns of consuming popular culture.
After the fall of communism, this constructed pan-Yugoslav common musical
heritage became the ground on which nationalists created ‘civilisational differences’.
Eric Gordy suggests that the effectiveness of Milošević’s mobilisation of nationalism
derived from its appropriation of key social, political and cultural structures from
9
Tomaslav Longinović, “Music Wars: Blood and Song at the End of Yugoslavia”,
in Music and the Racial Imagination, edited by Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 633.
communism. Two aspects of this appropriation are crucial for understanding the
position of turbo-folk. First, in contrast to Tito’s Yugoslavia, which relied on some
degree of acquiescence of urban and intellectual elites, Milošević turned to rural
Serbia, adopting its attitude of animosity to urban life. Second, Milošević adopted
the communist opposition to the bourgeoisie as the class enemy and replaced it
with the nation as the fundamental ideological principle.10 Serbian nationalism was
thus constructed as a defensive response to the ‘aggressive’ nationalism of all other
republics, the ‘traitors’ to communism and the global conspiracy against Serbia. The
brand of nationalism promoted by turbo-folk became the perfect cultural platform
for articulating Serbian national identity as a liberating gesture against communism,
steeped in consumption, hedonism and sexuality.
Turbo-folk became prominent partly because (some of) its performers
opportunistically embraced the nationalist agenda of Milošević and partly because
it filled the void left by the destruction of the shared culture of Yugoslavia. Gordy’s
account of the ascendance of turbo-folk explains how Milošević’s interests
resonated with the turbo-folk audience:
First, except in the cities, neofolk was already widely publicized and widely
popular; a basis had been laid, and no great investment was required to promote
the music. Second, neofolk musicians had been, since at least the early 1960s,
eagerly bringing electric and amplified sounds, as well as rhythms and styles
from western popular music … into their own repertoire. Third … whereas
rock and roll sought to express an orientation outside the general social order,
neofolk had a place in it, as a part of the system of mainstream communication,
especially in the small towns and villages. Most important, however, neofolk
artists willingly offered musical forms for use as nationalist agitprop.11
Gordy sees the rise of turbo-folk as primarily the result of Milošević’s political
opportunism that managed to tap into the rural mentality of the large majority of
Serbia’s population. Like all other parts of Yugoslavia, the rapid modernisation
of Serbia after World War II resulted in profound changes in points of social
identification. This created gaps in the everyday experience of the population,
which often translated into a profound sense of loss. Folk music not only filled this
void, but also reintegrated it into the official system of symbolic communication.
Music communicated the emotions left by displaced urban peasants; thus, becoming
an important element of everyday social interaction. Milošević seized upon this
symbolic power of music and on the opportunism of the performers to promote an
agitprop branch of neo-folk in the early nineties. When the regime shifted away
from overt nationalism in 1995, it withdrew its support, and neo-folk went in a
10
Eric Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of
Alternatives (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 12–14.
11
Ibid., pp. 127–8.
new direction to become turbo-folk. Overt nationalism was substituted for images
of consumerism, and folk elements became substituted with electronic sounds.
While Gordy’s account convincingly outlines the key sociological factors
that played a role in the emergence of turbo-folk, it is also crucial to highlight the
transnational popularity of turbo-folk, even during the war years. Turbo-folk in Serbia
inherited the audience of neo-folk, including its system of symbolic communication
and its nationalist residue. However, on a broader level, turbo-folk also filled the
void left by the destruction of the shared culture of Yugoslavia. While evidence of
turbo-folk as a shared culture existed in the nineties, its transnational popularity and
consumption across ex-Yugoslavia only became clearly apparent after 2000.
Ceca’s rise to fame is deeply connected to this shift from Yugoslav communism
to Serbian nationalism. Her big break happened in 1988 in Sarajevo at the folk
music festival, Ilidža, which was one of the more prestigious state-sponsored
spectacles that showcased young musical talent, while promoting pan-Yugoslav
folklore. Winning this festival meant lucrative record deals and, in Ceca’s case,
resulted in her first album being released in 1989. Her rise to popularity was also
made easier by the transnational popularity of Yugoslavian folk stars, such as Lepa
Brena, who made this style of music hugely popular and did so largely because
of their multicultural appeal. As discussed in the previous chapter, Brena enjoyed
considerable political and financial support from the authorities, and her albums,
tours, films and merchandise remain some of the best-selling in Yugoslavia’s
history. Brena also provided a model of feminine sexuality anchored within the
nexus of rural origins, beauty and urban style – a model that Ceca followed.
Ceca’s music from this period is characterised by an abstract perception of
rural regionalism that is typical of Yugoslav folk. While she sentimentalises village
life through her music and image, she sets it against a playful and provocative
representation of female sexuality. Her hits such as ‘Nagging Flower’ (‘Cvetak
Zanovetak’, 1989) and ‘That’s It, Miki’ (‘To Miki To’, 1990) are folk-infused
lamentations of female sexual awakening. ‘Nagging Flower’ is a statement by
a prepubescent girl staking ownership of her virginity, while ‘That’s It, Miki’ is
an upbeat summer romance song about first love experienced with overt sexual
connotations. Musically, ‘That’s It, Miki’ fuses the traditional Serbian mixed metre
with a fast and cheerful melody played on the accordion. In typical NCFM style,
the song features an instrumental break during which the synthesiser intermingles
with the accordion melody. Lyrically, the song is written from the perspective of an
underage girl describing emerging sexual desire, building towards the chorus line
in which the sexual act is strongly suggested through Ceca’s repeated exclamation
‘That’s it, Miki!’. The song intentionally plays on the juxtaposition of Lolita-esque
prepubescent femininity against ambiguous sexual fantasies.
Ceca’s youth (she began her career in 1988 at the age of 15) and her
background (she moved from a small Serbian village, Zitorađa, to the capital
city, Belgrade) were significant factors in her popularity, symbolising the triumph
of folk populism over urban elitism. The emphasis on Ceca’s ‘authentic’ rural
beauty and folk sound pandered to the patriarchal longing for a female purity
untainted by urban decay. In addition, her rural-to-urban success story symbolised

emancipation independent of education and employment, which were traditionally
seen as provinces of the urban elites. Ceca’s fusion of the urban and rural was
filtered through a knowing self-reflexivity towards rural origins and a stylistic
leaning towards urbanity that appealed to younger audiences, which became
crucial to her popularity in the nineties.
Negation of Immediacy
Turbo-folk rose to popularity in Serbia in the nineties, amid war, international

sanctions, poverty, record inflation, systemic corruption and organised crime. Its
celebration of materialism, luxury and sexual innuendo presented an escapist, rosy
picture of reality, providing a perfect cultural backdrop for Milošević’s ideological
project.12 The interests of the regime found resonance in the turbo-folk audience –
largely inherited from the Yugoslav folk audience – and the regime gave turbo-
folk high media visibility.13 Turbo-folk’s saturation of the media occurred through
state television. However, equally important were changes in the law that allowed
the creation of privately owned television stations and production companies such
as Pink TV that were dedicated almost exclusively to turbo-folk, soap operas and
pornographic films. In addition, because of sanctions and corruption, Serbia’s ‘wild
economy’ was flourishing, and music piracy was a large part of the enterprise,
allowing the market to be flooded with cheap and easily available music.
The state’s lack of control over radio and television content and the illegal
economy created the socioeconomic platform for turbo-folk’s success. In
addition, the affiliation of turbo-folk stars with high-ranking politicians and shady
businesspeople helped increase their opportunities. The inherited popularity of
folk music provided a sizeable and stable target audience. However, for turbo-folk
to achieve the level of popularity it did, it also had to be articulated as a form of
strengthening of national identity. Turbo-folk did this by functioning as a liberating
call against restraint. As Žižek argues, national identification represented in the
figure of Milošević functioned as this call: ‘You may! You may violate the stern
regulations of peaceful co-existence in a tolerant liberal society! You may drink
and eat whatever you want! You may flout political correctness; You may even
hate, fight, kill and rape!’.14
The representational strategies of turbo-folk from this period reproduced
the compulsion to consume the spectacle of the nation. Turbo-folk hits, on
12
Ivana Kronja, “Politics, Nationalism, Music and Popular Culture in 1990s Serbia”,
Slovo 16/1 (2004): 11.
13
Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia, p. 136.
14
Slavoj Žižek, “The Military-Poetic Complex”, London Review of Books 16 (2008),
accessed 18 November 2012, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n16/slavoj-zizek/the-military-
poetic-complex.
constant rotation on radio and television, glorified kitsch, anti-intellectualism,

the objectification of women and the cult of criminality. One of the biggest hits
was the song ‘200 mph’ (1994) (‘Dvesta Na Sat’), which celebrated speeding in a
motor vehicle as a pretext for sex. More bizarrely, another hit from this period was
Viki Miljković’s ‘Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Suzuki’ (1992), which featured the chorus
line ‘Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Suzuki / Discotheques, guitars, bouzouki / That’s
life, that’s not an ad / Nobody has it better than us’. The accompanying video,
now available on YouTube, features Serbian youths in a rural setting, dressed in
traditional clothes and drinking Coca-Cola in order to be magically transformed
into young urbanites in sports cars.
During this period, Ceca rose as the undisputed queen of turbo-folk, with her
image becoming a carefully crafted mix of politics, orthodox iconography and
sexuality.15 She underwent a series of plastic surgeries that significantly altered
her appearance. Most famously, Ceca performed for Serbian troops on the front
line, where she met Arkan. They married in 1995 in what was a publicly broadcast
‘national event’ that combined displays of Serb nationalism with material excess
and kitsch. Ceca became ‘the mother of Serbs’ and increasingly became associated
with Arkan’s right-wing nationalist political organisation, the Serbian Unity Party
(Stranka Srpskog Jedinstva) (SSJ). She stated to one public gathering, ‘You
can be as happy as me – just join the Serbian Unity Party’.16 Ceca’s marriage to
Arkan ensured an extravagant lifestyle and better-produced music. Between 1993
and 1996, Ceca released four albums, with lavishly produced high-budget videos
that continually appeared on television. Her music became a combination of
sentimental and tragic love stories, fusing love for men with love for the homeland.
The hit song ‘If You Were Wounded’ (‘Kad Bi Bio Ranjen’, 1996) features Ceca
professing her love for her (warrior) male by offering to donate her blood and
eyes. ‘If You Were Wounded’ synthesises sexual desire with abstracted patriotism.
The song is told from the perspective of a dedicated, but suffering, woman,
willing to give everything for her loved one. It creates a bricolage of acts of self-
torture (‘hands tied into a knot’), humiliation (‘slept like a dog’) and martyrdom
(‘burning’) as signifiers of love. This builds towards the explosive and graphic
chorus line ‘if you were wounded I’d give you blood, both my eyes if you were
blind’ that establishes an even stronger relationship between self-sacrifice and
love. Musically, the song’s highly charged emotions are reinforced by a thundering
melody played on trumpets, and complemented by synthesised trumpets.
Ostensibly, ‘If You Were Wounded’ is a sadomasochistic love dedication, with
no references to national or ethnic identification. Yet, the song presents several
cues that tie it to a distinctive sense of militant patriotism. First, the main melody
15
Zala Volčič and Karmen Erjavec, “Constituting Transnational Divas: Gendered
Production of Balkan Turbo-folk Music”, in Circuits of Visibility: Gender and Transnational
Media Cultures, edited by Radha S. Hegde (New York: New York University Press, 2011).
16
Robert Thomas, Serbia Under Milošević: Serbia in the 1990s (London: Hurst &
Company, 1999), p. 186.
played on the trumpet, coupled with the slow mixed metre drumbeat, clearly
recalls a military march. Second, Ceca’s emotional vocal delivery in the chorus
line ‘if you were wounded, I’d give you blood’ is backed by male bass vocals
that make it sound like an ominous military chant. Third, the song’s deferral to
a symbolic figure of (male) authority is a clear reference to Ceca’s marriage to
Arkan. Here, she presents an image of a strong and courageous, yet loyal and
obedient, wife who is prepared to take her place within the symbolic matrix of a
relationship (or nation) at threat.
‘If You Were Wounded’ was so popular that it could regularly be heard
from the trenches on both sides of the conflict. Ceca thus successfully balanced
seemingly contradictory images: the young wife of a warrior Serb and the
symbol of female empowerment. While her songs frequently featured longing
for a lost or unrequited love, as in ‘Masquerade’ (‘Maskarada’, 1997), they also
included a demand that a married man leave his wife and family for his young
mistress in ‘Coward’ (‘Kukavica’, 1993). Her music also proclaimed female
independence from men, with a strong hint of lesbianism in ‘Don’t Count On
Me’ (‘Ne Racunaj Na Mene’, 1994), which she performed in a duet with another
young female turbo-folk singer. This intentional conflation of gender signifiers
created a representational tension at the core of her music between physically and
economically powerful men and sexually powerful women.17
EPP 1: Turbo-fashion Then and Now
The early to mid-nineties were globally marked by anti-fashion in a ‘grunge’

reaction to the high gloss and glamour of the eighties and as an effect of the
economic recession.18 It was part of a broader anti-aesthetic shift that included
the rise of intentionally ugly ‘grunge art’ most notably in the work of the Young
British Artists such as Damien Hirst, the hand held stripped-down approach of
Dogme cinema directors such as Lars Von Trier, the rise of grunge music, and the
celebration of anti-intellectualism in cartoon characters such as MTV’s Beavis
and Butthead. In the nineties, Serbia had its own version of anti-fashion that was a
result of a combined effect of international sanctions, mass poverty and the general
cultural and moral collapse of society. Ivana Kronja describes this anti-fashion as
‘Warrior Chic’ subcultures, in which turbo-folk played a crucial part:
turbo-folk and dance music promoted the life-style and system of values
of the new Serbian elite formed during the nineties: regime politicians, war-
17
Jessica Greenberg, “Goodbye Serbian Kennedy: Zoran Đinđić and the New
Democratic Masculinity in Serbia”, East European Politics and Societies 1 (2006): 136.
18
Most literature on this period seems to confirm this view. For example, see: Valerie
Mendes and Amy de la Haye, Fashion Since 1990 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010),
p. 252.
profiteers, criminal bosses turned into ‘businessmen’ and glamorous turbo-folk

stars, mainly highly eroticised female singers. This system of values aimed to
establish the cult of crime and violence, war-profiteering, national-chauvinism
and provincialism, together with the abandonment of morals, education, legality,
and other civic values. It had also encouraged the war-orientated, retrograde
patriarchy and the prostitution and commodification of women, while accepting
the iconography of Western mass culture, the values of the ‘American dream’,
‘body culture’, culture of leisure and consumption.19
The Serbian ‘elite’ embraced wearing expensive designer clothing brands and gold
jewellery, driving expensive sports cars and frequenting discotheques. Women’s
style consisted of highly sexualised outfits that included evening dresses, designer
clothes with visible logos, expensive shoes and jewellery, and sparkling kitsch
outfits. This look was accentuated by the popular practice of silicone breast
augmentation. Men’s style included macho signifiers of wealth, such as fast
cars, mobile telephones and weapons, as well as dark suits, leather jackets and
expensive sportswear with visible logos. According to Kronja, the prostitution and
commodification of women as a basic characteristic of the Warrior Chic style was
supported by poverty, war, criminal expansion, patriarchy and the direct influence
of Western mass culture.20
Turbo-folk championed the values of unrestrained consumption, criminality
and nationalism embraced by the Warrior Chic ‘elite’ who constituted a large
segment of turbo-folk’s audience. An even larger segment of the turbo-folk
audience was comprised of the general population (mainly youths) for whom the
excesses of the Warrior Chic style were beyond reach. Due to the general poverty
in Serbia at the time, the street version of the Warrior Chic style consisted of
brand imitations. The international economic sanctions and arms embargo created
economic opportunities for clandestine trade and smuggling, which included
branded and designer clothes forgeries.21 Warrior Chic can thus be conceived as an
alternate version of postmodernism in fashion. Its hybrid mixture of styles had the
semblance of postmodern eclecticism and pastiche, yet it was created primarily
because of economic circumstances, which is a pattern that is mirrored in turbo-
architecture, discussed later in Chapter 4. As a cultural object, fashion emerges
from a complex social, political and cultural nexus. Therefore, Warrior Chic was
not simply a stylistic gesture, but also a conceptual one – its cultural currency
cannot be simply reduced to a display of wealth because it carries a series of
loaded political signifiers.
19
Ivana Kronja, “Turbo Folk and Dance Music in 1990s Serbia: Media, Ideology and
the Production of Spectacle”, The Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review 22/1 (2004): 103.
20
Kronja, “Turbo Folk and Dance Music in 1990s Serbia”, 111.
21
Peter Andreas, “Criminalized Legacies of War: The Clandestine Political Economy
of the Western Balkans”, Problems of Post-Communism 51/3 (2004): 3–9.
This is particularly evident in one of the best-known counterparts of Warrior

Chic: Dieselmen. Dieselmen are the only indigenous Serbian subculture whose
appearance can be explained as the consequence of rapid decline in living
standards in which a small group gets rich quickly (mainly by illegal means), after
which they seek the means to demonstrate their new wealth. This explanation
helps understand the root of the name: Dieselmen took their cultural currency
from Diesel jeans, which were one of the leading global brands at the time.22
However, the term is also a reference to the illegal activity through which they
gained their wealth: the smuggling of petrol. The Dieselmen style consisted of
short-cropped hair, heavy gold jewellery (particularly crosses), branded clothes,
expensive tracksuits, baggy Diesel jeans and belts with large buckles. Dieselmen
heroes are urban criminals from the eighties whose cinematic representation is
discussed in more detail in Chapter 6. Stylistically, Dieselmen can initially be seen
as sharing much in common with American gangster rap (they both appeared in the
early nineties), yet the subcultural codes of Dieselmen – including the aggressive
display of wealth, toughness and banditry – were all culturally specific to Serbia.
Testament to this is the fact that the subcultural specificity of the Deiselmen is
misunderstood when removed from its local context. On a number of occasions,
I witnessed the frustration of Dieselmen in Australia because their style was
misunderstood or mistaken for something different.
Simon Reynolds argues that fashion has its own cyclical history that is rarely
indexed to social change or currents within the broader culture.23 In Dieselmen, it is
possible to see a subculture that is stylistically and culturally a revealing reflection
of its time, and a subculture whose consequent development was intrinsically
connected to larger events in Serbia. On the one hand, as Kronja has argued,
the Warrior Chic subcultures of the nineties did not stop with the deposition of
Milošević – to whom they are usually connected – but continued to evolve and exist
after 2000 through the ‘Silicone Valley’ subculture (a misogynist term referring to
breast silicone implants), which maintains many of its values.24 On the other hand,
in 2011, Serbia witnessed a series of events that resembled the nineties in several
ways. In September 2011, a media campaign started to promote a festival entitled
‘I Love the Nineties’, which was held in Belgrade in October 2011.25 This event
started a series of parties in Belgrade nightclubs that culminated in the ‘I Love the
22
Mark Tungate, Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara (London:
Kogan Page, 2005), p. 35.
23
Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (London:
Faber and Faber, 2011), p. 191.
24
Ivana Kronja, “Urbani Životni Stilovi i Medijska Reprezentacija Gradskog Života
i Omladinske Kulture: Potkultura ‘Silikonske Doline’ i Filmska Trilogija Radivoja Raše
Andrica”, Zbornik Radova Fakulteta Dramskih Umetnosti 10 (2006): 91.
25
Jovana Gligorijević, “Povratak Devedesetih: Diskretni Šarm Mračne Nostalgije”,
Vreme 1080 (15 September 2011), accessed 20 October 2012, www.vreme.com/cms/view.
php?id=1010685.
Nineties’ festival on 8 October 2011 in Belgrade Arena, and included performers

from the period such as Ivan Gavrilović, with his hit song ‘200 mph’. This festival
coincided with a series of underworld murders around Belgrade, a drastic fall in
living standards (following the 2009 economic crash), renewed political tensions
with Croatia and a new wave of violence in Kosovo.
This cultural recycling of history resembles what Reynolds calls the
‘retromania’ of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and the economic and
political instability is a flow-on effect of the global crisis. It is also largely fuelled
by a desire to cash in on a falsified version of the past, deprived of its malicious
content. As Reynolds suggests, in late-capitalist fashion ‘the recent past piles up
in mounds of symbolically depreciated commodities’, time is colonised and the
past is ‘asset-stripped’.26
Yet what is striking is the reported enthusiasm of Serbian youth who experienced
the nineties as part of their childhood and appear to have a romanticised and
mythologised notion of the criminal underworld and Dieselmen subculture. This
nostalgia for a particularly dark period in Serbia’s history, filled with stories
about ‘tough guys from the streets of Belgrade’, glamorous women and general
lawlessness, is particularly interesting here for the way it identifies with freedom.
The nineties are seen as difficult, but as filled with ‘dignity’ and ‘human spirit’,
in contrast to the ‘faceless consumerism’ of neoliberal globalisation.27 This
idealisation and glamourisation of the nineties should be seen as part of the
embrace of ‘new Balkanness’ as a transnational resistance to globalisation. As
the next chapter demonstrates, in the new century the youth in Slovenia have also
started adopting turbo-folk style of fashion as a counter-cultural gesture against
perceived homogenisation.
The Vanishing of Turbo-folk
From the account thus far, it would appear that the transformation of Serbian
nationalism, on the level of representation through turbo-folk, occurred with a shift
of collective identity understood through performance of class and nationalism.
However, as mentioned earlier, Žižek proposes that the dialectic movement that
informs the logic of the vanishing mediator contains an extra step that universalises
certain values, after which it can disappear. That extra step occurred in two parts:
first, through Milošević turning against turbo-folk in 1994 and proclaiming the
‘Year of Culture’ and, second, during the 1999 air strikes on Serbia led by NATO.
Milošević rejected turbo-folk during the ‘Year of Culture’, when, in August 1994,
the Serbian Ministry of Culture declared a ‘struggle against kitsch’. Gordy argues
26
Reynolds, Retromania, p. 421.
27
Biljana Stjelja, “Povratak Devedesetih: Život u Turbo Ritmu”, Vecernje Novosti
Online (2 October 2011), accessed 4 May 2012, http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/
aktuelno.69.html:347334-Povratak-devedesetih-Zivot-u-turbo-ritmu.
that Milošević’s change in public position – from support to opposition – towards

the Serb para-state in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Radovan Karadžić, also
moved to marginalise turbo-folk. Milošević’s opportunistic attempt to appeal
to the international community as a champion of peace meant that turbo-folk
performers, which the regime had supported to promote the nationalist cause,
became embarrassing.28 The Serbian Ministry of Culture’s announcement that 1995
would be the ‘Year of Culture’ engaged a struggle against kitsch with the aim of
affirming ‘true cultural values’. While its main effect was a public attack on turbo-
folk as a polluter of cultural values, it remained little more than a slick advertising
campaign – developed by the Belgrade affiliate of Saatchi & Saatchi – with no
practical policies or actual funding for projects.29 The ‘Year of Culture’ did nothing
to diminish the popularity of turbo-folk – rather, the open attack against it gave
turbo-folk the semblance of having autonomy from the state. This meant two things
for turbo-folk. On the one hand, the regime publicly identified it as kitsch popular
culture, effectively distancing it from the national identity favoured by the state.
However, on the other hand, by never taking actual steps to remove turbo-folk from
the air, the regime positioned it as a pseudo-subversive expression of vox populi.
Turbo-folk’s excess and energy provided what Pavle Levi calls ‘a false offering
of instinctual freedom form a perspective in line with repressive nationalism’.30
Turbo-folk’s aestheticisation of collective enjoyment into a spectacle provided
a quasi-relief from the repressive state. However, in positioning turbo-folk
as the symbolic opposite to a state-controlled national identity, Milošević also
transformed the permissive injunction of turbo-folk to enjoy (‘you may!’) into the
prescriptive duty to enjoy (‘you must!’) in order to feel free. Thus, the nationalism
of turbo-folk, rather than providing a stable point of identification, promoted
hedonism and permissivity that depended on Milošević as its symbolic support.
This meant that turbo-folk manifested the inherent tensions of Serbian nationalism
and translated it into mixed and conflicting messages for its audience. The best
example of this is found in the turbo-folk hit from 1989 by Bosnian Serb Mitar
Mirić, entitled ‘No One Can Touch Us’ (‘Nemože Nam Niko Ništa’).
This song describes a passionate love affair between a couple ready to defy
the world, articulated in the chorus line as ‘No one can touch us, we are stronger
than destiny, they can only hate us, because they don’t love us’. While this was a
huge hit in ex-Yugoslavia, the song became the nationalist battle cry during the
nineties in Serbia. The chorus line became a manifesto that combined the siege
mentality paranoia of a ‘global conspiracy against Serbia’ with a self-exoticising
reference to ‘others’ coveting the Serbian passion for life. This malleable potential
of turbo-folk is particularly significant in the way it transforms love songs into
nationalist anthems, yet does so on a sufficiently universal level so that it can easily
28
Gordy, The Culture of Power in Serbia, p. 154.
29
Ibid., pp. 155–9.
30
Pavle Levi, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and
Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 104.
be translated into any context. This is clearly evidenced by the song’s popularity
in other ex-Yugoslav republics. The transnational appeal of turbo-folk, and ‘No
One Can Touch Us’ in particular, is also evident in Srđan Dragojević’s cinematic
representation of the song, which will be discussed in Chapter 5.
While the 1999 NATO air strikes may have turned the tide against Milošević,
who was eventually toppled in 2000, their role in the representation of nationalism
through turbo-folk meant that they marked a profound moment of transformation
from Serbian nationalism into pan-Balkan regionalism. The air strikes against
Serbia, while triggered by Milošević’s ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo,
were also an overreaction of the West after years of procrastinating in the face
of Serbian aggression in Bosnia and Croatia. Promoted as a humanitarian
intervention, the air strikes avoided civilian casualties and targeted infrastructure
such as roads, bridges and communication hubs. While the air strikes were also
aimed at destabilising the hold of Milošević over Serbia, domestically (and in
many cases internationally) they had the counter effect of elevating him from a
nationalist dictator into a symbol of resistance against the new world order. After
years of opposition protests in Serbia and numerous failed attempts to overthrow
Milošević, the NATO intervention provided once more a cause behind which all
of Serbia could unite.
The political parties seized on this opportunity. The state organised anti-NATO
demonstrations all over Serbia, particularly in Belgrade, where the public gathered
as human shields on bridges to ‘protect’ the bridges from being bombed. People
stood there in freezing winter conditions and wore target symbols, showing that
everyone in Serbia was now an innocent target. Music played a significant part
in the demonstrations and they soon developed into a month-long spectacle of
turbo-folk stars ‘singing against the bombs’ in a show of patriotic defiance. This
‘collective Bakhtinian carnivalization of social life’ not only provided the perfect
combination of ideology and turbo-folk, but did so as a staged performance for
Western audiences.31 Television footage of the demonstrations regularly featured
crude posters of a hermaphrodite Tony Blair and Bill Clinton’s sexual relations with
Monica Lewinsky set against the soundtrack of turbo-folk anthems such as ‘No
One Can Touch Us’. Thus, while Serbia appeared to be a country led by a dictator
engaged in ethnic cleansing and unwilling to relinquish power, it also symbolised
one of the last remaining obstacles to the global spread of the new world order.
Two things are crucial to this discussion. First, this symbol of Serbia as a
place of resistance to the global hegemony of America was a performed media
event for the West, with an emphasis on self-exoticisation and self-victimisation.
Serbian television regularly reported how the Serbs were viewed globally and
how their protests were garnering public support abroad. Second, despite being
organised and financed by the state, the protests were always presented as an
authentic expression of the people’s will. Even the entertainment of turbo-folk
31
Writings, Vol. 2, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (New York: Continuum, 2006), 265.
music, which was commissioned and financed by political parties, was seen as
a spontaneous show of solidarity. During an interview at one event, Ceca, who
regularly performed at the demonstrations, said, ‘I am a proud Serb … we are all
defending Kosovo, the heart of Serbia, and if necessary we will all die for it’.32
This performance of exotic and passionate Serb patriot nationalism, even to
the point of risking one’s life, and all while having fun, contrasted to the cold
and calculated hegemony of NATO. This is arguably why the representation of
nationalism in turbo-folk broke through its isolation in Serbia. The aim was to
raise the morale of the demonstrators through a calculated performance of the
soulful defiance of the Serbs. However, in so doing, turbo-folk became unhinged
from Serbian nationalism and turned into an abstracted expression of regional
fear of neoliberalism and globalisation. Before this moment, turbo-folk was an
expression of Serbian backwardness and chauvinism that appeared as a faded
shell of the popularity of folk in Yugoslavia. The protests did not bring anything
new to the situation. If anything, they affirmed the Serbian dedication to the
nationalist cause in being unwilling to let go of Kosovo. Yet, by articulating this
nationalism as a passionate form of resistance to the dreaded neoliberal new world
order, the protests paved the way for turbo-folk to become the soundtrack to this
resistance. The significance of the protests in the trajectory of turbo-folk is that
they shared the intimate relationship that existed between the performance of class
through music, that shifted into a performance of nationalism as class through
music, and that could finally shift again into a performance of nationalism as a
transnational resistance to globalisation. After the anti-NATO demonstrations and
fall of Milošević, turbo-folk seemed to disappear into the history of the nineties.
Evidently, once it had allowed for the abstraction of nationalism to take place, it
could be forgotten.
Mediated Immediacy
Following the fall of the Milošević regime in 2000, the defeat of Serbia in four
wars, the bombing of Serbia by NATO and the assassination of pro-European Prime
Minister Đinđić in 2003, Serbia attempted to purge itself of much of the criminal
elements that marked it during the nineties. This effort was evident in the mass
arrests of criminal clans in Belgrade in connection with the Đinđić assassination.
As the decimated economy was slowly recovering, primarily through privatisation
and foreign investment, Serbia sought to change its international image from a
pariah state to a potential member of the European Union.
With regard to turbo-folk, this meant that, in post-Milošević Serbia, turbo-
folk became identified by pro-European liberals as a threat to democratic, urban
32
A translation of mine in All That Folk (Belgrade: B92 Television, 2004).
and cosmopolitan European culture.33 The media ceased supporting the music and
performers started to turn away from turbo-folk, looking instead to a more pop-
oriented sound. Ironically, after 2000, turbo-folk also prompted protests by right-
wing nationalists in Serbia who saw it as a pro-Islamic threat to the ‘national
character’ and ‘spiritual space’ of Serbian national identity.34 Turbo-folk was
routinely condemned by its critics who saw it as harmful, and by its fans who
now saw it as an irrelevant description of the music. In addition, turbo-folk’s
popularity in all the former Yugoslav republics (already evident in the previous
decade) became even more apparent. Turbo-folk stars started performing ‘over the
border’ and, despite frequent fierce protests and public debates that still featured
nationalist sentiments, turbo-folk became a desirable, albeit controversial, cultural
commodity in the region. As Catherine Baker’s study of turbo-folk’s popularity
in Croatia suggests, nationalist objectives that sought to create separate cultural
spaces in the nineties had not managed to create a lasting fracture, and turbo-
folk emerged as the primary cultural mechanism for dealing with the pressures of
globalisation and neoliberalism.35 With local turbo-folk stars appearing regularly
in all ex-Yugoslav republics, turbo-folk became the primary cultural space through
which South-east European societies represented themselves. The media ban on
turbo-folk only helped further its image as a grassroots resistance to globalisation,
particularly with younger audiences.
Importantly, rather than being a process of cultural colonisation of ex-
Yugoslavia by turbo-folk, the nationalism promoted by turbo-folk in the neoliberal
context is, as Zala Volčič and Karmen Erjavec argue, a market-based, consumption-
oriented phenomenon:
[A] mode of consumption increasingly oriented toward the sentimental

and kitschy aesthetics of commercially produced cultural spectacles … As
the sense of national belonging is handed over to the machinations of the
marketplace, nationalist sentiments are commercialized, with all the trappings
of manipulative sentimentality.36
As the nationalism of the previous decade was transformed to suit the needs of
de-territorialised capitalism, its cultural branding of turbo-folk could disappear.
However, while the nationalist content changed to the point of invisibility,
permission to indulge in the hedonist consumerism championed by turbo-folk
33
Branislav Dimitrijević, “Global Turbo-folk”, NIN 2686 (20 June 2002), accessed 20
September 2012, http://www.nin.co.rs/2002-06/20/23770.html. Translation accessed 18
November 2011, http://www.ex-yupress.com/nin/nin139.html.
34
Ivan Čolović, “Culture, Nation, Territory”, Republika 288–289 (2002): 1–31.
35
Catherine Baker, Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War and Nationalism
in Croatia since 1991 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
36
Zala Volčič and Karmen Erjavec, “The Paradox of Ceca and the Turbofolk
Audience”, Popular Communication 2 (2010): 114.
became abstracted into a self-exoticising version of regionalism. I describe this

regionalism as ‘new Balkanness’: a loose and shifting transnational association
steeped in the shared enjoyment of music and its associated lifestyle. New
Balkanness is a form of nationalism deprived of malicious content and therefore
more palatable to the standards of tolerant neoliberal capitalism. The crucial
point here is that, while new Balkanness may not necessarily weaken nationalist
sentiments, it abstracts and displaces them sufficiently to create a shared
transnational cultural space. This space is primarily defined through an inversion of
turbo-folk from a marker of backwardness and primitivism into a self-exoticising
label of passion, emotion and joy of life, in contrast to the lifeless West.
Ceca provides an excellent example of this transformation. As Ceca’s image
changed drastically after Arkan was assassinated in 2000, she withdrew from the
public for two years and from politics completely, stepping down from her appointed
role as the president of Arkan’s SSJ to focus on humanitarian work. Following her
four-month imprisonment in 2003 (on allegations of involvement in the Đinđić
assassination), Ceca emerged as a changed figure whose image was transformed
from a nationalistic icon into a depoliticised pop culture commodity. This new
image celebrated a sense of identity that aligned with the influx of neoliberalism in
the region, including individualism, economic success and personal empowerment
against the odds.37 She became the president of Arkan’s soccer club, Obilić, and
was seen as a successful independent businesswoman – something that further
served to dissociate her from nationalism. This transformation was without doubt
a deliberate strategy. Lending evidence to this is a 2004 interview during which
Ceca claimed, ‘I don’t sing songs about nationalism. I only sing about love. And
besides, Milošević has been gone for four years, and I’m still here’.38 Ceca also
rejected the term ‘turbo-folk’ as a description of her music, stating in 2004: ‘They
are constantly saying that I sing turbo-folk. That is not true. First, I’d like someone
to explain to me what turbo-folk is. Because I can’t explain what turbo-folk is’.39
Via this shift in public personality and deliberate disassociation with turbo-folk,
Ceca’s popularity grew even further within the region, with successful tours in
all ex-Yugoslav republics, except for Croatia. Today, Ceca transcends national
divides and provides a source of ‘reconciliation based on the regional appeal of
consumer culture’.40
This transnational branding is particularly evident in Ceca’s album Ideally Bad
(Idealno Loša, 2006). Musically, this has highly polished production standards
and the bare minimum of Serbian folk music references in Ceca’s vocal delivery.
It has synthesised folk instruments, such as trumpets and the Serbian traditional
flute, the Frula. The album features a series of ballads implicitly dedicated to her
late husband Arkan. In the new circumstances of coming to terms with neoliberal
37
Ibid., 104.
38
Author’s translation, All That Folk.
39
Ibid.
40
Volčič and Erjavec, “The Paradox of Ceca and the Turbofolk Audience”, 104.
sociability in ex-Yugoslavia, these abstracted sentimental laments have entirely

new meanings (no songs explicitly mention Arkan). Through pop sensibility
infused with folk-inspired melancholy, Ceca’s music not only represents a longing
for a dead husband, but is also a symbolic reminder of a ‘soul’ being destroyed
during the transition into capitalism. This is particularly evident in the song ‘My
Beautiful Thunder’ (‘Lepi Grome Moj’), which is implicitly addressed to Arkan
and is an open question about ‘what went wrong’ in a relationship. The song never
suggests that this crisis in the relationship is due to a lack of love or passion,
but rather gestures towards destructive external forces, which are here naturalised
through the image of a maelstrom. The male bass choir that accompanies Ceca
during the chorus line ‘do you remember my beautiful thunder’ suggests a sense
of impending doom, while the upbeat rhythm and cheerful main melody contrast
with a sense of happy resilience. Symbolic of a successful and independent woman
who has overcome significant hardship, Ceca’s blend of self-victimisation and
cathartic exaltation in ‘My Beautiful Thunder’ pander to the exoticised self-image
of ex-Yugoslavia to become representative of people’s unrelenting lust for life in
the face of adversity.
The representation of a shared culture through turbo-folk shifted dramatically
in the previous three decades as it broke with overt expressions of nationalism as a
vehicle for exclusion. Throughout the recent history of ex-Yugoslavia, turbo-folk
remained a consistently popular cultural representation of an identity. To account
for this seemingly trans-historical and transnational appeal, I follow Baker’s
suggestion that turbo-folk should be understood as a conceptual category, rather
than a stylistic description of music.41 As such, the term ‘turbo-folk’ can entail
a range of meanings, including parody (it was coined by jazz musician Rambo
Amadeus as a parody of folk in Yugoslavia), derision (it is used as a negative
label that suggests backwardness, rural primitivism and nationalism) and value
judgement (it suggests kitsch, the nouveau riche class and generally low culture).
However, it can also refer to intentional self-exoticisation as a marker of imagined
Balkan temperament and mentality, whose spontaneity, passion and emotion stand
in contrast to the anaemic and lifeless West.
It is precisely the representational and conceptual fluidity of turbo-folk as a
communicator of populism that allows it to be framed as a vanishing mediator
of nationalism. The new cultural conditions and the new musical form borne
out of turbo-folk mask the nationalist ideology of its inception. As nationalism
represented by turbo-folk adapts to the new material conditions of de-territorialised
capital removed from particular identities, its meaning shifts away from negative
labels towards a seemingly empowering self-exoticisation. As this new form of
cultural consumption of nationalism – divorced from the legacy of the violence of
41
Catherine Baker, “The Concept of Turbofolk in Croatia: Inclusion/Exclusion in
the Construction of National Musical Identity”, in Nation in Formation: Inclusion and
Exclusion in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Catherine Baker et al. (London:
SSEES, 2007), p. 139.
recent history and steeped in carefree hedonism – becomes more central to how
the neoliberal system is viewed, turbo-folk can fall off as a conceptual form.
EPP 2: Imagine all the Nationalists
To highlight this point, a final chapter can be added to the account of Ceca’s career
and its relationship to representing national identity. This does not mean bringing
the discussion of her music closer to the present. Ceca released two more albums,
Love Lives (Ljubav Živi, 2011) and C-Club (2012) that further ventured into Euro-
pop territory, similarly to Ideally Bad. She is very likely to continue along this
path. Rather, I will follow the mental experiment proposed by Croatian author Ante
Perković. Perković notes the similarities between Serbian and Croatian political
and musical scenes in the nineties, arguing that Croatia also had its own brand of
turbo-folk, with the only difference being certain cultural signifiers.42 The next
chapter will discuss the phenomenon of ‘homebrand’ turbo-folk in Croatia and
Slovenia. Here I wish to expand on Perković’s critique of the ‘narcissism of small
differences’ that has marked Serbia–Croatia relations since the nineties. Perković
proposes an imaginary duet between Ceca and Marko Perković ‘Thompson’.
Marko Perković ‘Thompson’, nicknamed after the submachine gun, is a
controversial Croatian ‘patriot’ performer. His music fuses rock marked with
Christian and historic themes, Croatian folkloric elements and Croatian nationalism
with overt use of the language of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna
Država Hrvatska, NDH – a World War II criminal ally of Nazi Germany and
fascist Italy).43 Thompson, in many ways, is the reverse image of Ceca in that they
both embody particular cultural narratives and histories about ‘the nation’. Their
symbolic function is not merely to represent those histories, but to exist as living
constructions of divergent and often contradictory stories. Ceca’s brand of Serb
nationalism is consumed as much by Croats as Thompson’s aggressive macho
patriotism is enjoyed by the Serbs. I personally witnessed a bar full of drunken
Serb nationalists singing along to Thompson and complaining about Serbs not
having ‘such great artists of their own’. In this sense, both Ceca and Thompson
are bizarre media constructions that are not truly representative of any particular
place or people, but are reflective of ‘imagined’ communities of people existing in
mythological places.
Thus, the joining of these two seemingly polar opposite ‘patriots’ would
be based not on musical grounds, nor on shared audiences, but rather on the
fundamental similarity of their respective symbolic positions as popular figures.
As Perković writes:
42
43
Reana Senjković and Davor Dukić, “Virtual Homeland?: Reading the Music on
Offer on a Particular Web Page”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 8/1 (2005): 59.
both are national symbols which the establishment would gladly get rid of, both
are in their own way on the edge of the law (and certainly outside of the politically
correct), both are romantic heroes to their fans, both are top pop products
without competition. Paradoxically, these two self-declared nationalists through
their music function as a serious factor of integration between the republics of
former Yugoslavia.44
This hypothetical turbo-folk hit – which is perhaps best left untitled – features a
series of floating signifiers that tap into the shared space of ex-Yugoslavia, and
the destruction of that space. Yet these signifiers need to operate on a sufficiently
abstract level to allow for contradictory associations. Here, it is possible to provide
some broad outlines of the lyrics.45
The male verse should indicate an experienced veteran, which can suggest
both combat duties and a lover. He is to be mildly regretful about his past life,
somewhere between Marcel Proust’s melancholy and Tiger Woods’s regret about
his sex addiction. Importantly, he is to provide strong hints about the blossoming
new romance because love needs a future projection. The female verse needs to
proclaim devotion to the loved one, and cheerful resignation about his hedonism
and tendencies towards substance abuse – despite his melancholy about this, as
suggested in the male verse. In particular, the female verse needs to make clear
that there is an unwritten understanding that the male will return ‘to my arms’
after many adventures, so that he can be healed. Symbolically, this verse should
be a combination of oedipal maternal-lover protectiveness and Antigone-like
tragic heroism. The chorus needs to synthesise these two perspectives into an
upbeat triumphant proclamation of love that prevails over significant obstacles.
Crucially, all floating signifiers to love need to be universal enough that they can
refer to a number of paternal symbols of power (including dead political leaders).
In addition to the lyrics, the form of the duet is crucial because it will recall one
of the most popular staples of music in Yugoslavia: duets that pair performers of
different ethnicities as a way to symbolise transnational unity.
The duet between Ceca and Thompson would highlight the fundamental
similarity between Serb and Croat nationalist songs. Not only were these songs
transplanted from the same repertoire, including the adaptation of pro-communist
songs, but they were often only discernible by a few words. The hypothetical
nationalist duet would also flag the crucial role that the mythology generated by the
popular media in the region plays in perpetuating the public profile of performers
such as Ceca and Thompson. Accordingly, one might propose that the shooting
of the video for the hypothetical hit could take place on the movie set of Srđan
Dragojević’s The Parade, which will be discussed in Chapter 6. The song could be
the perfect soundtrack to Dragojević’s Balkan exoticisation, particularly the scene
44
Perković, The Seventh Republic, p. 146 (author’s translation).
45
Here, I am drawing on Rambo Amadeus’s sketch-song ‘How to Make a Hit’ from
his live album Better One Warm Beer than Four Cold Ones (2004).
in which nationalists of all Balkan denominations go on a road trip across the

region, singing turbo-folk and together defying neoliberalism. What decades of
nationalism could not bring together would be joined in the ultimate commercial
shock tactic of the mythological Balkans: turbo-folk that transcends all national
borders and brings together former enemies.
At the heart of this hypothetical duet is Catherine Baker’s suggestion that
turbo-folk is a conceptual category. This can now be expanded to add that turbo-
folk is a category of the empty signifier. This zero-level turbo-folk is a travesty
on a number of levels: to the nationalists, it tarnishes the national purity of the
artists; to the progressive liberals, it is the joining of all that is culturally wrong;
and to the Yugo-nostalgic types, it is the tarnishing of one of most beloved staples
of popular music.46 This zero-level turbo-folk is equally offensive to all sides, with
the perception of the travesty depending on the observer’s group belonging. Thus,
turbo-folk is the empty signifier with no meaning, functioning to signify only the
presence of meaning.
It should be argued that zero-level turbo-folk enables all members of each
nationality to experience themselves as such. This can be best illustrated by the
musical-national paradox I witnessed during the summer of 1992 in Mostar, a
southern town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the middle of a bloody civil war.
Mostar was besieged by Serb forces stationed on the surrounding hills, and defended
by a volunteer defence force largely comprised of local Croats and Muslims. As
these local soldiers returned to their neighbourhoods after a shift at the front line,
they would spend their nights getting drunk to a repertoire of patriotic songs. One
song that featured regularly and triggered the loudest sing-alongs was ‘If You
Were Wounded’ by Ceca. In terms of content, the song was designed to lift soldier
morale: an upbeat love dedication by a woman to her (warrior) male, including
a chorus-line promise of giving blood if he were wounded, and giving both her
eyes if he were blind. However, ironically, the song was not intended for Croat
and Muslim soldiers; Ceca had performed this song for Serb soldiers, publicly
proclaimed her Serb nationalism, and was already associated with Arkan at the
time. Even though all this was public knowledge, the local soldiers in Mostar did
not see it as an obstacle to loudly enjoying the music that ideologically served as
a mobiliser for the opposite side.
Displaced Mediator
While on the topic of turbo-folk as an empty signifier of national identity, it is

possible to again return to Žižek’s idea of the vanishing mediator in order to
consider an extra dimension of meaning. Even though Žižek has consistently
deployed the vanishing mediator since first introducing the concept in the early
nineties, the only time he has used it in relation to the explosion of nationalism
46
Personal conversations with all three groups in Serbia and Croatia confirm this.
in ex-Yugoslavia is to describe the transition in Slovenia from ‘really existing

socialism’ to capitalism. For Žižek, the vanishing mediators in nineties Slovenia
were new social movements, punk and the New Left, which triggered the process
of democratisation but lost ground after the victory of ‘democracy’:
Culture itself, the set of cultural preferences, changed radically: from punk and
Hollywood to national poems and quasi-folkloric commercial music (in contrast
to the usual idea according to which the universal American-Western culture
over-shadows authentic national roots).47
In this context, the vanishing mediator for Žižek represents a momentary realisation
of an ‘excess of meaning’, of the ‘ideal form’ deprived of its content, before a
return to the ‘normal’ state of things:
What we have here is the tension between the ‘open’ situation when a new
social past is generated, and its subsequent ‘closure’ … the circle is closed when
the new social pact establishes itself in its necessity and renders invisible its
‘possibility’, the open, undecided process that engendered it.48
Cultural phenomena – art and punk music – created the ground for democratisation –
for productive possibilities in the moment of change. These possibilities were then
reabsorbed into the capitalist order.
This movement between opening and closing is crucial to the present discussion
because, in contrast to these progressive cultural forces, turbo-folk as a vanishing
mediator represents a cultural agent that first created a closed condition within the
transition from socialism to capitalism, and then created an open, yet problematic,
condition. To paraphrase Žižek, turbo-folk, which in many ways triggered
the process of cultural hyper-nationalism and fought its heaviest battles, is not
enjoying its rewards. When the new social pact of transnational regionalism is
established as a mechanism for coping with global capitalism, it renders invisible
its ‘possibility’: the nationalist, chauvinist culture of turbo-folk that engendered it.
One way of understanding this contrast in the function of music as the vanishing
mediator in Slovenia and Serbia is to acknowledge that this mediation creates an
‘open’ condition with little guarantee of what will follow. This condition in both
cases refers to a form of the negation of socialism that can have different content,
such as progressive cultural movements or retrograde chauvinism. Another way
of understanding this contrast is to account for the differences between the socio-
political and socioeconomic frameworks of Serbia and Slovenia in the early
nineties. However, it must be argued that both examples of vanishing mediators are
fundamentally the same, insofar as they represent a negation of socialism through
47
Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying With the Negative (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993),
p. 228.
48
Ibid., pp. 227–8.
an insistence on individualism. While they may appeal to the opposite sides of that
individualism – one championing consumption and the other opposing it – both
nevertheless embrace Western capitalism as a source of liberation.
Turbo-folk is thus better understood in line with Jodi Dean’s rearticulation
of the vanishing mediator as a ‘displaced mediator’ – that is, ‘a mediator whose
functioning is displaced from what might have been understood (retroactively)
as its original role’.49 Both punk and turbo-folk as vanishing mediators did not
vanish, but rather were displaced from their earlier position by the onset of
capitalism. With turbo-folk, this displacement refers to the shifting in nationalist
cultural politics, from a political (nationalist) position to a seemingly apolitical
popular cultural form. What originated as a deeply nationalist cultural form of
populism has, through Western standards of commercialisation, turned into an
ostensibly harmless popular musical form. If nationalism is, as Dean suggests, a
‘shock-absorber against the structural imbalance of capitalism’,50 then turbo-folk
is its extension – a shock absorber that usurps nationalism as resistance to global
capitalism into the economy as a consumable commodity.
Turbo-folk thus exists as the intersection of two levels of meaning. On the
first level, turbo-folk is the cultural representation of nationalism – a realisation
of the excess of nineties Serbia with all its contradictions. In short, it is a standing
reminder of perceived Balkan backwardness and primitivism. However, a closer
inspection of turbo-folk demonstrates that it is representative of almost exactly
the opposite. Its primitiveness and backwardness became the means of resisting
globalisation, and turbo-folk became the soundtrack for a pan-Balkan transnational
identity, deprived of all nationalist elements. As a result, turbo-folk became
‘regular’ pop music with only the most formal of similarities to its nationalist
predecessor. The paradox of the vanishing of turbo-folk is that it is never posited
as the origin of today’s pop folk music in Serbia, and the term ‘turbo-folk’ does not
exist in this genealogy. Nationalist turbo-folk is always perceived in isolation as a
cultural aberration that appeared at a certain time and disappeared with that time,
despite the fact that its cultural logic permeates every aspect of today’s sociability
in Serbia and the Balkans.
Understanding turbo-folk through the concept of the vanishing mediator
raises important questions about the changing meaning of cultural mobilisers of
nationalism. The populism of turbo-folk outlived the demise of socialist Yugoslavia
and nationalist Serbia, co-opting both positions into a historically suspended and
emotionally charged anti-neoliberalism. If the violent destruction of Yugoslavia
was the reverse image of the ‘birth’ of pan-European democracy post-1989, then
the cultural products of that destruction carry an important lesson about today’s
populisms in Europe.
49
Jodi Dean, Žižek’s Politics (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 111.
50
Ibid.
Chapter 3
Beyond Serbia: Turbo-folk across
Cultural and National Boundaries
Let us begin with a paraphrase: a spectre is haunting the Balkans – the spectre of
turbo-folk music. All the powers of ex-Yugoslavia have entered a regional alliance
to exorcise this spectre: the cultural elites, the intellectuals, the nationalists, the
conservatives and the progressive liberals. Almost universally rejected by this
alliance, and almost universally embraced by the public, turbo-folk represents a
nexus for a range of political, cultural and historical anxieties to be played out.
In a very important sense, aside from the seemingly unwavering popularity
of turbo-folk, one thing that unites all Balkans is the way the term itself has
become internalised in the region as the projection of negative and undesirable
characteristics. This tendency to view turbo-folk as evidence of more primitive
and backward societies – symbolically located to the south and the east – is
often connected to perceptions of particular ethnic groups. However, it is just as
often not based on ethnic or national differences, but rather on perceptions of
cultural otherness. There is ample evidence across the borders of ex-Yugoslavia
of perceptions of turbo-folk as ‘the other within’ – something undesirable that
needs to be removed and distanced from the cultural space of the nation and the
individual. Yet, there is just as much to suggest that perceptions of turbo-folk
as a kernel of ‘authentic Balkans’ standing in opposition to ‘cold and soulless’
globalisation remain intact when moving between ex-Yugoslav states. While the
finer points of this perception may change – in Croatia turbo-folk is de facto Serb,
while, in Slovenia, it is Balkan – the underlying logic is almost identical.
The previous chapter articulated the shifts in representations of nationalism
through turbo-folk in Serbia, whereby the problematic elements of turbo-folk
(nationalism) dropped off, and turbo-folk became perceived as ‘normal’ pop music.
In order to understand the significance of turbo-folk as the cultural space at the
centre of debates over national identity and popular culture, this chapter extends
the discussion to examine the way turbo-folk exists as a genre in Slovenia, Croatia
and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As this chapter will show, popular perceptions of
turbo-folk are crucial to understanding perceptions of symbolic inclusion and
exclusion within national spaces in ex-Yugoslavia. Importantly, these perceptions
of inclusion and exclusion not only function through local debates over turbo-
folk, but also play a key role in audience identification with this music in the
ex-Yugoslav migrant community in Australia. Accordingly, this chapter will also
address the way audience perception of Ceca and turbo-folk in Australia provides
insight into the working of national identification in diasporic communities.
In an important sense, stylistic or lyrical differences between turbo-folk in

Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia are virtually non-existent.
In all cases, the performers follow the same basic formula of fusing elements of folk
sound – usually through an instrument that functions as a signifier of folklore and
of national identity – with the ‘base’ of electronic dance pop. Where they exist, the
differences operate at the level of micro-identity politics discernible only to local
audiences: through the use of a specific instrument or through the use of particular
linguistic expressions. Taking these musical micro-politics as its departure point,
this chapter will analyse Croatian and Slovene ‘homebrand’ turbo-folk. It will
show that the main way to distinguish between turbo-folk in Serbia from Croatia
and Slovenia is the performers’ attitude towards the representations of national
identity through the music. In both Croatia and Slovenia, there is an ironic distance
towards symbols associated with national identity. Croatian performer Severina
released a song, ‘Croatian Woman’, in which she ironically plays on her public
perception as a performer who is ‘Serbifying’ Croatia, and, in the accompanying
music video, employs military aesthetics that reference Croatia’s fascist past.
Slovenian Atomik Harmonik’s music video for song ‘Turbo Polka’ plays with
codes of being Slovene and transgresses the boundaries of national symbols in
Slovenia. This kind of ironic attitude towards symbols of national identity does
not exist in turbo-folk performers from Serbia. It is impossible to imagine Ceca
playing with codes of Serb nationhood.
One way of explaining the more critical and playful attitude towards symbols
of national identity in turbo-folk by Slovene and Croatian performers is to suggest
that turbo-folk is always perceived as de facto Serb, and thus requires a minimum
of ironic distance by non-Serb performers. As argued in the previous chapter,
turbo-folk is always perceived as cultural excess and often framed through the
politics of nationalism. However, by the early 2000s, turbo-folk was purged of
its nationalist excess and transformed into the soundtrack for regional resistance
to globalisation. I previously described this regionalism as a loose and shifting
transnational association defined through an inversion of turbo-folk from a marker
of backwardness and primitivism to a self-exoticising label of passion and emotion,
in contrast to the lifeless West. As this chapter will show, this currency of passion
and emotion is crucial for understanding Ceca’s popularity outside Serbia. Despite
the existence of local turbo-folk in Croatia and Slovenia, and despite the stigma
attached to Ceca’s image and public personality, she continues to be considered the
undisputed diva of turbo-folk. This is because, in contrast to the critical and ironic
attitude of Croatian and Slovenian turbo-folk performers, Ceca’s music evokes
extreme affective states to suggest that she is more sincere about her music.
Turbo-folk in Croatia
The previous chapter suggested that there were significant similarities between
the Serbian and Croatian political and musical scenes in the nineties. Both were
Turbo-folk across Cultural and National Boundaries 83
driven by nationalist politics that emphasised culture as a direct extension of state

building. Both were closely linked to the political regimes of Franjo Tuđman in
Croatia and Slobodan Milošević in Serbia. Both musical scenes were split between
performers that openly embraced nationalist politics and performers that refused
to do so. The latter group suffered the consequences of their non-patriotic stance
through media exclusion, marginalisation from the public sphere and difficulty
booking spaces for performances.1 While the previous chapter outlined some of
the processes of nationalist politics in Serbia, nationalisation in Croatia under
Tuđman (1990–1999) included changes to the language that introduced ‘purely
Croatian’ words, renaming of streets and buildings, and the erasure and exclusion
of all references to Yugoslavia and Serbia. This encompassed all forms of popular
culture, such as music and cinema. For example, during the nineties, Serbian films
were rarely, if ever, screened in Croatia. One notable exception was Serb Director
Srđan Dragojević’s film Wounds (1998), discussed in Chapter 6, which was
released in cinemas, albeit with subtitles. This paradoxical gesture of linguistic
demarcation of difference was lampooned in the press and not repeated – Croatian
and Serbian languages are near identical, which made the use of subtitles absurd
and completely redundant.
The previous chapter also outlined the fundamental similarity between the
musical taste of nationalists. There are countless examples in music that affirm this
point, all of which raise an important question about the process of identification that
underpins it. This includes the previously cited examples of Croat soldiers listening
to Ceca to lift their morale and Serbs listening to Thompson extolling his virtues as
a great patriotic artist. This paradoxical dynamic is often heard in accounts of the
war, and forms the central theme of Dragojević’s film Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames
(1996), which will be discussed in Chapter 6. The most common explanation of
this phenomenon is the ‘revenge of the countryside’ story, which suggests that all
nationalists in the Balkans come from low socioeconomic rural and uneducated
backgrounds. Due to these backgrounds, they all have the same (lack of) musical
taste and respond to the same kinds of music. A number of commentators have
suggested that this notion is little more than an easily deployed cliché. To paraphrase
Žižek, the problem here is not that the reports are untrue, but rather that the motives
that drive such assertions – that all nationalists are primitives who listen to turbo-
folk – are false.2 This is a case of ‘lying in the guise of truth’ because the underlying
fear of ‘Balkan primitivism’ is an ideological position that projects broader social
antagonisms onto the fear of the turbo-folk listening ‘other’.
To move beyond this ideological construction of ‘Balkanness’ in turbo-folk,
it is first necessary to separate turbo-folk from the overly nationalist propaganda
music that was widely available in Serbia and Croatia in the nineties. This kind
1
Gordy and Baker provide detailed accounts of Serbia and Croatia, respectively.
2
Slavoj Žižek, “The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape: Reality and Fantasy in
New Orleans”, In These Times (20 October 2005), accessed 18 November 2012, http://
inthesetimes.com/article/2361.
of music, including Thompson in Croatia and Baja Mali Knindža in Serbia, was
often transplanted from the same repertoire, including the adaptation of pro-
communist songs, and was often only discernible by a few key words (such as
‘Serbia’ instead of ‘Croatia’, and vice versa). Second, it is necessary to highlight
that both Serb and Croatian turbo-folk originated in the same cultural place of
NCFM in Yugoslavia – discussed in Chapter 1 – and their appearance marked a
logical extension of that musical scene. No amount of official nationalist politics
of ‘purification’ or censoring of the media could erase the fundamental cultural
similarities between Serbia and Croatia. This is confirmed by ample evidence that
the process of ‘othering’ based on rural–urban divisions was almost identical in
Serbia and Croatia (and all other ex-Yugoslav republics).
With the gradual warming of Serbia–Croatia relations post-2000, following
the death of Tuđman and arrest of Milošević, the presence of turbo-folk in Croatia
became more pronounced. The year 2000 marked the end of aggressions and hyper-
nationalist politics in Serbia, symbolised by the overthrow of Milošević and the
NATO bombing campaign. This had a significant effect on the regional perception
of Serbia and its cultural products, of which turbo-folk is the most well-known
and, for many, is synonymous with nationalism. This change in attitudes marked a
new era in Serb–Croat relations, in which there was a gradual change in the stigma
attached to turbo-folk, although these relations were still not without difficulties.
As Catherine Baker argues, turbo-folk ‘provided the most contentious issues of
musical politics in Croatia after 2000’ because performers that took on aspects
of the turbo-folk sound, such as Severina Vučković, ‘transgressed the boundary
of national cultural identity according to the pervasive narrative that Croatia was
culturally separate from Bosnia/Serbia’.3 As Baker maintains, turbo-folk in Croatia
conveyed otherness through its foreign/Serbian origin and particularly through
its association with Ceca as ‘a multi-dimensional exclusionary symbol’.4 Baker
correctly identifies the public reaction to the song ‘My Stiletto’ (‘Moja Štikla’),
which was Severina’s 2006 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, as the pinnacle
of these debates:
The ‘Stikla’ case demonstrated the construction of an essentialist concept of

Croatian cultural identity, the process of setting and marking its boundaries
through symbolic means, and the re-presentation of national identities in various
fields of contemporary life.5
3
Catherine Baker, Sounds of the Borderland: Popular Music, War and Nationalism in
Croatia since 1991 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 137.
4
Ibid., pp. 138–9.
5
Catherine Baker, “When Seve Met Bregović: Folklore, Turbofolk and the Boundaries
of Croatian Musical Identity”, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and
Ethnicity 36/4 (2008): 741–64.
The song’s use of musical elements based on folk songs and dance, and the
involvement of Goran Bregović – an ex-Yugoslav musician represented as Serbian
in the Croatian media – enabled suggestions that the song presented ‘a definition
of Croatian turbofolk’.6
On one level, the reference to Severina’s music as ‘Croatian turbo-folk’ is
intended to explain Severina’s (and Bregović’s) fusion of traditional Croatian
folklore, such as ganga and rera dances, with pop sensibility and presentation.
However, this assertion cannot be separated from the implicit view that Severina
violated ‘ethno’ tradition. Baker notes that, in Croatia, ‘genuine’ folklore is viewed
in the context of ‘ethno’ music, while turbo-folk is seen as their perversion. This
is crucial because it suggests that the view of ‘Croatian turbo-folk’ in Croatia
is based more on the rural–urban kitsch–culture dichotomies, rather than
nationalistic distinctions or oppositions to Serbian music per se. While there
undoubtedly remains a certain element of resistance to the ‘Serbness’ of turbo-
folk, this largely seems to be the case with taboo performers, such as Ceca. With
respect to Croatian performers, turbo-folk is largely used as a device for exclusion
based on its characteristic as cultural trash and its association with ‘primitive’
groups. In Croatia, one such group synonymous with cultural otherness is the
Herzegovinians, whose alleged love of turbo-folk is seen as evidence of their
primitiveness and aggressiveness.
While the 2006 case of Severina marked the pinnacle of debates over turbo-
folk in Croatia, these debates were present in the public prior to the case. The most
popular Croatian talk show Latinica (1993–2011) – named after its host, Denis
Latin, but also a reference to the Croatian Latin alphabet – dedicated two shows
to turbo-folk in Croatia in 2002 and 2006. In 2002, two of the invited guests on
Latinica were music performers, presumably invited as symbols of two opposing
viewpoints on turbo-folk that were intended to clash. On one side was Miroslav
Ilić, an iconic NCFM performer from Serbia, who was discussed in the introduction
through his song ‘I Loved A Girl From The City’. Importantly, Ilić is more often
associated with Yugoslavia than Serbia. In his responses, Ilić reinforced these
associations by distancing himself from turbo-folk, supporting the Croatian media
ban on such ‘trash’, and extolling the virtues of the traditional ‘ethno’ sound, of
which he saw himself to be a representative. On the other side was Vesna Pezo, a
relatively unknown Croatian performer, whose music combines instrumentation
steeped in 1980s NCFM and pro-Croatian patriotism. Her 2006 song ‘Croatian
Woman’ (‘Hrvatica’) combines central Serbian accordion instrumentation and
Southern Wind synthesisers with the chorus line ‘Mummy and Daddy won’t help
you, once a Croatian woman kisses you’. In contrast to Ilić, Pezo passionately
defended folk music and argued that most Croats listen to it.
In 2006, Latinica revisited the topic of why turbo-folk is popular in Croatia.
This time, the talk show featured more academics and cultural commentators
and the ‘two sides’ – Serb and Croat – were represented. On the Croat side was
6
Ibid., 750.
Alen Borbaš, a well-known ‘hero’ of the Croatian Homeland War who ‘admitted’
to listening to Ceca and Thompson even during the war. Bombaš discussed his
club in Osijek, known for its turbo-folk performances. On the Serbian side was
Olja Karleuša, a relatively unknown performer (possibly more famous for being
a relative of turbo-folk celebrity Jelena Karleuša than for her own music), whose
responses were subdued and professionally polite. Latinica concluded that turbo-
folk is an inevitable part of everyday life in Croatia and that it functions as a form
of social release and cultural antidote to the transition towards neoliberalism and
the effects of globalisation in Croatia.
It is interesting to note that Severina did not participate in any of the debates on
Latinica, despite the fact that she represented the combination of these factors. As
Baker argues, in this symbolism, Severina represents diluted Croatian adaptations
of Serbian originals, or connotes brash post-transition social values.7 Severina’s
absence from both discussions suggests an underlining desire by Latinica to
maintain that turbo-folk is fundamentally un-Croatian: that its appearance in the
Croatian cultural space is a consequence of larger socio-political shifts, rather
than a native phenomenon. The view that turbo-folk has existed in Croatia for
decades was quickly glossed over in favour of discussions of Croatia as a society
in transition. The view was represented by only one guest in 2006, Aleksej
Gotthardy-Pavlovski, who is currently producing a documentary on turbo-folk in
Croatia for Croatian Radio Television (HRT), due for release in 2014.
Despite her absence from the programme, Severina nevertheless monopolised
the public furore over ‘My Stiletto’ and the stigma of turbo-folk in Croatia to
further her career. In 2008, she released her next studio album entitled Hail Mary
(Zdravo Marijo), which combined a series of contradictory cultural signifiers. The
title is clearly a reference to the debates that surrounded Severina’s Croatianness,
as well as the traditional conservative Catholicism in Croatia. Yet, the album
featured a hit single ‘Gas Gas (Pedal to the Metal)’ that employed a series of
references to turbo-folk and to the debates that surrounded it in the Croatian public
sphere. The energetic upbeat rhythm and brass instrumentation of ‘Gas Gas’ – a
signature style of Goran Bregović, who co-wrote and co-produced the song – are
complemented by the playful, irreverent and highly sexualised lyrics. The song
lyrics knowingly allude to signifiers of turbo-folk – ‘turbo-machine’, ‘turbo-
season’ and ‘turbo-year’ – while playing them off references to Croatian national
identity, such as ‘Latin alphabet’ and ‘Dalmatian freeway’. This was sufficient for
Croatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia) to describe ‘Gas Gas’
as ‘turbo-folk’ in an article that also claimed this to be an act of Serbification by
Severina. Enitled ‘Kako Je Seve Postala Cebe’ (‘How Seve[erina] became the
Serbian Cyrillic Equivalent of her Nickname’), the title was an obvious reference
to Severina’s position as a conveyor of Serbness.8
7
Ibid., 743.
8
Robert Pauletić, “Kako Je Seve Postala Cebe”, Slobodna Dalmacija (17 May 2008).
‘Gas Gas’ playfully alludes to these anxieties through a series of signifiers

that are placed alongside each other. Her references to ‘turbo’ are set against
references to symbols of Croatian nationhood, such as the Dalmatian Coast
(Dalmacija) and the Latin alphabet (Latinica). Further, ‘Gas Gas’ also references
truck driving, which is traditionally a working-class occupation synonymous with
the consumption of NCFM and turbo-folk. One of the most often repeated clichés
about the emergence and spread of turbo-folk music is that is started on the city
fringes and peripheries in truck stop bars (Kafana), and later spread to the cities.
On one hand, it could be argued that such a reading of a pop song with largely
nonsensical lyrics reaches too far in making a connection. However, meta-cultural
references have been the staple of Severina’s repertoire. Her 2004 song ‘Croatian
Woman’ (‘Hrvatica’, 2004) referenced public questioning of her ‘Serbness’, and
made overt critical remarks about other popular music performers in Croatia, such
as the rapper Edo Majka. ‘Gas Gas’ also makes several references to Severina’s
libido and sexual urges (‘the cabin is rocking’) in an ironic gesture towards the
stigma of her 2004 sex home video. After a personal sex tape featuring Severina
and a Croatian businessman was leaked on the internet, it became an overnight
sensation and generated significant (and transnational) attention. It also shifted the
public perceptions of Severina from being seen as good Croatian girl to a figure
that continued to be involved in controversies.
Discussions of turbo-folk in Croatia persist today, and are often connected
to the announcement of a concert by a Serb performer. Even though these
discussions often have nationalist overtones, they are increasingly removed from
the nationalist politics of the nineties. In many ways, the furore over Severina’s
‘Croatian turbo-folk’ was more about a Croatian performer taking on the sound of
‘otherness within’, than about Serb performers coming to Croatia. In fact, when
visiting the Croatian coastline during the summer season, one can see countless
posters announcing concerts by Serb turbo-folk performers. Although Ceca is still
the one notable absence, it is not inconceivable that she could hold a concert there
in the foreseeable future.
Turbo-folk in Slovenia
If turbo-folk occupies a contentious cultural and political position in Croatia, in

Slovenia, it is removed from this ideological component of cultural chauvinism
or political subtext of ‘nationalism by other means’. As Ivan Đorđević suggests,
‘Slovenian youth experiences turbo-folk as merely another possibility in the wide
range of popular music on offer’.9 The relationship of Slovenians to turbo-folk can
be explained through Slovenia’s sense of national identity, and its symbolic and
political position in ex-Yugoslavia. As Alexei Monroe argues, the key structural
9
Ivan Đorđević, “Reception of Neofolk Music in Slovenia: Identity Politics in the
Beat of ‘Easy Listening Tunes’”, Traditiones 39/1 (2010): 137–53.
contradiction of Slovene identity is the dichotomy between the Germanic and

South (Yugo) Slavic cultural spaces and identities.10 On the one hand, Slovenia
was always perceived as a culturally advanced and distinctive space in Yugoslavia.
It was the most economically developed and liberal republic, it did not suffer much
bloodshed or destruction during the early nineties, and it was the first ex-Yugoslav
republic to join the European Union in 2004. Yet, on the other hand, despite being
perceived as ‘the Europe of the Balkans’, Slovenia retains the view of Europe –
Germanic Europe in particular – as being cold, boring and soulless.
The position of turbo-folk in Slovenia can be traced along this dichotomy.
Due to the perceived sense of cultural removal from ‘the Balkans’, represented
by the southern ex-Yugoslav republics, Slovenia can take on the position of
benevolent Europe and thus tolerate turbo-folk as ‘Balkan kitsch’. In Slovenia,
turbo-folk functions to demarcate particular identities largely associated with
non-Slovene ‘Southerners’ – Serbs, Croats and Bosnians – that serves to reinforce
a sense of Slovenia that belongs to Europe. Yet, because it also perceives itself as
different from the cold and heartless Europe, Slovenia can embrace the Balkans
as a positive reframing of itself. As Volčič and Erjavec demonstrate, Ceca is one
of the most popular performers with young Slovenians, representing a positive
reframing of the Balkans:
Ceca consciously represents herself as authentic, passionate, and crazy, someone

who stands in strong counter-distinction to the ‘civilized, orderly, and boring’
old Europe. In this regard, Ceca signifies cultural Otherness in the discourses
of Slovene and Croatian respondents. If they associate Slovene and Croatian
cultural contexts with ‘Western European’ attributes, that is, more rational,
organized, systematic, and work-oriented, they also position the Balkans and
Ceca as symbols of joyful life, authenticity, emotionalism, passion, enjoyment,
and craziness.11
Turbo-folk in Slovenia exists in two main modes: ‘imported’ turbo-folk from the
South and ‘local’ turbo-folk. The primary means through which ‘imported’ turbo-
folk is available are the internet and satellite channels. Cable Pink TV, dedicated
almost exclusively to playing turbo-folk, is one of the most watched channels
in Slovenia.12 ‘Local’ turbo-folk in Slovenia includes a number of performers
that emulate the sound and image of Serbian turbo-folk. There are a number of
Slovenian imitations of Ceca, whose music and appearance largely mimic Ceca’s
image and sound, such as the lead vocalist from the group Turbo Angels.
Slovenia also has its own ‘homebrand’ version of turbo-folk, called turbo-
polka. Appearing in 2004, turbo-polka caused significant media interest, including
10
Alexei Monroe, Interrogation Machine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), p. 17.
11
Zala Volčič and Karmen Erjavec, “The Paradox of Ceca and the Turbofolk
Audience”, Popular Communication 2 (2010): 113.
12
Đorđević, “Reception of Neofolk Music in Slovenia”, 138.
a 2007 documentary film produced by Radio Television Slovenia (RTS) entitled

Turbofolk under Triglav (Turbofolk pod Triglavom). Stylistically and musically,
turbo-polka follows the template of Serbian turbo-folk, fusing dance music beats
and pop vocal melody lines with folk themes. However, it adds the musical signifier
of ‘Slovene’ through the use of the Button Box Accordion, known in Slovenia as
the Frajtonerca. The genre of turbo-folk in Slovenia began in the early 2000s
with the band Atomik Harmonik (translated as Nuclear Accordion). Atomik
Harmonik were the first performers to describe their music as ‘Slovene turbo-
folk’, which was based on the Serbian model of folk music with contemporary
dance production.13 This led to a perception that Slovenian turbo-folk merely
copies the Serbian version. While there undoubtedly is a large degree of influence
of Serbian performers on their Slovenian counterparts, the origins of turbo-folk in
Slovenia can also be traced to performers such the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble,
which mixed Slovenian Polka with elements of pop in the eighties to achieve great
commercial success. Slovenia also had a significant stake in the production and
distribution of NCFM music in Yugoslavia.
In contrast to the melodramatic pomp of Serbian performers such as Ceca,
Slovenian performers of turbo-folk take a self-parodying approach to the music
and public appearances. Performers such as Lepi Dasa (Pretty Boy) are self-
consciously kitsch and adopt a playful attitude towards the codes of masculinity
and machismo implicit in turbo-folk. Atomik Harmonik also self-consciously and
ironically play on the sex appeal of their lead female vocalists, as well as signifiers
of Slovene national identity. Their lyrical content is intentionally nonsensical and
their music videos regularly employ comedy and often look like comedy sketches.
Seemingly, Slovenian turbo-folk performers are much more prepared to admit that
they are not taking themselves and their music seriously.
Basing their music on a mix of on Slovenian folk and Schlager, fused with
pop vocals and dance beats, Atomik Harmonik won first prize in 2004 at one of
the most prestigious music contests in Slovenia with the song ‘A Splashing Hose’
(‘Brizgalna Brizga’). Their first album, released in November of that same year,
sold 25,000 copies, and ‘Brizgalna Brizga’ went to the top of the national charts.
In 2006, they released ‘Turbo Polka’, an English version of ‘Brizgalna Brizga’,
which charted in Austria and Italy. Atomik Harmonik’s trademark turbo-polka
sound and tongue-in-cheek lyrical topics revolving around rural themes are most
evident in ‘Turbo Polka’, which was their biggest international hit. The song is
distinctive for its free mixing of Slovenian and English words that have entered
Slovenian slang, such as ‘bejba’, the phonetic version of ‘baby’. The song follows
the basic pop structure of verse–chorus–verse. The bridge between verses and
chorus consists of a melody played on the Frajtonerca accordion. The two female
vocalists carry most of the melodies, with a third male performer adding the Ricky
Martin-esque verse ‘shake your bum’. The song is decidedly kitsch Euro-pop;
however, it is not without self-awareness. It employs a series of linguistic and
13
Ibid.
musical references to global pop and turbo-folk. The English language employed
is rudimentary, and typical of Euro-pop. While this may be little more than a
marketing attempt to attract a bigger audience, it also suggests an ironic approach
to the canon of pop music.
‘Turbo Polka’ ostensibly has no message other than being a party anthem to
have a good time and meet the right man. There is very little to suggest that ‘Turbo
Polka’ carries, or attempts to convey, a sense of Slovene national identity. The
song is pure pop. Atomik Harmonik’s compatriots Laibach have made a career
writing covers of ‘harmless and nonsensical’ pop music. By changing the format
of songs into military marches with booming vocals that chant the chorus line,
Laibach have helped unearth the ideological components built into pop culture.
Even though the strategies of Laibach are vastly different to the kitsch-nationalism
of turbo-folk, the latter’s over-identification with Western consumerism has been
seen as a ‘fatal’ imitation of global trends in popular culture. In fact, if there is an
ideological message in ‘Turbo Polka’, it is that, in terms of national identity, the
song is an empty signifier: it can stand for anything. It could be from anywhere
in Mitteleuropa, and perhaps displays most clearly the Slovene aspirations
to become an equal member of that community and to repress or distance its
Balkan connections.
EPP 1: Turbo-folk in Bosnia and Herzegovina
One striking absence from studies of turbo-folk is an account of its popularity

and consumption in Bosnia and Herzegovina after 2000 (‘BiH’ hereafter).14 In the
available literature, there is often little more than a passing reference to this, even
though, before the outbreak of the war, after Serbia, NCFM was the most popular
genre of music in BiH, and some of the best-known performers of NCFM and
turbo-folk come from BiH. In Bosnia, as in the other ex-Yugoslav republics, turbo-
folk was a direct outgrowth of the immensely popular NCFM, and still exists as a
major part of the popular music scene. In many ways, BiH turbo-folk – much like
the style of music from Montenegro and Macedonia – is virtually indistinguishable
from the music in Serbia. The popularity of turbo-folk continued to grow during
the war in the nineties, seemingly despite its association with Serb nationalism,
albeit as a lowly and trashy music.15 There are stories of soldiers from opposite
sides of the conflict trading tapes of turbo-folk music during the war. For example,
14
There is work available on music in the Albanian inhabited lands of the Balkans.
See: Jane C. Sugarman, “The Criminals of Albanian Music: Albanian Commercial Folk
Music and Issues of Identity since 1990”, in Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman
Ecumene: Music, Image and Regional Political Discourse, edited by Donna Buchanan
(Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), pp. 269–308.
15
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, “Bosnian and Serbian Popular Music in the 1990s:
Divergent Paths, Contested Meanings, and Shared Sentiments”, in Balkan Popular Culture
I was told a story about Serbs and Bosnian Muslims who were fighting for days,
separated only by a street. Part of the everyday routine was ‘conversations’, during
which the soldiers would yell at each other. During one of these conversations, a
Serb soldier was asked by a Bosnian Muslim soldier if he could get him a cassette
by Dragana Mirković. He delivered the cassette by carefully wrapping it up and
then throwing it over.
Even though the presence of turbo-folk in Bosnia was undeniable even during
the worst years of the war, in the years since the end of the war, mainstream
music became nationalised in BiH. Bosnian ethnomusicologists write of ‘Bosnian
NCFM’, and non-Serb performers of music in the style of turbo-folk reject the
label. Both represent attempts to extricate the symbolism of turbo-folk – and its
implicit cultural subjugation to Serbia – from the cultural space of Bosnia.16 Both are
understandable, given that the Serb acts of ethnic cleansing on Bosnian territories
created a complex and idiosyncratic context regarding the position of music in the
public sphere, especially considering the role turbo-folk played in the nationalist
politics of Serbia in the nineties. Even the actions of the international community
acknowledged this in the aftermath of the war. A significant amount of aid was
allocated by the United States (US) and European governments to fund cultural
projects in Bosnia; however, the donors avoided sponsoring traditional local music
‘because it symbolized inter-ethnic hatred’.17 By funding ‘neutral’ music projects
and festivals that were oriented towards Western and global cultural traditions,
the donors were attempting to defuse attention placed on linguistic and cultural
differences.18 This effectively represented a strategy of avoiding the complex
problems of ethnic difference that were seen as implicit in the music. However,
it may be the donors’ decision to ignore turbo-folk that gave it cultural currency.
Despite the neo-colonial approach of international non-governmental
organisations to ignore local music, and despite the ongoing process of
nationalisation in BiH – including a powerful resurgence of Serb nationalism and
radical Islamism – music promoted under the banner of turbo-folk freely circulates
across the spaces of BiH. This is largely due to the history of its popularity, as well
as its presence in the media, through cable television channels such as Pink, DM
and OBN. Seemingly, the powerful presence and reach of the media transcends the
highly complex social, political and cultural structure of the country. BiH was the
most heavily devastated ex-Yugoslav republic, and it suffered the most casualties.
Two decades after the end of the war, there are ongoing ethnic tensions and visible
and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image and Regional Political Discourse, edited by
Donna Buchanan (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), pp. 58–93.
16
Naila Ceribasić, Ana Hofman and Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, “Post-Yugoslavian
Ethnomusicologies in Dialogue”, Yearbook for Traditional Music 40 (2008): 33–45.
17
Adriana Helbig, Nino Tsitsishvili and Erica Haskell, “Managing Musical Diversity
within Frameworks of Western Development Aid: Views from Ukraine, Georgia, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Yearbook for Traditional Music 40 (2008): 46–59.
18
Ibid.
traces of the destruction. BiH is a largely decentralised country, comprised of two

autonomous entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika
Srpska – that, although largely ethnically homogenous, still have a mixed
ethnic population.
The second key aspect of the success of turbo-folk in BiH is largely due to
the activities of its performers and musicians that increasingly run in the face of
nationally homogenising politics. Driven by the logic of the market and pop music
aesthetics, contemporary performers of turbo-folk in BiH largely transcend local
or nationalist politics. However, despite this, nationalism remains a formidable
presence in Bosnia, and it is often through the activities of performers that
boundaries of national belonging are articulated.19 In BiH, these are most evident
in the public discussions of turbo-folk performer Seka Aleksić.
The rise in popularity and public personality of Aleksić is synonymous with
the cultural and political complexities of post-war BiH. Aleksić was born in 1981
in Bosnia to a working-class ‘mixed marriage’ of a Serb father and Muslim
mother. When the war broke out in 1992, she moved with her family to Serbia. She
abandoned studies after finishing secondary school, and started performing covers
of Ceca songs in local bars. She then moved to Switzerland for two years and,
through continuous performances in gastarbeitern clubs, garnered a significant
following. After returning to Bosnia, Aleksić continued performing in local bars
and at festivals, and her performance at a festival in Serbia landed her a recording
contract with Grand Productions, the main producer of turbo-folk.20 Even though
Aleksić resides in Serbia and speaks with a Serb dialect, she is constantly present in
BiH media, often through controversy, and has regular concert performances there.
A key aspect of Aleksić’s public personality is her work ethic and show
business cunning. As a younger generation of turbo-folk performers that emerged
into the spotlight after 2000, Aleksić could not rely on the support of state
television. As suggested in the previous chapter, after the fall of Milošević, the
public media in Serbia turned away from broadcasting turbo-folk in an attempt
to jettison its nationalist stigma. Aleksić was one of the performers who had to
build their careers against the media blockade and stigma attached to Bosnian Serb
performers. It was precisely this dedication to performing at a grassroots level –
returning to bars, rather than relying on the media – that provided a key narrative
of Aleksić’s career: the self-made success story. Throughout her career, Aleksić
has demonstrated cunning in show business: in 2006, she starred in a Serbian
teen-comedy We Are Not Angels 3, in which she played an ironic version of herself
as a turbo-folk diva; since 2005, she has owned two brands of clothing; and she
maintains several public media feuds with other prominent turbo-folk celebrities.
19
Ceribasić, Hofman and Rasmussen, “Post-Yugoslavian Ethnomusicologies”, 41.
20
Miša Đurković, “Seka Aleksić – Pobuna Socijale”, Evropa (17 February 2005),
accessed 21 February 2014, http://teorijaizteretane.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/seka-aleksic-
pobuna-socijale.html.
There are significant parallels between the career and the style of Aleksić to that
of Lepa Brena. If Brena’s story was the Yugoslav socialist dream of the eighties – as
discussed in the first chapter – then Aleksić’s story is the post-Yugoslav transitional
free market dream. Both performers came from underprivileged backgrounds in
Bosnia, and both moved to Serbia, where they ultimately found success against
the odds, including receiving ridicule for their physical appearance and emphasis
on sexuality.21 Yet, both also retain close links to Bosnia, which provides the space
for a transnational symbolism of their music. Brena was the undisputed symbol
of upwards social mobility of multiethnic Yugoslavia. Aleksić has openly rejected
her ‘Serbness’ and embraced her mixed heritage, and, in 2008, publicly stated that
she would gladly represent BiH at the Eurovision Song Contest. While these kinds
of public gestures could be explained as attempts to appeal to and accommodate
her multiethnic audience, and possibly to generate publicity through controversy,
they also translate into Aleksić’s music – most notably in her song ‘Balkan’ (2003).
Released on Aleksić’s breakthrough album Balkan, the song is an upbeat
number that extols the virtues and joys of life in the impoverished, yet passionate,
Balkan. The song weaves its main melody, played on violins and Zurne, in the
style of Southern Wind, over the upbeat oriental drums. This melody is developed
and accentuated in the bridge before the chorus. The Zurne intertwine with the
vibrato of Aleksić’s voice in the chorus, with special emphasis on the note of the
extended last syllable in the word ‘Balkan’. The song ‘Balkan’ is synonymous with
Aleksić as the orientalist symbol of the Balkan woman, who is corpulent, curvy,
seductive and hyper-sexualised. Her ‘scene sexuality’ is open, promiscuous and
independent from recent history – rather than claiming a distinctive nationality,
she claims that her body is the ideal body of women in Bosnia. In this respect,
Aleksić represents a signifier of post-war sexuality and femininity. In contrast to
Ceca, Aleksić does not need to wait for her man to come back from the battlefield,
nor does she have to mourn his loss. Her sexuality and body are free to function as
emblems of pure hedonism.22 Aleksić is the symbol of excessive enjoyment in the
post-war transitional BiH.
Aleksić’s aesthetics maintain a careful balance between performing Bosnian-
Balkan-oriental exoticism with carefully appropriated elements of global pop music
iconography. Her public image and music videos incorporate the latest trends in
global music, including RnB dance moves (shaking her posterior) and flirting with
queer aesthetics. She is a performer who does not shy away from controversy, and
openly clashes with other performers and journalists, thus retaining a connection
to the symbol of a fierce and passionate Balkan woman, while always ensuring
she transcends national differences. Ceca and Aleksić represent different ‘brands’
of turbo-folk – one unburdened by history and designed for pure enjoyment, and
21
Marijana Mitrović, “Agents of Spectacle: Body Politics in Turbo-folk”, paper
presented at the conference Images of Culture: Now and Then, Institute of Ethnography
SASA, Krusevac, 18–19 October 2007, pp. 129–45.
22
Ibid., p. 140.
the other loaded with historical and personal baggage. While Aleksić can be said
to be a ‘pure’ performer, Ceca’s music is always perceived as based in personal
experience. As will be discussed below, this distinction is crucial in explaining
Ceca’s ongoing popularity.
‘They Can’t Speak Serbian, but they Know all my Songs’: Ceca Comes
to Australia
On 4 December 2010, Sydney’s Olympic Park was a scene of a series of cultural

encounters. The setting was symbolic because the encounter was a repetition,
albeit on a significantly smaller scale, of the global cultural encounters of the
Sydney 2000 Olympics. While the 2000 Olympics were a carefully staged and
globally visible event that framed its display of nationalism through sporting
achievements, in 2010, the cultural encounters revolved around national signifiers
articulated through the consumption of music.
On one side of the Olympic Park was a V8 Supercar racing event accompanied
by a performance of Guns N’ Roses – an iconic rock band of the late eighties and
nineties. The combination of the macho V8 cars and retro-nostalgic rock music
(and copious amounts of alcohol) gave this event a distinctive flavour: this was
the entertainment of the ‘ordinary working Australians’. This idea of ‘ordinary
Australians’ has occupied a central position in Australian national identity politics
for over two decades. It has played a key role in the constitution of national spaces
and identities in Australia, and the symbolic means of inclusion and exclusion.23
This function of inclusion and exclusion operates through distinctions between
the position of the ‘ordinary’ citizen (a fragile, threatened and morally innocent
position) and the threatening ‘other’.
On the other side of the Olympic Park were members of the ex-Yugoslav
community in Sydney attending Ceca’s first ever performance in Australia. The
significance of this event exceeded the expected fan excitement of seeing their
favourite performer. Ceca was refused entry to Australia on two previous occasions
(due to suspicion of her connections with organised crime in Serbia) marking this
as a moment of triumph of sorts. The sense of triumphant elation was tangible as I
set out to conduct interviews with the attending audience members.
This setting of Balkan versus ordinary Australian is significant for several
reasons. First, in Australia, turbo-folk music can generally only be heard in national
community clubs in Sydney’s western suburbs, or at community events. It is almost
completely invisible to the larger Australian community, and thus is perceived by
the migrant community as a form of culture that is unique and exclusive. The
venue of the Sydney Olympic Park symbolically brought turbo-folk into the public
arena for the first time, where the enjoyment of its audience would encounter
23
Penny Rossiter, “The Extraordinarily Ordinary Mr Howard”, Australian Studies 2
(2010): 7.
the enjoyment of ‘ordinary’ Australians. This sense of exposure – of enjoyment

perceived as the exclusive domain of one community, being juxtaposed against
the enjoyment of the host culture – prominently featured in the responses of the
interviewees. Second, the Olympic Park venue was nationally neutral territory,
meaning that members of all ethnic groups from ex-Yugoslavia could attend the
event without the intimidation of going to a national club. This was visible in the
absence of national insignia worn by the audience, as well as several respondents
identifying themselves as being non-Serb. The format of the interviews was
semi-structured and focused on two questions: ‘Why is Ceca so popular?’, and
‘What does Ceca represent to you?’. The responses mostly repeated the themes
attained by Volčič and Erjavec during their work with Ceca’s fans in Slovenia
and Croatia. The respondents focused on the following themes: fame and self-
empowerment through hard work – ‘she sacrificed everything to get where she
is’; glamour and good looks – ‘she is the most beautiful woman in the world’;
pride in accomplishment of ‘our’ female performer – ‘she is the best our country
can offer’; and in some cases, national pride – ‘Ceca is the Queen of the Serbs’
and ‘Ceca is a Serbian icon’ – or regional pride – ‘Ceca is the Madonna of the
Balkans’. In many ways, the responses suggested that the perception of Ceca, and
her symbolic meaning, changed very little between audiences in ex-Yugoslavia
and the ex-Yugoslav migrant community in Australia.
One way of explaining this fundamental similarity between Ceca fans in the
Balkans and in Australia is via Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘long-distance
nationalism’, in which cultural connections are formed and sustained across
nation-states and continents.24 The responses seemingly confirmed that, in the
contemporary world, marked by the effects of globalisation and contemporary
systems of communication (shrinking time and space distances), there is easier
information exchange and accessibility, and higher interconnectedness across
continents regarding ideas about popular music. Ceca’s music and public image
held high emotional stakes and acted as a powerful mobiliser of a range of
emotions, which did not differ to the responses of Ceca’s fans in the Balkans.
However, there was another dynamic evident in the responses – one that
did not immediately occur to me. This dynamic had less to do with articulating
and defining a sense of national identity, and more to do with responding to a
perceived threat of homogenisation. It was a form of nationalism, yet not one that
was hinged on defining particular Balkan identities against each other. Rather,
it was one that based itself on a sense of difference from non-Balkan people. In
the previous chapter, I named this nationalism ‘new Balkanness’. Here, I can add
another layer to this idea by suggesting how it works within what Arjun Appadurai
calls ‘diasporic public spheres’ – subjectivities informed by global movements
of people and information that undermine the boundaries of national identity.25
24
Benedict Anderson, “The New World Disorder”, New Left Review 193 (1992): 3–13.
25
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 4.
This undermining of a fixed sense of national identity was articulated in Sydney

through the use of language.
One striking feature of all interviews was that, even though the respondents
were given the option of responding to the questions in either English or their own
language, they all chose English. For one group of respondents, this choice was
explained by the fact that they were born in Australia and had limited knowledge
of their parents’ language. Despite this, they were all clear about being familiar
with Ceca’s lyrics. The statement from the title of this section – ‘They can’t speak
Serbian, but they know all my songs’ – was made by Ceca to the Serbian media
upon returning from Australia. This signifies a direct acknowledgement of this
function of language and familiarity with song lyrics as markers of identity. Yet,
for most of the respondents, who were self-described first generation migrants,
this choice was curious. While they had varying degrees of English-speaking
skills, they all spoke with an accent. Further, all the respondents stated their given
name and its Anglicised version. Thus, the choice was based on the awareness of
being a migrant community within a larger Australian community.
To articulate this dynamic, it is necessary to expand understandings of the
way Ceca’s audience in Australia identifies with the music. This can be done
by expanding understandings of the way the national imagination functions in
diaspora. The term ‘diaspora’ refers to communities dispersed throughout one
or more places, whose identity is defined by the relationship between the myths
and memories of a (real or imagined) homeland and a sense of alienation in the
host country.26 The term ‘diaspora’ thus captures the dual identity of ex-Yugoslav
migrants in Australia, articulated around different and often contradictory histories
and cultures, and forming new – often entitled ‘hybrid’ – identities in their new
homes. It helps explain the struggles to define a local community within the
context of displacement, which are informed by national identity, but are not
exclusively nationalist. Diaspora consciousness is produced through identification
with cultural forces, such as popular music.
In Sydney’s Olympic Park, the respondents demonstrated two different
examples of diasporic identities, communicated in relation to Ceca as a symbol
of the Balkans. The work of Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage helps make
sense of these two examples. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of class structures
and ‘cultural capital’, which determines the standing of an individual within a
larger community, Hage articulates the national identity of migrants in Australia as:
the sum of accumulated nationally sanctioned and valued social and physical
cultural styles and dispositions (national culture) adopted by individuals and
groups, as well as valued characteristics (national types and national character)
26
See: James Clifford, “Diasporas”, Cultural Anthropology 9 (August 1994): 302–338.
within a national field: looks, accent, demeanour, taste, nationally valued social
and cultural preferences and behaviour, etc.27
Hage argues that this accumulated national capital is converted into national belonging
that is recognised by the dominant culture, which, in Australia, is Anglophone.
In one sense, at the Olympic Park, Ceca’s audience was articulating its love of
Ceca in English because of their exposure to the framework of the dominant culture.
Several of the respondents noted the presence of ‘Australians’ and their ‘culture
and music’. Further, the presence of the police in greater numbers would have
heightened this sense of being held accountable for liking Ceca. Equally important
was the fact that, in this context, I was also part of the representative dominant
cultural group, armed with a microphone and an ‘ordinary Australian’ cameraman.
Although this can help explain the respondents’ choice to use English, it still
does not account for Ceca’s role in accumulating cultural capital. Hage writes that
national belonging tends to be proportional to accumulated national capital:
a national subject born to the dominant culture who has accumulated national
capital in the form of the dominant linguistic, physical and cultural dispositions
will yield more belonging than a male migrant who has managed to acquire the
dominant national accent and certain national cultural practices, but lacks the
physical characteristics and dispositions of the dominant national ‘type’.28
Hage’s concept of national capital captures the smaller differences present within
migrant or hybrid identities, based around conceptions of belonging. More
importantly, it positions conceptions of symbols of ‘otherness’ or ‘Balkanness’
within this economy. It allows the positioning of turbo-folk and Ceca as a form
of cultural capital that is possessed, accumulated, cultivated and translated/
assimilated (within the host culture). For example, younger Australian-born
respondents made it clear that they routinely played Ceca’s music at high volume
in their car stereos. This gesture of symbolic ownership of difference is evident
in most migrant communities, and involves claiming public space as a space to
articulate cultural difference ‘from within’. This sharply contrasts to the older
respondents who only listened to Ceca in their home.
These two groups are positioned at the intersection between two ‘national
capitals’: the Australian (cosmopolitan) and the Balkan (ethnic). Music is a key
mediator between these two levels of identity. In the symbolic space of Australian
national capital, learning English is a way of becoming cosmopolitan and moving
beyond the confines of ethnic identity. Apart from being a means of communication
and expression of culture, language also has a symbolic meaning. In Australia,
migrants are recognised as members of certain ethnic groups by their language or
27
Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural
Society (Annandale: Pluto Press, 1998): p. 53.
28
Ibid., pp. 53–4.
accent, and are ranked accordingly.29 In the Balkans, familiarity with Ceca’s lyrics
is a means of displaying not only ‘subcultural capital’, but also a higher emotional
and affective state. It means retaining some element of Balkan, unbridled by
the homogenised and globalised society of Australia. Within this dynamic, the
affective economy of the music is crucial.
EPP 2: Ceca and Affect
This discussion of turbo-folk in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia has demonstrated

the complex interplay of ideas about national identity, popular music and daily
politics that underpins the understanding and discussion of popular music. It has
shown that, although the national ingredients change from one national context
to the next, the basic form of turbo-folk and the key operative terms (‘the other’,
‘kitsch’, ‘Balkan’ and ‘primitive’) remain constant. Insofar as this constant can
be taken to suggest that there is a basic template for successful turbo-folk, this
can also suggest that there is a template for becoming a turbo-folk superstar. In
order to understand this success, it is not sufficient to outline the basic musical
form of turbo-folk – as did the previous chapter – or to substitute one national
template for another – as I did above. Turbo-folk’s success is seemingly marked
by another economy at play, and one that has been almost completely overlooked
in the available literature. If this section has outlined the symbolism of the national
politics of turbo-folk, unpacked the gender and sexual binaries that underpin its
aesthetics, and understood its position as a popular culture reflective of transitional
societies, why does this still not seem enough to understand its appeal? This
question can be approached by returning once more to Ceca and her seemingly
inexplicable popularity across ex-Yugoslavia. In all descriptions of turbo-folk in
Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and the other republics, and in all conversations with
turbo-folk audiences, one constant remains: the unquestionable popularity of Ceca
as the undisputed queen of turbo-folk. Why? What is so special about Ceca?
Here, I want to argue that the success of Ceca is grounded in the fact that the
meaning of her music – and consequently its success – arises not from content or
form, but from an affective economy that produces politics of sincerity. In other
words, Ceca’s music amplifies certain emotions and affects in a way that creates
the impression that she is more genuine and honest about her music than any other
turbo-folk performer. To reach this conclusion, it is necessary to go beyond music
and aesthetics. Examining the content of her lyrics leads to the conclusion that they
are typical pop love songs, and that their popularity stems from them performing a
social function of communicating and amplifying experiences and emotions in ways
that make them more convincing. However, there is nothing unusual about this. As
Simon Frith suggests, the bulk of popular songs are love songs because ‘people
29
Val Čolić-Peisker, “Croatians in Western Australia: Migration, Language and
Class”, Journal of Sociology 38/2 (2002): 149–66.
need them to give shape and voice to emotions that otherwise cannot be expressed
without embarrassment or incoherence’.30 Similarly, discussing the key formal
elements of Ceca’s music and public personality – as did the previous chapter –
partly explains her success, but is no different to countless other performers, such
as Severina or Seka Aleksić. Therefore, it is necessary to add another layer to the
story of Ceca and turbo-folk by outlining its affective economy.
In their account of Ceca’s popularity in Croatia and Slovenia, Volčič and
Erjavec touch on an important point by suggesting that she embodies ‘an affective
relationship to the individual narrative of personal triumph over the political
narrative of Greater Serbia’.31 This connection between an affective economy
at play in Ceca’s music and contemporary politics in the region is crucial to
articulating Ceca’s ongoing popularity and her ability to rise above all other turbo-
folk performers. Volčič and Erjavec suggest that Ceca symbolises an affective
relationship to individual narratives; however, they do not suggest what affects
this includes. Here, I want to argue that Ceca’s popularity can largely be attributed
to her ability to capture affects in the region. This capturing of affects produces the
effect of Ceca’s sincerity.
A full account of the psychological and cultural theories of affect – that stem
from the work of US psychologist Silvan Tomkins and have played a significant
role in the analyses of visual art and humanities during the last two decades – is
well beyond the scope here. Affect can be described as a ‘basic emotion’ and an
‘unwilling muscular and glandular response’ that moves in the space between the
visceral body and consciousness.32 Affects are immediate reactions that people
have to stimulus prior to a cognitive response, such as getting goose bumps and
becoming lightheaded when hearing a favourite Ceca song (as described by one
fan). In her analysis of the presence of affect in political speech, Anna Gibbs
suggests that the voice is one of the primary sites of affective communication
and plays a crucial part in heightening and intensifying affects by amplifying
the tone, timbre and pitch.33 Almost all fans of Ceca noted the high emotional
content of her husky, deep and melancholic voice, stating that it came from ‘deep
within Ceca’s chest’, touched them and spoke to them on a level that was beyond
linguistic articulation.
30
Simon Frith, “Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music”, in Popular Music: Critical
Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Volume IV: Music and Identity, edited by Simon
Frith (London and New York: Routledge, 2004): pp. 32–47.
31
Erjavec and Volčič, “The Paradox of Ceca”, 116.
32
Jill Bennett, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art after 9/11. London:
I.B. Tauris (2012), pp. 20–21.
33
See: Anna Gibbs, “Contagious Feelings: Pauline Hanson and the Epidemiology
of Affect”, Australian Humanities Review 24 (December 2001), accessed 20
January 2013, http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-December-2001/
gibbs.html.
While Ceca is certainly not the first performer of popular music to have
such a powerful hold over her audience, the key issue is the way the affective
content of her music operates: the way affective responses are activated through
the relationship between her music and the culture. Here, I am drawing on Jill
Bennett’s account of the way specific cultural forms enfold emotional politics.
Bennett warns that affect cannot be orchestrated or anchored within an object,
but it can be activated, expressed or incited by an image or an object: ‘sometimes
images and objects are simply in the path of an oncoming affect. Affect “enlivens”
objects and experiences because it invests them with joy, sadness, wonder, rage’.34
Affect cannot be orchestrated or controlled; however, specific cultural forms
‘enfold emotional politics’ and amplify affect.
Following Bennett, Ceca’s music and public personality can be articulated
through the frame of intense and conflicting emotional states. Her repertoire
consists almost exclusively of love songs, and articulates the emotions usually
associated with successful love (desire, eroticism and exaltation) and lost love
(uncertainty, anxiety, loss and disappointment). However, in Ceca’s music, these
emotions are always articulated through extreme affective states, such as death,
grief, shock and anger. They often present graphic images of self-harm and
violence, yet are always framed through the grand narrative of self-empowerment
and independence. While many other performers of turbo-folk (and popular
music in general) bank on investing their music with extreme emotions to show
‘attitude’, and while many have powerful and emotive voices, the key with Ceca is
the presence of what Bennett calls the ‘presence of competing affects’: sensations
that are commonly found among the population.35
Ceca’s most popular songs – such as ‘Coward’, ‘My Beautiful Thunder’ and
‘If You Were Wounded’, discussed in the previous chapter – capture the sensations
of distress and anxiety that are common in the population of the region. Her music
enacts emotions that are present in the public: frustration with ongoing economic
hardship, incomprehensibility of the ongoing presence of violence, loss of the
social sphere, dissolution of the family as a social unit, pressures of emotional
relationship, and the failure of successor states to provide accounts of recent
history. To paraphrase Gibbs, Ceca’s music communicates the emotions and
defiant attitude of someone who has experienced enough difficulty, and it is these
emotions and this attitude that evoke sympathy in the public. The problem, of
course, is less to do with Ceca connecting with these conflicting and competing
emotions, than – as argued in the previous chapter – to do with the way in which
they are co-opted into national narratives and conservatism. It also needs to be
stated that Ceca’s is one of many examples of popular culture in the region that
communicates the ‘had enough’ attitude. Chapter 6 will demonstrate how a similar
dynamic occurs in the films of Dragojević.
34
Bennett, Practical Aesthetics, p. 22.
35
Ibid., p. 123.
It is interesting to note that Ceca’s public personality is also split between

two factors. The first is the extreme emotional states of her life, such as the
brutal assassination of her husband Arkan, her imprisonment, her involvement
with the criminal underworld, and her alleged involvement in the assassination
of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić. The second is her cool demeanour
when giving interviews, which are always performed with an edge of composed
defiance and professional distance. Ceca embodies a public figure who is split
between the detached professionalism of a pop music diva and an extremely
turbulent and violent lifestyle.
This presence of intense and competing affects in her music and public
personality is crucial because it grounds Ceca’s musical expression and symbolism
in what Bennett calls the ‘politics of sincerity’: a musical expression that is
perceived to be beyond politics, beyond manipulation and beyond doubt – an
expression that stems ‘from deeply felt experience’.36 As Bennett suggests, times
of fear, uncertainty and instability produce politics of sincerity that transcend or
sidestep politics. Sincerity is perceived as neutral in content: this is why Ceca can
be considered sincere in her commitment to love. This commitment means nothing
if viewed in terms of the emotional content, but means everything if viewed in
terms of the historical narratives of Ceca’s love for her homeland (and its war
criminals). Thus, it is Ceca’s perceived sincerity that elevates her to the Madonna
of the Balkans, across national divides. Perhaps it was this aspect of Ceca’s public
personality that inspired young Serbian artist Vladislava Đurić to create the work
Saint Ceca (2010), in which Ceca was rendered an orthodox icon.
By focusing on the popularity and consumption of turbo-folk outside Serbia –
in Croatia, Slovenia and BiH – this chapter shifted the emphasis away from turbo-
folk as cultural nationalism to focus on the cultural processes that inform the
understanding of turbo-folk as such. This chapter has demonstrated that cultural
perceptions of turbo-folk across the borders of ex-Yugoslavia are as constant as
its popularity: in Croatia, turbo-folk is synonymous with the cultural other; in
Slovenia, it is the symbol of the exotic Balkan; and in BiH, it is a combination of the
two. This chapter has also shown that the perception and process of identification
with turbo-folk in Australia follows this logic within the broader public sphere
of diaspora. By tracing the similarities between the popular perceptions of turbo-
folk, it can be seen that it functions as an empty signifier whose meaning shifts and
changes depending on the context. In this sense, a comparative regional analysis
of turbo-folk not only affirms its unwavering popularity in ex-Yugoslavia, but
functions to mystify the cause for this popularity. This chapter traced the affective
economy at play in the music of Ceca, which produces a semblance of sincerity
and elevates her above other turbo-folk performers. The presence of key affects in
Ceca’s music captures the general feelings of anger, frustration and anxiety in the
region. It is this economy that contributes to her music ‘speaking’ to people, rather
than expressing emotions ‘from the depths of the soul’.
36
Ibid., p. 135.
While framing turbo-folk through its affective economy helps demystify and
explain its popularity, understanding the broader cultural meaning of turbo-folk
involves going beyond the familiar debates and investigating its position in the
broader cultural field. It involves asking how turbo-folk is connected to the field
of visual culture that has appeared across ex-Yugoslavia in the wake of turbo-folk,
including in art, sculpture, architecture and film. Importantly, this process entails
more than merely revealing visual culture that is ‘about’ turbo-folk, or suggesting
that there is such a thing as ‘turbo visual culture’. Rather, this process involves
tracing the connections between the dominant perceptions of turbo-folk and the
way these have been taken up and reconceptualised. The chapters that comprise
the second half of this book examine these connections in different ways, focusing
on the ways the understanding of turbo-folk moves across and between different
forms of culture. This includes analysing forms of visual art in the following
chapter, in terms of how artists engage with turbo-folk as a mode of representation
and, more importantly, how artists engage with turbo-folk as a form of cultural
remembering. This question of cultural memory will lead to an examination of
the cultural output that is ostensibly unrelated to turbo-folk in Chapter 5, which
considers public sculpture and architecture. This will provide crucial insight into
the changes to the social and cultural sphere in ex-Yugoslavia that enabled the
rise of turbo-folk as a form of remembering. The final chapter returns to forms of
remembering in popular culture from a different perspective, by examining the
role turbo-folk plays in popular cinema. These chapters complement the historical
and theoretical narrative of Part I of this book by tracing the cultural threads of
turbo-folk beyond the well-known public debates.
Part II
Turbo-culture:
Cultural Responses to Turbo-folk
Chapter 4
Turbo-art: Music and National Identity
in the Work of Contemporary Artists
from Former Yugoslavia
The first half of this book outlined the complex and controversial history
of turbo-folk and its associations with nationalism, kitsch and populism. It
explained the position of turbo-folk in the present social and political landscape
of former Yugoslavia, in particular the way in which turbo-folk is consumed and
perceived beyond Serbia. The second part of this book seeks to further expand our
understanding of the cultural meaning of turbo-folk by going beyond the political
debates over national identity and investigating its position in the broader cultural
field. This chapter traces the way in which turbo-folk is connected to visual culture
that has appeared across former Yugoslavia since 2000, and the way in which
dominant perceptions of turbo-folk have been taken up and reconceptualised.
This chapter demonstrates the way in which visual artists from Serbia, Macedonia
and Kosovo have used found music as a signifier of the ‘Balkan readymade’
to problematise the relationship of popular music (and turbo-folk in particular) to
national representation in Serbia. The artists discussed in this chapter position folk
music as the cultural memory of key historical moments in Yugoslavia (and after),
and the audience’s response to turbo-folk in art as the performance of that history.
One the one hand, this gesture highlights post-socialism in former Yugoslavia as
a repetition of nationalist discourses that are now seen as a way to brand one’s
identity. On the other hand, these artists also demonstrate how national branding
functions in international art exhibitions where the depiction of identity parades
cultural difference for the entertainment of cosmopolitan viewers. These artists
highlight the role of music as the national signifier (suggesting an identity ‘from’
somewhere) in the process of national branding on the international art circuit.
They also show that the issue of national identity of an artist from the periphery
is always inscribed into the contemporary ‘internationalism’ of large exhibitions.
Over the last decade, a number of artists from ex-Yugoslavia have been dealing
with the question of historical memory and national identity by incorporating the
‘found sound’ of popular music. Artists such as Zoran Naskovski, Milica Tomić,
Nada Prlja, Lulzim Zequiri and Erzen Shkololli use works of popular music as a
form of cultural remembering by positioning them in relation to key historical and
political events. This interest in ‘readymade music’ as an expression of cultural
and historical identity conjures an array of art-historical associations, from Pop art
through to Fluxus and performance art. It also may be correlated to more recent
work, such as Phil Collins’s videos of amateur karaoke performers and Christian
Marclay’s compositions created from found music. Nicolas Bourriaud describes
this kind of work as postproduction:
Since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created
on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-
exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products … These
artists who insert their own work into that of others contribute to the eradication
of the traditional distinction between production and consumption, creation and
copy, readymade and original work. The material they manipulate is no longer
primary. It is no longer a matter of elaborating a form on the basis of a raw
material but working with objects that are already in circulation on the cultural
market, which is to say, objects already informed by other objects.1
Bourriaud provides a broad definition of recent works of art that build on the long
tradition of the Duchampian methodology of the readymade, and updates it for the
information age. However, the works by artists from the ‘periphery’ of the Balkans
do not slot easily under the rubric of ‘postproduction’, unless they are viewed as
local expressions – or appropriations – of contemporary Western art. On the one
hand, when conceived through the signifier ‘from the Balkans’, the found music in
the work of Naskovski and others functions to represent particular identities in a
region still coming to terms with a recent civil war fuelled by nationalism, ongoing
acrimony and the pressures of branding a ‘new’ national identity on a global stage.
On the other hand, when discussed in public debates or during conferences, the
work ‘from the Balkans’ that may be described as postproduction is often viewed
as derivative of ‘international’ counterparts.
The way music is used by the artists considered here makes it possible to move
beyond the impasse of understanding their work as either a localised version of
larger trends in recent art, or of framing it through the lens of a traumatic and violent
history. In one sense, the use of music as a readymade in the Balkans is expressive
of the historical reality of ongoing economic and political instability and media
manipulation of culture, as discussed in the first three chapters. Yet, the use of music
as a historical, political, cultural and media readymade to problematise local and
global perceptions of the historical reality of the Balkans creates the possibility of a
different interpretation of the work. Rather than representing popular music in their
work as an expression of a ‘Balkan readymade’, Naskovski, Zequiri and Shkololli
draw attention to the way the translation of the ‘readymade’ into a politically fraught
local context positions their work at the conjuncture of two accounts.
The first account of the work of these artists explains them as an attempt to deal
with the legacies of recent nationalist-driven wars in which popular music played
an intrinsic role in fuelling ethnic passions. As discussed in the first chapter, popular
music played an instrumental role in ex-Yugoslavia by shaping perceptions of
1
Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction (New York: Lukas and Sternberg, 2000), p. 1.
Turbo-art 107
cultural and national identity. Originating in the unique ideological position of

Yugoslavia – between East and West and between socialism and capitalism –
popular music became a powerful symbolic mobiliser. Music became the stage
on which collective identity was forged after World War II and the premise on
which national differences were constructed during the wars in the nineties.
Paradoxically, it remains the only shared culture in the region. The cultural space
of Yugoslavia represents a failed attempt to forge a shared culture, and music
played a crucial role in this attempt. Following the dissolution of the Yugoslav
state, the institutional framework for transnational collaboration vanished and was
replaced by popular and often nationalist music, such as turbo-folk. Turbo-folk
provides an ideologically charged context for narratives of cultural remembering,
belonging and difference articulated through music. The choice of songs by artists
Naskovski, Zequiri and Shkololli recall particular moments in the history of
Yugoslavia and act as a site for collective identity by positioning popular music
with respect to national identity. The songs featured in their artworks tap into the
perception of popular music as ‘the epic of the everyday’, while questioning the
changing nature of populism implicit in the music and popular culture in general.2
In so doing, they recall a broader set of political and cultural anxieties that have
been projected onto the music: the signifiers of ‘kitsch’, ‘oriental’, ‘nationalist’
and ‘Balkan’, as well as cultural divides between ‘high’ and ‘low’, ‘global’ and
‘local’ and ‘East’ and ‘West’.
The second account provides an explanation of the impulse to deal with the
problematic relationship of national identity to popular music in countries of
ex-Yugoslavia, while also acknowledging how the very gesture of dealing with
national identity positions the work of artists within the sphere of contemporary
art. All the works discussed in this chapter have been shown in international
exhibitions and determined through the mechanism of national representation from
‘the periphery’, thus complementing the internationalist multiculturalist profile of
the ‘peoples of the world’.3 Yet, as David McNeill’s account of non-metropolitan
artists dealing with the effects of globalisation suggests, ‘peripheral’ art often
appears as an art of unresolved tension in which the component parts sit together
uneasily and embody the ‘frisson’ between the local and the global.4 McNeill cites
Russian post-Perestroika ‘Sots’ artists, such as Alexander Kosolapov, Eric Bulatov
and Leonid Lamm, and Chinese ‘Political Pop’ artists, such as Wang Guangyi
(who emerged in the wake of Tiananmen). These artists have presented Western
audiences with a premeditated anti-communist stance presented in the familiar
2
Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen, “From Source to Commodity: Newly-composed folk
music of Yugoslavia”, Popular Music, 14/2 (1995): 242.
3
Jelena Vesić, “Politics of Display and Troubles with National Representation in
Contemporary Art”, Red Thread 1 (2009): 79–94, accessed 8 September 2012, http://www.
red-thread.org/dosyalar/site_resim/dergi/pdf/redthread01_eng.pdf.
4
David McNeill, “Planet Art: Resistance and Affirmation in the Wake of 9/11”,
Australia and New Zealand Journal of Art 3/2 (2002): 11–32.
stylistic mannerism of American pop art.5 These artists, working at a great distance
from the economic centres of contemporary art, realised the advantage of offering
Western audiences work that owed artistic allegiance to pop art, while bearing the
‘exotic’ content of Marxist slogans.6
The frisson evident in the works of Russian and Chinese artists is also visible
in the work of Naskovski and others, whom, in dealing with national identity,
constitute what McNeill describes as a tactical engagement rooted in playful
reordering of metropolitan expectations. This tactical engagement results from the
artists’ intentional use of the most politically loaded cultural ‘brand’ of popular
music, known for its connections to expressions of nationalism and perceptions
of the primitive ‘Balkan ghost’.7 In addition, these artists can also be said to use
popular music to intentionally play into the perception of both post-communist
societies’ ‘slavish’ embrace of pro-Western popular culture (as an expression of
democracy), platitudes about the violent and exotic Balkans, and perceptions of
art as a form of ‘national representation’. Within this understanding, the strategy
of artists demonstrates a critical awareness of the specific and highly complex
position of popular music in the history of Yugoslavia and its successor states. This
awareness is drawn from the potency of music as a shared culture under socialism,
an expression of nationalism in the nineties, and a form of post-nationalist national
branding through culture in the new century.
The next section will outline the role of music as a performance of identity in the
work of Zoran Naskovski, Milica Tomić and Nada Prlja. I argue that these artists
position popular music as a mediator between the global and local perspectives on
‘media events’.8 They use found music as a signifier of the ‘Balkan readymade’ to
highlight the complex relationship between local and global perceptions of events,
and to problematise the relationship of popular music to national representation
in Serbia. Naskovski, Tomić and Prlja position turbo-folk music as the cultural
memory of key historical moments in Yugoslavia and after, and the audience’s
response as the performance of that history.
Popular Music and the Repetition of National History: Death In Dallas and
Apollo 9
For his work Death In Dallas (2000), Serbian artist Zoran Naskovski combined a
montage of video footage of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy and
its surrounding events, including documentary news reels, scenes from Abraham
Zapruder’s home video, scenes from Oliver Stone’s film JFK (1991), and lesser-
5
Ibid., 27.
6
Ibid., 28.
7
Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute (London: Verso, 2000), p. 5.
8
For a discussion of media events, see Jill Bennett. Practical Aesthetics: Events,
Affects and Art after 9/11 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 77–87.
Turbo-art 109
Figure 4.1 Zoran Naskovski, Smrt u Dalasu, installation view. The American
Effect Exhibition, Whitney Museum of Art, 2003 (photograph
provided by the artist)
known autopsy footage, alongside the ‘found sound’ of a musical performance.

Naskovski sets the video montage against the crackling audio from a 1965 single
release ‘Death In Dallas’ that he found at a Belgrade flea market, featuring the
gusle (a traditional Balkan dirge-like single string instrument) and wailing male
vocals. Performed and sung by amateur gusle player Jozo Karamatić, ‘Death In
Dallas’ narrates the events of the Kennedy assassination in decasyllable – a pre-
modern Serbo-Croatian form of epic storytelling.
The 17-minute song is striking for its vocal and instrumental
idiosyncrasies – particularly to unaccustomed Western audiences – that transform
the Kennedy assassination into an epic folkloric tale and the late US president into a
tragic hero. Naskovski intentionally plays upon the awkward translation into English
in the subtitles. The song mournfully chronicles the events of the assassination in
striking and vivid detail, including the names of key players as well as lesser-known
ones, such as Kennedy’s driver, the nurse who tried to revive the dead president and
the priest who read the president his last rites. The ‘factual’ statements of the lyrics
chronicle the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination in linear narrative,
highlighting the (oral) historical motif of the song. This sense of historical narration
is complemented by the flat nasal vocals intermingling with the simple gusle melody
pattern, which is repeated with each verse. ‘Death In Dallas’ presents a well-known
event from a highly idiosyncratic perspective by introducing the narrative of ‘found
music’ to ‘found video’. The juxtaposition of sound and video reflects the encounter
of familiar and unfamiliar pre-existing material by drawing together the well-known

footage of the assassination against the virtually unknown song. Thus, Naskovski’s
use of pre-existing found music in Death In Dallas operates on two interconnected
levels – as a mediator between the global and local perspective of a media event, and
as a signifier of the ‘Balkanisation’ of that event.
Global/Local
Regarding the global and local relationship of the media, the experience of Death
In Dallas is one of making familiar history appear unusual or strange, achieved
by inscribing the periphery in a larger set of world histories. Accompanying the
video montage and audio of Death In Dallas is a display of documents, including:
a LIFE Magazine cover page featuring Jacqueline Kennedy and her children at the
funeral; the report of the Warren Commission; the cover of the ‘Death In Dallas’
single; and a cover page of a Serbian newspaper bearing the title ‘Goodbye Serbian
Kennedy’, featuring photos from the funeral of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran
Đinđić, who was assassinated in 2003. Each narrative told by the collage in Death
In Dallas questions the truthfulness and objectivity of the others, providing a
composite picture that does not add up to an absolute answer or clear and complete
narration of historical events.
Karamatić’s song not only challenges the historical perspective and accounts
presented in documentation, but is itself called into question and undermined
by the intentionally awkward and stylised subtitles, which translate the Serbo-
Croatian lyrics into English using the font of Western films. In so doing, Death
In Dallas generates tensions between competing narratives (documentary and
lyrical, pre-modern epic and modern documentary form, vernacular and popular
culture) that are never resolved, but rather are set in a feedback loop.
The narrative of the work is based around the lyrics of the audio recording
‘Death In Dallas’, written by Božo Lasić, who self-published a booklet in 1965
that featured the lyrics and an introduction in which he explains that his sources
for the lyrics were newspaper reports.9 Thus, vernacular oral history and folk
mythology – the usual sources for gusle music – are substituted with print media
as the source for the narrative. Consequently, the work becomes a closed loop of
recorded sound as historical medium talking to print media. Naskovski’s use of
one medium to problematise another is further complicated by the first line of the
song: ‘Oh my gusle, my instrument of old, by modernism you will suffer not’ – a
line that acknowledges the interloping between the gusle instrument as a historical
medium and modernism as a form of representation.
This relationship between history and its media representation operates on two
closely connected levels: the sense in which Death In Dallas suggests a repetition
of historical events, and the way the conditions of knowledge about the event
9
Božo Lasić, “Kennedy Smrt U Dalasu”, self-published (Mostar, 1965).
Turbo-art 111
are generated by the media. Although Death In Dallas is ostensibly about the
assassination of Kennedy, the work took on new meaning while it was being set
up for the 2003 exhibition The American Effect in New York’s Whitney Museum,
when Serbian Premier Zoran Đinđić was assassinated in Belgrade. This profoundly
traumatic moment for Serbia echoed the events surrounding Kennedy and further
highlighted the sense of historical repetition in the work. The political career of
Đinđić was frequently compared to that of Kennedy, particularly in regard to the
circumstances of his murder, which was also shrouded in mystery and conspiracy
theories. One example of these conspiratorial comparisons is the fact that Kennedy
was elected to office in 1960 and assassinated in 1963, while Đinđić was elected
in 2000 and assassinated in 2003.10 The Đinđić assassination, as a political event
and form of historical repetition, had a profound effect on the cultural perceptions
and legacies of turbo-folk, including Naskovski’s work and turbo-architecture,
which will be explored in the next chapter.
Balkanised Media Event
The inclusion of the found song is not only crucial for the sense in which Death
In Dallas suggests repetition of history through performance – or rather through
playing a recording of a performance 40 years later – but also to the way it
repeats a particular sense of history through the music as a medium. In a number
of documented responses to the work’s exhibition in the US, the discussion
converged on Naskovski’s use of an idiosyncratic cultural form. The sound of
Death In Dallas is a sense of temporality that is both pre-historical and trans-
historical: one review described it as ‘a thousand years old’ and ‘before images
could be recorded’; another suggests that the vocal style is ‘a coarse, throaty wail
that seems to have been carried across the centuries from some primordial funeral
rite’.11 The seemingly otherworldly character of the sound is not only seen as a
repetition of the traumatic event of the Kennedy assassination, but also as the
trigger of the reactivation of the national trauma for the audience. In his discussion
of Death In Dallas, Øyvind Vågnes notes that he witnessed members of the
10
My thanks to Zoran Naskovski for pointing this out.
11
James Hoberman, “Jump Cuts”, The Village Voice (18 November 2003), accessed 21
February 2014, http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-11-18/film/jump-cuts/; Gary Shteyngart,
“The Whole World is Watching”, New York Times (13 July 2003), accessed 12 October 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/arts/art-architecture-the-whole-world-is-watching.
html?pagewanted=all&src=pm; Lawrence Rinder, “The American Effect”, in The American
Effect: Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990–2003, edited by Lawrence Rinder
(New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2003); Kelly Vance, “Burning Sensation:
Peace and Love at Burning Man; Reshaping a National Nightmare in ‘The Eternal Eternal
Frame’”, East Bay Express (17 March 2004), accessed 21 February 2014, http://www.
eastbayexpress.com/oakland/burning-sensation/Content?oid=1073294.
audience weep before the work, and suggests that the sound ‘reminds the visitor
that Zapruder’s images are images of trauma’.12
Although Death In Dallas might be understood as a reminder of the forgotten
personal tragedy at the heart of an over-familiar and mythologised event, the
work undoes its reduction to a signifier of trauma and anachronistic cultural form
through its use of the found music. The impulse to read the song as a conduit for
trauma in Death In Dallas is premised on the ability of the unusual and ‘foreign’
sound (even to most of the local audiences) to give the well-known images
new, highly emotional and affective meaning. Yet, although Death In Dallas is
a strongly emotive work, it includes a range of different emotions, including a
dark, humorous sensibility due to the pompousness and seriousness of the musical
performance, which is exaggerated by the artist to the point of self-parody.
In a sense, Karamatić’s song ‘Death In Dallas’ was to Kennedy what Elton
John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ was to Princess Diana. Although Karamatić might
be interpreted as the ‘epic-folk-Balkan’ version of Elton John, he also stands as
the opposite of Elton John. This is because Karamatić was the voice of the author
from the people, as opposed to celebrity-royalty. Amplifying this difference was
Naskovski’s choice to use the particular Karamatić photograph and album cover –
a decision the artist described as being ‘because it looked like Jimmy Hendrix
holding a guitar’.13 This has the effect of creating a comparison (and indeed
parody) between folk artists and musicians of celebrity-royalty status. Thus, set
against the exalted melancholy of ‘Death In Dallas’ that brings together the past
and present and the centre and periphery, Naskovski’s work is doubled and offset
by the irreducible cultural difference and multiplicity of cultural associations that
are located at the core of the found sound.
Naskovski’s use of music in Death In Dallas creates a symbolic universe
that ‘Balkanises’ Kennedy’s death by framing it through the cultural lens of the
‘dark side’ of civilisation, still plagued by the residue of history and arrested
in development.14 Death In Dallas’s branding of the Kennedy assassination as
‘Balkan’ creates a mode of representation that aims to both seduce and to defy
the Western gaze through music – the most powerful and controversial cultural
mobiliser in ex-Yugoslavia. As a result, Naskovski effectively demonstrates the
crucial role that folk music plays in the process of (retrospectively) creating
national traumas and national mythology. The work illustrates the artist’s success
in representing the repetition and the reactivation of Serbian national trauma in the
late eighties by enacting the same combination of historical footage (of World War
II atrocities against the Serbs), media footage and soundtrack of folkloric songs
similar to ‘Death In Dallas’.
12
Øyvind Vågnes, Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination Film in Visual Culture
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), p. 106.
13
Zoran Naskovski, email to author (7 February 2012).
14
Dusan Bijelić, “Introduction: Blowing Up the Bridge”, in Balkan as Metaphor,
edited by Dusan Bijelić and Obrad Savić (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 1–22.
Turbo-art 113
In this regard, the use of the gusle in ‘Death In Dallas’ is of particular importance.
The use of the instrument in the work channels the significant role the gusle played
in Serbian history as an instrument of patriotic epic poetry. As gusle songs relate
to a form of Serb oral history that reaches back to the Ottoman occupation and the
struggle for liberation against the oppressors, the instrument stands as a powerful
symbol of patriotism and tradition that is perceived as deeply historical. However,
Naskovski’s use of the gusle also references its more recent political manipulation,
such as the mobilisation of folklore at Serb nationalist political meetings in the
early nineties, and the reported case of Radovan Karadžić – the Bosnian Serb
war criminal currently on trial at the ICTY. While fleeing authorities under a
false name and changed appearance, Karadžić played the gusle to a photograph
of himself.15 In creating a moment of transnational trauma by using a localised
form of cultural expression, Naskovski demonstrates that the ideological function
of cultural products, such as music, has the ability to solicit a response across
historical and geographic borders. A song that is foreign (or ‘other’) to the US in
every sense retroactively ignites passions about the loss of Kennedy, just as similar
gusle songs – manipulated through nationalist mythology – ignited the fiction of
‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ that informed many Western commentators’ understanding
of the ex-Yugoslav conflicts in the early nineties.
If Death In Dallas uses found folk music to highlight the relationship between
local and global perceptions of events, this strategy is also evident in Naskovski’s
work that explicitly deals with the relationship of turbo-folk to national
representation in Serbia. A good example is Naskovski’s earlier work, Apollo 9
(1999). On 7 September 1999, Naskovski staged a musical performance in front of
a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in downtown Belgrade. The performance took
its name from a 1969 LP single release ‘Apollo 9’, written by Obren Pjevović,
a farmer with only primary school education, and with vocals by a peasant girl,
Mašinka Lukić. ‘Apollo 9’ is identified as ‘proto turbo-folk’ because it is one of
the first examples of a song that experimented with contemporary themes. The
music is typical of the central Serbian region of Sumadija. It has a steady 2/4
rhythm and caressing melody of syllabic vocals combined with acoustic guitar,
accordion and a clarinet.16 However, the title of the song and the lyrics dealing
with spatial exploration and social differences demonstrate a shift away from rural
village themes towards an engagement with technology and industrialisation.
Naskovski’s event began with a toast, followed by Lukić’s performance of
‘Apollo 9’, during which the audience was served homemade brandy, beer and pig
on a spit. In the background was a projected montage of documentary footage of
the flight of Apollo 9 to the moon. The event was a huge success, partly because of
15
“Karadžić svirao gulse”, Slobodna Dalamcija (23 July 2008),
accessed 27 September 2012, http://slobodnadalmacija.hr/Svijet/tabid/67/articleType/
ArticleView/articleId/15983/Default.aspx.
16
Music of Yugoslavia”, Popular Music 14/2 (1995): 241.
the free alcohol, but also due to Naskovski’s choice to use a hugely successful song
from the seventies. The documentary video footage complemented the subject
of the song that is in equal parts a vox populi critique of modernisation and an
expression of Cold War paranoia. The song juxtaposes traditional folkloric motifs
of rural village life with planetary exploration to highlight their discrepancy and
the difficulty of rural life. This pattern is followed in several verses that combine
images of dried plums and planets, and the moon with hungry children wanting
bread. There are two key elements at play here. Folkloristic populism of the ‘voice
from the people’ and the everyday themes of the song are heightened by their
juxtaposition with the unreachable planets. Representative of the shift in NCFM in
the seventies from village nostalgia to modernism and industrialisation, ‘Apollo 9’
changes the perspective, rather than the theme. The song is not so much about
abandoning the rustic nostalgia as it is about the perception of that tradition from
space. Just as important is the dark humour of the song, which serves to bridge
the gap between two seemingly polar opposites. Humour is directed at scientific
innovations that are leaving behind hungry children around the planet. Importantly,
both folkloristic populism and humour converge in the last two verses of the song.
The final verse asks whether Earth is being spied on from flying saucers with
people ‘bigger than Apollo’.
‘Apollo 9’ acts as a point of symbolic condensation between two historical
moments during which a major economic and political shift took place. As discussed
in the first chapter, in 1969 Yugoslavia, this restructure centred on the socialist
modernising of an underdeveloped economy decimated by World War II, as well
as a largely illiterate population. The lyrical perspective of Apollo 9 is one of the
‘epic of the everyday’ on the periphery, observing these changes with doubt and
uncertainty.17 Thirty years later, in 1999, the restructure refers to the destruction of
Yugoslavia and its destructive shift from socialism to capitalism. The performance
of Apollo 9 in 1999 inevitably connected the centre-periphery dialectic of the
work to images of the world, versus the closed society of Serbia under Milošević.
The culmination of this standoff took the form of NATO-led air strikes on Serbia,
which happened shortly before the performance of Apollo 9. In a form of cultural
response, the state organised anti-NATO demonstrations all over Serbia, particularly
in Belgrade, where the public gathered as human shields on bridges to ‘protect’ them
from being bombed. Musical performances (that resembled ‘Apollo 9’) played a
significant part in the demonstrations, turning them into a month-long spectacle that
Žižek calls the ‘collective Bakhtinian carnivalisation of social life’.18 While, on the
one hand, Serbia appeared as a country led by a dictator engaged in ethnic cleansing
and unwilling to relinquish power, on the other hand, the performance of passionate
17
18
Writings, Vol. 2, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (New York: Continuum, 2006),
p. 265.
Turbo-art 115
Serb patriotism to the soundtrack of folk music symbolised defiance to the global
militaristic hegemony of NATO.
These events are evidence that songs such as ‘Death In Dallas’ and
‘Apollo 9’ are about the ideological functioning of music as a mobiliser of national
identification. In both cases, Naskovski uses historically ‘loaded’ songs to bring
historical discourse into the present: just as the performance of identity in Apollo 9
repeats the ‘spontaneous’ performances of identity in the protests against NATO,
Death In Dallas repeats the assassination of Kennedy. In this way, both works
correspond to Attali’s thesis that music can be prophetic of political changes and
reflective of political systems. These works also support Marx’s thesis that history
repeats itself twice – first as a tragedy at the centre and second as a farce at the
periphery. Yet, popular music in Naskovski’s work is not just used as a medium for
repeating history, but is also a medium of history – an articulation of the feeling
of time in the Balkans. The flow of history is suspended in the music, reflecting
the structural effect of temporality on the ‘historically frozen’ Balkans. In other
words, Naskovski treats the cultural specificity of his works not just as a form of
cultural remembering, but as a way of bringing into view the complex relationship
between popular culture, populism and constructions of identity.
Naskovski’s work is usually conceived in terms of his use of the readymade
to critically explore the intersections of different media and different histories
specific to the Balkans. Both Death In Dallas and Apollo 9 can be read through
their strategic play with ‘music as readymade’, raising questions of the ongoing
economic and political instability and media manipulation in the Balkans.
Yet, Naskovski’s use of music as an expression of ‘Balkan readymade’ also
problematises both global and local perceptions of turbo-folk (and turbo-folk as a
readymade) in the Balkans.
The songs selected by Naskovski in his work recall particular moments in the
history of Yugoslavia as a site for collective identity, and of the position of popular
music within that sphere. Death In Dallas and Apollo 9 tap into the perception of
music as ‘the epic of the everyday’ and investigate the recall of cultural memory
through the appropriation of shared cultural spaces and perceptual fields implicit in
the music. In this way, Naskovski’s work may be seen as part of a broader body of
work that investigates the intersections between music and sound, and social and
political structures. This body of works includes Albanian artist Anri Sala’s Natural
Mystic (Tomahawk #2) (2002), which features a man channelling the sound of the
US-led NATO bombing campaign of Serbia in 1999, as he imitates the ominous
sound of a Tomahawk missile. It also includes Lebanese artist Mazen Kerbaj’s
sound piece Starry Night (2006), which features the artist’s improvised trumpet duet
with the Israeli Air Force’s bombing of Lebanon on the night of 16 July 2006.
However, looking more closely, Naskovski’s choice of songs also implicitly
deals with the ‘problem’ of turbo-folk in ex-Yugoslavia. In Apollo 9, Naskovski
was the first artist to include turbo-folk in contemporary art. This gesture positions
Naskovski as a chronicler of the development of popular music in Yugoslavia –
one that insists on NCFM and turbo-folk music as cultural memories of particular
moments. As discussed in the first chapter, turbo-folk and NCFM have been
perceived as the key forms of cultural expression of the working class. Naskovski’s
work references this process implicitly by positioning folk music as the cultural
memory of key historical moments. His work also explicitly alludes to this process
by associating Jozo Karamatić with Jimmy Hendrix, and Mašinka Lukić with
street performers ‘from the people’. In this way, Naskovski positions turbo-folk as
a practice that engages with the history and aesthetics of labour.
Claire Bishop describes the artistic practice used by Naskovski as
‘delegated performance’:
the act of hiring non-professionals or specialists in other fields to undertake

the job of being present and performing at a particular time and a particular
place on behalf of the artist, and following his or her instructions. This strategy
differs from a theatrical and cinematic tradition of employing people to act on
the director’s behalf in the following crucial respect: the artists … hire people to
perform their own socioeconomic category.19
As a delegated performance, Apollo 9 opens up the space between the

socioeconomic category of the NCFM performer in seventies Yugoslavia and
nineties Serbia. Lukić’s public appearance and performance in the work recalls
the shared cultural space of Yugoslavia discussed in the first chapter – or rather,
it recalls this space viewed from the perspective of the cultural margin. Lukić’s
career as a performer was marked by the quirkiness and oddity of ‘Apollo 9’ (and
other similar songs) and confined to the status of cultural ‘otherness’. Yet, the
context of the performance – Serbia in 1999, following wars in Bosnia and Croatia,
international sanctions and alienation, and facing the threat of NATO – shifts the
perspective, where Lukić’s cultural marginality is now also Serbia’s international
marginality, publicly embraced and celebrated as a patriotic act.
Apollo 9 performs this tension through a staged celebration between the (recent)
past and the present, between the institution of the state and ‘the people’ and between
the meanings of ‘people’s music’ both historically and in the present. Bishop
argues that ‘(t)his tension between structure and agency, particular and universal,
spontaneous and scripted, voyeur and voyant, is key to the aesthetic effect and social
import’ of delegated performance.20 In this sense, the delegated performance of
Apollo 9 is not only an expression of the socioeconomic category of the NCFM
performer and the audience, but is also expressive of the social space in which their
contact took place. To be more precise, it is expressive of the commercialisation of
that space throughout the nineties. The fact that Apollo 9 took place in front of a
McDonald’s restaurant in downtown Belgrade only highlights this point, drawing
attention to turbo-folk as the cultural triumph of the West over Serbian values.
19
Claire Bishop, “Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity”, October 140
(2012): 91.
20
Ibid., 110.
Turbo-art 117
The proximity of turbo-folk to the cultural dynamics of globalisation in

Apollo 9 provided a blueprint for the way Balkan music has been incorporated into
works of contemporary art in the region. This is evident in the way Naskovski’s
approach to turbo-folk has been taken up by artists Milica Tomić in Serbia and
Nada Prlja in Macedonia.
EPP 1: Turbo-folk as Delegated Performance in Art
In 2001, Milica Tomić repeated Naskovski’s strategy of delegated performance

from Apollo 9 by staging a performance of a popular Serbian turbo-folk with
vocalist Dragana Mirković in the context of a contemporary art exhibition in
Vienna, Austria.21 Entitled This is Contemporary Art, the event featured Mirković
performing a three-song set in the gallery performance space, accompanied by a
dance group. The performance was complemented by the audience’s enthusiastic
and energetic response to the music, typical of turbo-folk concerts. This response
came because the audience not only consisted of the usual art gallery crowd, but
was largely comprised of Yugoslav migrant workers in Vienna. The documentary
photographs of the event, available on Tomić’s website, testify to this ‘clash of
cultures’, with images juxtaposing the art crowd’s ‘black-on-black’ outfits with the
ex-Yugoslav migrants’ golden crosses and leather jackets. In acknowledgement of
this cultural distinction, Mirković, instructed by the artist Tomić, started the event
by announcing the title of the work: ‘This is contemporary art!’.
This announcement is key to the different ways the performance deals with the
representation of national identity through turbo-folk. To begin with, in delegating the
performance to Mirković, Tomić claims she sought to draw attention to Mirković’s
status as a ‘star of turbo-folk’: a reified entertainment commodity. In contrast to
Naskovski, who chose a little known ‘cult’ performer for Apollo 9, Tomić opted
for a turbo-folk celebrity, whose face is famous across ex-Yugoslavia and whose
private life features regularly in tabloids and television shows. In this respect, the
articulation of Mirković’s status as a ‘reified commodity’ of turbo-folk recalls pop
art strategies that sought to engage the banality of commercial entertainment culture,
the fascination with celebrity and the symbolic status of celebrity.
Yet, the setting of the work in a Vienna contemporary art gallery raises
questions about the status of this turbo-folk star in an international context. If
Mirković is famous across ex-Yugoslavia, she is perhaps little more than quirky
cultural exotica ‘from Balkan’ to the art audience in Vienna. This is acknowledged
by Tomić, who states that the work sought to draw attention to the ‘invisible’ status
of the ex-Yugoslav guest worker community in the eyes of the larger community
21
See Milica Tomić’s website for details: “This is Contemporary Art”, Milica
Tomić, accessed 20 September 2012, http://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/this-is-
contemporary-art/.
in Vienna.22 Vienna has one of largest ex-Yugoslav migrant populations, and is one
of the cultural capitals of Mitteleuropa. The setting of the work in this context –
and in a contemporary art gallery – thus implicitly frames the performance around
questions of cultural taste and cultural exchange in globalisation.
This is Contemporary Art prevents any straightforward reading of turbo-
folk as being instantly associated with national branding or national identity.
This obstruction takes effect from the perspective of contemporary art and the
perspective of global visibility. This is because the introduction of turbo-folk as a
cultural readymade into the ‘white space’ of a contemporary art gallery carries a
different set of national identity signifiers. In addition, a performance of Balkan
identity to Yugoslav workers in the audience is very different to the meaning and
affect of the work from within the perspective of the contemporary art scene in
Austria. It is the interplay between these two perspectives and the implicit cultural
divides between ‘high’ and ‘low’ and ‘East’ and ‘West’ that allows Tomić to
defamiliarise the national identification that is typically projected upon music.
It is precisely in this ‘obstruction’ of national identification in This is
Contemporary Art that reveals the latent problematic histories inherent in turbo-
folk. As Bishop points out, in delegated performances:
although the artist delegates power to the performers (entrusting them with
agency while also affirming hierarchy), delegation is not just a one-way,
downward gesture. The performers also delegate something to the artist: a
guarantee of authenticity, through their proximity to everyday social reality,
conventionally denied to the artist, who deals merely in representations. By
relocating sovereign and self-constituting authenticity away from the singular
artist … and onto the collective presence of the performers, who metonymically
signify a solidly socio-political issue … the artist outsources authenticity and
relies on his performers to supply this more vividly, without the disruptive filter
of celebrity.23
Mirković may be a celebrity star of turbo-folk in a local and indeed global sense,
but her celebrity is accompanied by a series of projected signifiers associated
with cultural hierarchies of value and taste. As discussed in the first chapter, this
perception results from turbo-folk music being viewed through the audience, which,
in this instance, are the ‘invisible’ and ‘uncultured’ ex-Yugoslav manual labourers in
Vienna. The authenticity that is outsourced to the performers of This is Contemporary
Art is the authenticity of the invisible uncultured labourer migrant. Yet, the sizeable
portion of Mirković’s fan base that is comprised of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) community, who were also present in the audience, also serves
22
See Branislav Dimitrijević, “Performans Milice Tomić: Ovo je savremena
umetnost”, Vreme 546 (21 June 2001), accessed 10 October 2012, http://www.vreme.com/
cms/view.php?id=290487.
23
Bishop, “Delegated Performance”, 110.
Turbo-art 119
to undermine this view. Following the performance, when asked whether she was
aware of her LGBT audience, Mirković replied, ‘Of course!’ – thus bringing into
question the easy identification of turbo-folk and its audience.
The association of Mirković’s performance with ex-Yugoslav migrant
Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in Vienna adds another layer to the associations
of turbo-folk celebrity with backwardness and cultural primitivism. It concerns
Mirković’s musical affiliation with one of the most controversial branches of
turbo-folk – the Belgrade-based band and production team Southern Wind. As
discussed in the first chapter, Southern Wind emerged in the music entertainment
industry in the late eighties and quickly generated a large audience, despite (or
perhaps because of) accusations of the ‘orientalisation’ of music in Yugoslavia
and a media boycott. The charges of ‘orientalisation’ brought against the music
of Southern Wind were explained, among other things, by the ‘importing’ of the
orient through Yugoslav guest-worker immigrants. Musically, Southern Wind was
largely a continuation of NCFM style – a combination of Serbian double metre,
Bosnian melismatic singing and Macedonian irregular rhythms with electronic
and synth-based sounds. This eclectic combination of musical styles and
ornamentation recreated and capitalised on the syncretic music that symbolised
the transcultural and heterogeneous juncture of Yugoslavia. Yet, because Southern
Wind emerged into the musical context of the late eighties – a period saturated with
messages of regionalism, ethnicity and East–West intersection – it was precisely
the transnational elements of their output that led to their music being labelled as
‘southern’, ‘oriental’ and ‘Eastern’.
Mirković was one of the most popular Southern Wind performers, yet her
popularity was always hinged on the support of the Yugoslav guest-worker
audience. In this sense, Tomić’s claim that Mirković is ‘the biggest star of turbo-
folk’ is better understood in relation to the Yugoslav guest workers’ marginality.
Technically, economically, politically and symbolically, the biggest star of turbo-
folk is Ceca, whose rivalry with Mirković in the early days of their singing careers
ended as soon as Ceca married Arkan and her popularity surged. In terms of identity
politics and symbolism, Ceca is the mainstream of turbo-folk, and Mirković is the
margin: Ceca is the symbol of Serbia (the mother of Serbs, Ceca-nationale and so
on) and Mirković is the symbol of the ‘Eastern’ sound (the musical ‘other within’).
The slippages between cultural distinctions underlying the artistic gesture
of This is Contemporary Art thus create a rupture in the process of national
identification. On the one hand, they offer what Bishop calls an alternative form
of knowledge about capitalism’s commodification of the individual.24 Mirković’s
status as the ‘star’ of turbo-folk and as a commodity of turbo-folk (a readymade
of a readymade) is undermined, just as the perception of the turbo-folk audience
is problematised by Mirković’s public statements. On the other hand, the
24
Ibid., 111.
delegated performance offers a ‘specific space of experience’, where the norms of

contemporary labour are suspended and transgressed.25
In acknowledgement of the discontinuity between delegated performance and
contemporary forms of labour, in 2007, Macedonian artist Nada Prlja organised
a live performance of Turbo Star in a contemporary art gallery in Skopje. The
performance took the form of an amateur singing competition, in which amateur
candidates performed turbo-folk songs before a ‘cultural elite’ jury panel consisting
of art historians and artists. As Prlja explains, this was intended to be a live event
in which new stars of turbo-folk were created.26
Turbo Star is about the commodification of celebrity and stardom in the
contemporary media, where the promise of ‘15 minutes of fame’ has become
responsible for the relentless onslaught of reality television that frequently
includes the routine humiliation of hopeful amateur performers on turbo-folk
talent shows such as Stars of Grand (Zvezde Granda). Yet, Turbo Star was also
about the corporate co-option of the do-it-yourself work ethic that commercialises
the pursuit of one’s dreams, no matter how futile and misguided. This emphasis
meant that the work effectively subverted the performative labour of talent shows
by making the implicit cultural hierarchy explicit. Importantly, the cultural
hierarchy was also undermined in the mismatch between the ‘expertise’ of the
usual contestant show judges typically consisting of musical celebrities and
producers that were substituted by art intelligentsia. This mismatch suspended the
routine humiliation of contestants by highlighting the ‘elite’ and inserting them as
‘intellectual readymades’ into a different context. The artist’s observation of the
enjoyment of both the participants and the audience in the (staged) carnivalesque
transgression of the situation suggests that the work offered a specific space of
experience outside of identity constructions of contemporary capital. As a result,
the artist successfully obstructed the easy identification of turbo-folk with escapism
and with the commodification of the individual.
The work of artists Naskovski, Tomić and Prlja discussed in the previous
section demonstrates the ways in which popular music has been used to question
the discourses of national identification. In their work turbo-folk functions as a
disruption of the easy connection between popular music and populist nationalism.
Yet, turbo-folk here not only works to obstruct local narratives about music and
national identity, but also to problematise the global perspectives of music in the
Balkans. In this sense, Naskovski, Tomić and Prlja raise important questions about
the broader process of national branding implicit in discussions of popular culture.
These questions are explored further in the next section, in relation to the work of
artists Lulzim Zequiri and Erzen Shkolloli.
25
Ibid.
26
Stefan Szczelkun, “The Return of the Red Bourgeoisie: An Interview with Nada
Prlja”, Mute 13 (23 September 2009), accessed 10 September 2012, http://www.metamute.
org/editorial/articles/return-red-bourgeoisie-%E2%88%92-interview-nada-prlja.
Turbo-art 121
Popular Music and National Art on a Global Scene: Heroes and Hey You
Music as a form of national branding is also explored in the work of two artists
from Kosovo, Lulzim Zequiri and Erzen Shkolloli. Shkololli’s video work, Hey
You (2002), documents a vocal performance by Albanian singer Shkurte Fejza.27
The song is a letter addressed to Europe, referring to the split of Albania and
Kosovo and demanding that the world should not divide Albania. Fejza invokes
the image of the double-headed eagle – featured on the Albanian flag – and asks
for the eagle to be reunited once again. Fejza’s performances, which combined
Albanian folk music with contemporary pop, became symbolic of the national
resistance in Kosovo against Serbian domination. Her songs were banned
between 1981 and 1983 by the communist regime in Yugoslavia, and in 1986 she
was imprisoned for her political activity. Hey You is about the censorship of the
‘provocative’ national representation of ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia; however,
it is also about the repetition of that censorship in the context of a contemporary
international art exhibition, where censorship is achieved in the very process of
branding an artist as ‘national’.
Hey You recalls a particular historical moment in Yugoslavia, in which music
converged with nationalist discourse. Political authorities in post–World War
II Yugoslavia were highly cautious of the effect of music of ‘national’ profile.
This cautiousness came as a result of the war of liberation that spilled into a civil
conflict fought on tangled political and ethnic lines, after which both victims and
perpetrators had to collectively form the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. What
one ethnic group considered the glorious past, the other considered a national
tragedy. Consequently, the authorities banned public performances of songs related
to the national identity of the constituent peoples of Yugoslavia.28 This overt form
of political censorship was significantly relaxed following constitutional changes
in the seventies, and the general process of liberalisation. Former emphasis on
commonality between the groups gave way to an emphasis on mutual difference.
Positioned in the increasingly ‘nationalised’ political landscape of the eighties,
growing tensions became mirrored in the music. The lyrics of ‘Hey You’ reflect the
political landscape of the late eighties by referring to the claims of ethnic groups
over Kosovo – namely, the attempts of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to achieve
greater autonomy, set against the determination of the Serbian state to cut off the
autonomous status of that province.
‘Hey You’ is about the censorship of anything that carried the signifier of
national in Yugoslavia. It is reflective of a socialist regime that was held together
27
The work can be viewed at: “The Center for Digital Art – Video Archive – Hey You”,
The Israeli Centre for Digital Art, accessed 21 February 2014, http://www.digitalartlab.org.
il/ArchiveVideo.asp?id=483.
28
Svanibor Pettan, “Music and Censorship in Ex-Yugoslavia: Some Views
from Croatia”, Paper presented at the 1st World Conference on Music and Censorship,
Copenhagen, Denmark (20–22 November 1998).
by a set of rules that ensured tight control of cultural output. Yet, ‘Hey You’ is
also about the return of the signifier of nationalism in the wake of Yugoslavia. It is
about the way post-socialism is marked by the repetition of nationalist discourses
that are now seen as a way to brand one’s identity. Shkololli undermines these
discourses by mimicking a more subtle act of censorship, one that frequently
takes place in international art exhibitions where the depiction of identity parades
cultural difference for the entertainment of cosmopolitan viewers.29
Shkololli’s work is a documentation of the performance. However, he alters
the performance in ways that shift its meaning and its intended audience. On
the one hand, the work is addressed to Europe through its lyrics, and this was
amplified through its showing at international exhibition Manifesta 4 in 2002. In
this context, it no longer operates as a local dialogue – or the periphery addressing
the centre from the periphery – but shifts this dialogue to the centre, thereby raising
the question of visibility. Shkololli also strips the performance of its context by
removing the audience and the band, and instead depicting Fejza singing in a
pristine white space that resembles a white cube. The song is thus stripped of
its association as a nationalist-secessionist song that was banned by a paranoid
Yugoslav socialist regime. Its call becomes addressed to the European community,
and is thus an implicit threat. The song propagates the unification of all Albanians
around the world into one big country, thus awakening the spectre of orientalist
fears of nationalist populist Islam in Albania and Kosovo.
Lulzim Zequiri’s Heroes (2003) builds on the discourse in both Naskovski’s
and Shkololli’s work through a parody of nationalist populism implicit in Hey
You, and through the role of the international art circuit in the production of the
mythologised Balkan identities and conflicts implicit in Death In Dallas.30 Heroes
documents a performance by two male musicians playing the Shargia – a string
instrument akin to the mandolin – in a rural domestic setting. The men play a
traditional folk melody while singing about the heroic achievements of Kosovo
artists, including Shkololli, at art exhibitions and international events, including
the Manifesta, Istanbul Biennial and Kassel Documenta Exhibitions. The quirky
and humorous fusing of the folkloric tradition of epic songs (that would usually
glorify the achievements of historic heroes and military leaders) and lyrics
addressing the international contemporary art circuit demonstrates that the issue
of national identity of an artist from the periphery is always inscribed into the
contemporary ‘internationalism’ of large exhibitions. Zequiri’s experimentation
with folklore in Heroes mismatches the ‘epic seriousness’ of the musical form and
the gossipy style of the ‘art scene politics’ of the lyrical content. Yet, this mismatch
can also be reversed, where the ‘contemporary’ and ‘international’ character of
the lyrics is juxtaposed against the ‘archaic’ and ‘parochial’ form of the vocal and
musical delivery.
29
Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), p. 47.
30
Vesić, “Politics of Display”.
Turbo-art 123
Playing around the slippages and implicitly acknowledging the arbitrariness

of the divisions between the local, global contemporary, and traditional notions
associated with expressions of national identity in art, Zequiri invents a new
form: ‘epic art journalism’. Importantly, Zequiri’s invented hybrid form also
parodies the notion of national representation in a contemporary international art
exhibition. Thus, on the one hand, Heroes suggests that, as Jill Bennett states,
‘the notion of national representation is no longer associated with discreet modes
of aesthetic expression’, and works of art in international exhibitions rarely
embody national identity in any straightforward sense.31 Yet, on the other hand,
Zequiri simultaneously demonstrates that, despite this absence of a ‘national
aesthetic’, the work of artists from the periphery is still frequently tagged with the
signifier ‘national’.
Jelena Vesić argues that Heroes illustrates how the international positioning of
the artist dictated by the politics of national identity is already inscribed into the
contemporary art system:
first within the general tendency of building the new national cultures in post-
Yugoslav states (in other words, each state needs its contemporary art to serve
the purpose of contributing to the building of the State), and secondly within the
international art scene as institution where the quality and thematic scope of the
artistic work is not enough, but the signifier of ‘from Kosovo’ is needed in order
to confirm the vaunted image of all-inclusive internationality.32
Heroes parodies the vocabulary of national identity performed through music,

and the inscription of this vocabulary within international art circuits. As Vesić
suggests, the emergence of local ‘national’ contemporary art scenes in the
Balkans is connected to the influx of money from various foreign foundations,
and signals the official assignment of culture to become a part of the processes of
democratisation in post-conflict societies.
In this sense, Heroes prevents any straightforward reading of works from
the periphery as being instantly associated with national branding, narration or
nationalist discourse. The humorous performance of national identity in the song
problematises understandings of the national association ‘from Kosovo’ in both
local and international contexts. This obstruction of national identification signals
how potent these works are – and, by extension, how potent the music and humour
they employ are – in defamiliarising the national identification that is projected
upon music, artists and artworks in both international and local contexts. In turn,
this obstruction also reveals the latent problematic nationalist histories inherent in
the music.
31
Jill Bennett, “Migratory Aesthetics: Art and Politics beyond Identity”, Thamyris/
Intersecting 23 (2011): 112.
32
Ibid., 112.
Heroes also illustrates a more volatile dynamic at play in art ‘from Kosovo’
that deals with national identity, particularly the relationship of this art to
Serbian national identity. Heroes was part of an exhibition entitled Exception:
Contemporary Art Scene of Prishtina, scheduled to open on 7 February 2008 at
the Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade, after a successful opening a few weeks earlier
in Novi Sad in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. However, this public
showing of works that dealt with the ‘national question’ of Kosovo in Belgrade
was seen as a direct provocation and, before the opening could take place, an
angry mob of Serb nationalists burst into the gallery, verbally abusing everyone
present and destroying one of the works.
EPP 2: Exception – Kosovo in Serbia
The Serb perception of Kosovo and Kosovar people is best illustrated by two old
jokes from Yugoslavia:
A lion escapes from a zoo and attacks a group of children playing in a park.
A passer-by jumps to the children’s help and strangles the lion with his bare
hands. The next day, a Serb newspaper features a headline on its front page
that says: ‘Brave Serb rescues children from certain death!’. The man contacts
the newspaper and says angrily: ‘I am not a Serb’. The paper apologises, and,
the next day, the corrected headline says: ‘Yugoslav hero of the day!’. The man
contacts the paper again and says angrily: ‘I am not Yugoslav!’. ‘So what are you
then?’ ‘I am Kosovar!’ The following day, the headline says: ‘Kosovar terrorist
kills a lion, children’s favourite animal!’
A Serb walks into a bar, orders a drink and begins a conversation with another
man. After few minutes, the Serb realises the other man is a Turk, quickly pulls
out a gun and kills him. The other guests, shocked, ask him: ‘Why did you do
that?’ He replies: ‘He was Turkish, and they killed our Tzar Lazar in the Battle
of Kosovo!’ ‘But that happened over 600 years ago!’ ‘Yes, but I only heard about
it yesterday.’
While the first joke describes the criminalisation of Kosovars, the second joke
describes the mythologising of historical narratives surrounding the place of
Kosovo in Serbia. Taken together, they help explain the way Kosovo figures
as a traumatic point in Serbia, always symbolically condensed into something
different, and always as a point of conflict. The traumatic and almost pathological
attachment of Serbs to Kosovo is best illustrated by everyday experience, where,
even several years after the declaration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, it
is still virtually impossible to mention to anyone in Serbia that Kosovo may not be
or should not be Serbian.
Turbo-art 125
These jokes also illustrate the way the catharsis of humour creates a familiar
world of shared beliefs and cultural values. As Simon Critchley argues, the ability
of humour to imagine a world of shared values and the potential of humour to
demonstrate a predicament (and how it may be changed) brings it close to a
shared prayer.33 The fact that Kosovo and Kosovar people feature as the most
popular subject of jokes in Serbia indicates the symbolic weight they carry in
public discourse. Reflecting on this symbolic potency, Ian Parker calls Kosovo the
symptom of Serbia’s historical foundation: ‘a point of symbolic condensation of
conflict that causes anguish but which has a function, and so it is difficult, perhaps
impossible without the disintegration of the identity founded upon it, to give up’.34
A full account of the history, politics and symbolic role of Kosovo narratives in
Serbia is well beyond the scope here. It will suffice to say that the Serbs recollect
the Kosovo Battle of 28 June 1389 as a heroic fight against the Ottoman Empire –
a fight that they lost, but that remains the symbol of Serb bravery, martyrdom,
patriotism and defiance of oppression. The myth of Kosovo has featured as a
powerful mobiliser in Serbian politics and the public ever since that period. It
became significantly revitalised as the cornerstone of Milošević’s nationalism in
the nineties, and peaked during the Kosovo War of 1998–1999 between Serb armed
forces and Albanian separatist forces (KLA). The war escalated and eventuated
in the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. However, even after the overthrow of
Milošević in 2000, Serbia’s position on Kosovo has not changed a great deal.35
The myth of the heroic sacrifice of the Serbian people in defending the ‘gates of
Europe’ from the Ottoman invasion has remained key in defining national roots
and ‘grounding’ the national identity.36
This myth once again took centre stage in Serbian public debates in
February 2008, in the midst of an electoral campaign for the president of Serbia,
with the independence of Kosovo looming.37 The independence of Kosovo was
announced on 17 February 2008, accompanied by rallies and demonstrations
around Serbia, as well as unrest and the trashing and burning of shops and
foreign embassies in Belgrade. Against this volatile and charged context, on 7
February 2008, Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade unsuccessfully attempted to open
an exhibition entitled Exception: Contemporary Art Scene of Prishtina, which
dealt with contemporary art and national representation. Right-wing Serbian
nationalists – including the proto-fascist ‘patriotic’ group Obraz (Honour)
and violent football hooligans – disrupted the opening and destroyed the work
33
Simon Critchley, On Humour: Thinking in Action (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 17.
34
35
See: Jelena Obradović-Wochnik and Alexander Wochnik, “Europeanising the
‘Kosovo Question’: Serbia’s Policies in the Context of EU Integration”, West European
Politics 35 (2012): 1158–81.
36
Vesic, “Politics of Display”.
37
Vladimir Jerić, “Four Acts and the Pair of Socks”, Red Thread 1 (2009), http://
www.red-thread.org/dosyalar/site_resim/dergi/pdf/redthread01_eng.pdf.
considered the most provocative. The rest of the exhibition was packed up and
closed on the same night. As Vladimir Jerić recounts from that evening, the
police did the legal minimum of keeping the situation under control by effectively
allowing the destruction of work inside the gallery in order to prevent a wider
escalation. The police then insisted that the rest of the ‘objects’ be removed from
the space as soon as possible because they could not ‘guarantee the safety’ of the
organisers, visitors and artworks.38
As Jerić argues, an idealist attempt to deal with the politics of identity in such a
charged broader context provided little more than a tragic reminder of the expected
state of affairs in Serbia:
It was not possible for the Prishtina artists to escape the identification with
‘being Albanians’ and therefore ‘separatists’, while the audience had only but
two choices: you are coming to this exhibition to either support ‘the Albanian
cause’, or ‘to defend the integrity of Serbian territory’.39
Yet, within this violent confrontation, Jerić also describes another battle that took
place that evening, which he describes as ‘the battle of icons’:
Two of them were standing inside the gallery, one recognisable as Adem Jashari
and the other as Elvis Presley, the first in his combat/tribal uniform, casually
holding an automatic rifle, and the latter as represented at the time by Andy
Warhol, dressed as a cowboy, pulling out a gun and aiming at whoever is
looking. These two came visiting as part of the work ‘Face to face’ by Dren
Maliqi. The third ‘icon’ was brought outside the gallery to confront Jashari – it
was Legija, the famous war and civilian criminal, who was eventually found
guilty and is serving a prison sentence for the assassination of the then Serbian
prime minister Zoran Đinđić. His life-size image was brought by the usual lynch
mob of fascists and ultra-nationalists to defend them from what they perceived
as the ‘armed invasion’ of the image of Jashari.40
Jerić’s description of the ‘battle of icons’ suggests an understanding of the images

involved in the confrontation as readymades: both as industrial–cultural objects
of mass production and reproduction, and as ideological symbols of recognition
onto which national and political identification are projected. Yet, Jerić’s account
opens up another possibility of understanding the reaction to the ‘icons’ through
the religious function of icons: the primary purpose of an icon of the Orthodox
Church is not just to represent a patron saint, but also to form a direct link between
the saint and the faithful.
38
Jeric provides a full account of the events that evening in his Red Thread article:
Ibid., 105.
39
Ibid., 99.
40
Ibid., 100.
Turbo-art 127
In this sense, it is possible to see the violent confrontation at the Kontekst

Gallery as a form of delegated performance, in which the gallery and the artists
created a space in which the public could (violently) perform their national
identity. Crucial here are not just the particular place and time of the event, but
the images in question that acted as a trigger for the violence and as a mediator
between the ‘icons’ and the violence. For the enraged mob of nationalist Serbs, the
‘icon’ of Jashari was directly attacking them, and their act of ‘iconoclasm’ was not
aggression, but an act of self-defence.
The icons here perform two functions. The first is that they open up the
conversation (or confrontation) between the three actors – Elvis, Jashari and
Legija – and their respective cultural categories: global celebrity of popular
culture, symbol of Kosovar resistance and symbol of Serb militant patriotism. The
result of this conversation or confrontation was the destruction of Jashari, which,
as Jerić points out, suggests that, in Serbia, the symbolic weight of the destruction
of Jashari overshadowed the ‘meaning’ of Elvis. On another level, the icons
acted as mediators between the mythology of ‘Kosovo’, and the incorporation
and grounding of that mythology in everyday life. Rather than simply acting as a
reminder of the ‘with us or against us’ status quo in Serb perceptions of Kosovo,
this mediation through icons also highlights the politically charged understanding
of culture, including music and art.
This relation between religious iconography, turbo-folk and national
identification was also highlighted in the work of Serbian artist Vladislava Đurić.
In 2010 Đurić painted Ceca as an orthodox icon titled Saint Ceca.41 The work
overtly juxtaposes two main elements of Ceca’s public image, the hyper-sexualised
femininity against the religious overtones. Ceca is shown wearing a religious
headscarf (the symbol of chastity and modesty) with her cleavage exposed. This
is clearly intended to recall the way in which Ceca, and numerous other turbo-folk
performers, use crosses as staples of their image, and publicly state their adherence
to the conservative traditions of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The work also
bears the inscription ‘Est. Um. Ceca’ (show business performer Ceca), taking the
place of traditional inscriptions on icons that show the name of the saint. This is
a reference to the public elevation of Ceca into a symbol of public veneration. As
shows in the previous chapter, Ceca is frequently identified by her audience as an
iconic figure: mother of the Serbs, martyr, hero, patriot.
The veneration of Ceca implicit in her rendering as an Orthodox Icon also
raises another question. Traditionally, Orthodox icons were not only seen as in
possession of magical properties that could transform the worshippers, they were
also connected to particular accounts of vision. These accounts saw vision as
‘extramission’, where light travelled out of the eye to touch the world and then
returned to the body of the worshipper. Seeing was doing and the mere sight
41
See Marijana Mitrović, “The ‘Unbearable Lightness’ (of the Subversion) of
Nationalism: Bodies on Estrada in Postsocialist Serbia”, Bulletin of the Institute of
Ethnography SASA, Belgrade 59/2 (2011): 142–3.
of the icon could transform people. This allows us to add another layer to the
story of the ‘battle of icons’ in the Kontekst Gallery. The images in question not
only functioned as symbolic mediators between politically charged histories and
nationalist populism, but they effectively framed the encounter between them as
an assault on the senses. In other words, the sight of ‘Kosovar terrorists’ on the
walls of a Belgrade gallery was the trigger for the outbursts of the violence.
***
To return to the two aforementioned jokes, art (transformed into icons) in the
Exception exhibition – just as music in Heroes and Hey You – provided a politically
charged short circuit between conceptions of national identity and their cultural
representation in local and international contexts. They demonstrate national
identity as a set of cultural values only to prevent its easy understanding and co-
option into larger political narratives.
The violent explosion of nationalist anger that surrounded the opening of
the Exception exhibition returns this discussion to the ‘spontaneous’ carnival in
Naskovski’s Apollo 9. Both works embody the staged character of performing
national identity and the explosive potential of populism that is also implicit in
Hey You. Yet, most importantly, they also highlight the ability of popular music
to retroactively ignite nationalist passion through repetition, as highlighted by
Death In Dallas. Taken together, they illustrate the way art functions as a form of
obstruction to the easy identification of art and music ‘from the periphery’ with
signifiers of national identity.
The use by these artists of found popular music produces an interval in the local
history of national representation in former Yugoslavia. This interval refers to the
obstruction of the easy identification between popular music and nationalism. Yet,
these artists also disrupts the easy inscription of artists ‘from the periphery’ within
the international art circuit.
Popular music as a site of cultural remembrance raises the issue of the absence
of common ground in high culture after the collapse of the institutional framework
of Yugoslavia in the face of proliferating popularity of popular culture – and popular
music in particular – as the only shared culture in the region. Moreover, the use of
intentionally ‘exotic’ and unfamiliar cultural form taps into the ‘internationalist’
dictum of contemporary art exhibitions, while highlighting that the presence of
artists from the periphery is still largely determined through national representation.
On the one hand, these gestures by Naskovski, Tomić, Prlja, Zequiri and Shkololli
could be understood as calculated attempts to tap into the international art circuit.
On the other hand, their tactical use of cultural difference could be considered
an attempt to unleash the critical potential of peripheral vision. This is not a
perspective simply opened up by viewing the centre from the periphery. Rather, it
suggests that the very construction of the centre–periphery dialectic predetermines
readings of the work and forecloses more complex historical differences.
Chapter 5
They Can Be Heroes: Popular Culture and
Public Sculpture in Former Yugoslavia
On 26 November 2005, in the town of Mostar in the south of Bosnia and

Herzegovina, a life-sized bronze statue of Bruce Lee was unveiled. Spearheaded
by the non-governmental organisation, Mostar Urban Movement, Bruce Lee
was chosen as a symbol of fighting against ethnic divisions in a community that
remains deeply divided between the Muslims and Croats, years after the end of the
civil war. The Muslim population inhabits the eastern side of the Neretva River,
while the west bank remains almost exclusively Croat. Located in the city park
on the western side, the life-sized monument (1.68 metres) by Croatian sculptor
Ivan Fijolić was intended as a symbol of solidarity and the bridging together of
cultures. The Mostar Urban Movement described Bruce Lee as ‘far enough away
from us that nobody can ask what he did during World War II’ and ‘part of our
idea of universal justice – that the good guys can win’.1 Local Bruce Lee fans,
representatives of Germany that financed the project and Chinese officials attended
the unveiling ceremony. That same night, a group of teenagers spray painted the
statue, stole Lee’s nunchucks and left the site littered with bottles. The statue was
moved to a warehouse, with only the pedestal remaining to bear the inscription:
‘To Bruce Lee, your Mostar’.
The vandalising of the Bruce Lee statue was a repetition of an act that took
place 13 years earlier: the destruction of the sixteenth-century Stari Most (Old
Bridge) on 9 November 1993. Stari Most was the symbol of Mostar’s history
and cultural diversity (the city’s name translates as ‘the bridge keeper’) and its
destruction symbolised the civic destruction of the multiethnic and cosmopolitan
community in the Yugoslav wars of the nineties.2 Although the vandalising of the
Bruce Lee statue was a repetition of the destruction of the bridge, the difference in
the magnitude and scale of the destruction – between a premeditated destruction
of an iconic sixteenth-century bridge symbolic of both a multiethnic town and a
multiethnic country, and the drunken vandalising of a bronze statue of a popular
1
“Turbo-sculpture”, Art Fag City (24 August 2009), accessed 17 September 2012, http://
www.artfagcity.com/2009/08/24/img-mgmt-turbo-sculpture/.
2
See: Robert Bevan, The Destruction Of Memory: Architecture At War (London:
Reaktion Books, 2006); Bogdan Bogdanović, “Urbicide”, Space and Society 16/62
(1993): 8–25.
culture icon – recalls Marx’s paraphrase of Hegel that history happens twice – the
first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.3
The historical narratives harnessed by the Bruce Lee statue might be accused
of substituting difficult questions of ethnic divisions and historical responsibility
with popular culture. However, the act of vandalising the statue would suggest
an altogether different, more politically loaded understanding of the role of
popular culture in dealing with these questions. By concentrating on the way the
Bruce Lee statue project has been subsequently repeated across the region of ex-
Yugoslavia via statues of popular culture icons such as Rocky Balboa, Tarzan and
Bob Marley, this chapter discusses the relationship between popular culture and
historical remembering.
The existence of grass roots projects to build statues of popular culture figures
in a region devastated by a recent civil war is, in one sense, indicative of a refusal
to talk about history. Effectively, these statues present a kind of emptying of
history in the very act of creating it – no longer recent traumatic history, but rather
a representation and abstraction of history. Yet, in another sense, the Bruce Lee
statue and the similar public statues that emerged across ex-Yugoslavia in its wake
(with less destructive consequences) suggest an entirely different relationship to
historical remembering that is more akin to the role of public art and popular
culture in socialist Yugoslavia.
On the one hand, these statues could be understood as atavistic, even Yugo-
nostalgic gestures. As Zala Volčič shows, in recent years, the Yugoslav past has
become a free-floating signifier of consumer desire that feeds on the sense of loss
inherent in capitalism.4 However, they might also be considered an evocation
of memories of socialism mediated through popular culture. Marita Sturken
demonstrates the role of statues as mediators of conflicted and politically charged
histories.5 This discussion is interested in the way these statues of Western popular
culture icons mediate aesthetic and structural legacies of socialism in Yugoslavia.
In particular, this chapter demonstrates that, if viewed in terms of their relation to
popular culture in Yugoslavia, as well as the popular culture that emerged in its
wake, these statues function to mediate the historical memory of a specific group:
the socialist working class.
As discussed in the Chapter 1, socialism in Yugoslavia enabled the
development of popular culture. With the rise in living standards, the spread of
literacy, investment in the press, radio and later television, and the development
of the recording and film industries, popular culture was a direct consequence of
socialist modernisation, even if this was not necessarily intended to be the case.
3
See Slavoj Žižek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (London: Verso, 2009).
4
Zala Volčič, “Yugo-Nostalgia: Cultural Memory and the Media in the Former
Yugoslavia”, Critical Studies in Media Communication 24/1 (2007): 22.
5
Marita Sturken, “The Wall and the Screen Memory: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial”,
in Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering,
edited by Marita Sturken (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 44–84.
They Can Be Heroes 131
Yet interestingly, as a consequence of the somewhat unique and idiosyncratic

economic, political and cultural position of Yugoslavia, the popular culture that
developed had a peculiar character: socially, it was oriented towards the East;
politically, it was non-aligned and oriented towards the developing world (at least
after the sixties); and economically (and politically, to an extent) it was oriented
towards the West.6 In much the same way, popular culture in Yugoslavia occupied
a position between its historical roots in Eastern tradition (Ottoman and Byzantine)
and its Westward leanings. Politically, it was socialist yet consumerist, like its
capitalist counterparts, and aesthetically, it was caught between socialist realism
and Western postmodernism. Yugoslavia’s socialism forged a shared culture that
was steeped in consumerism; thus, popular culture was the perfect cultural form
to represent shared identity. As shown in Chapter 2, this popular culture was taken
up and manipulated in particular ways following the break-up of Yugoslavia, and
particularly in the nationalist culture in Serbia under Milošević. This level of
political manipulation of popular culture is clearly evident in turbo-folk; however,
it is also evident in the anarchy of uncontrolled and illegal construction enabled
and tolerated by the Milošević regime, which Srđan Jovanović-Weiss describes
as ‘turbo-architecture’.
As this chapter shows, turbo-folk and turbo-architecture form an important
context for understanding the popular culture statues as ‘capitalism with a socialist
face’. These statues mark an extension of the cultural practices in socialist
Yugoslavia. Monuments of the World War II anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia,
public statues of war heroes and ‘partisan spaghetti western’ films symbolically and
aesthetically reflect the encounters of socialism and commercialism. Sculptures
of Bruce Lee and other celebrities embody and repeat key aspects of these
encounters, yet equally embody the entrepreneurial opportunism and postmodern
pastiche of turbo-architecture. In this sense, they are as much representations
of these divergent histories as they are mediations between what Boris Groys
calls the ‘collective mental territory’ of socialism and their private appropriation
under capitalism.7
Rocky, Tarzan, Bob and Samantha
In August 2007, the small village of Žitište in northern Serbia unveiled a three-
metre statue of the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone
in the popular Rocky film series. The statue was built by funds raised locally and
made by a local amateur sculptor. The 28-year-old local who raised the funds felt
that Rocky was a universal hero and far more deserving of respect than Serbia’s
own recent leaders:
6
Zoran Janjetović, From “International” to Commercial: Popular Culture in
Yugoslavia 1945–1991 (Belgrade: Institute for Modern Serbian History, 2011), p. 283.
7
Boris Groys, Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), p. 166.
Figure 5.1 Rocky Balboa, Sculpture, 3 metres. Žitište, Northern Serbia, 2007
(photograph by the author)
When I saw the latest Rocky film, I felt as if Rocky came from our village …
He had to fight to win his place in society … This area has been economically
isolated for a long time, and the villagers identify with the guts this movie
character shows as he confronts miserable starting circumstances.8
The locals believed that building the statue was a way of creating a positive and
empowering message in an area plagued by floods, crime and poverty.9 This
attempt to change the public image of small and isolated rural areas was (at
least initially) successful, and the unveiling of the statue attracted the attention
of the global media, including a personal video message from Sylvester Stallone
acknowledging the efforts of the villagers.
A few months later, Međa (meaning ‘border’), a nearby small village (population
of 1,100) on the Serbian-Romanian border, announced plans to commemorate
Johnny Weissmuller – the swimmer who won Olympic gold medals five times
and who also played the fictional character Tarzan a record 12 times. The villagers
8
Dan Bilefsky, “Balkans’ Idolatry Delights Movie Fans and Pigeons”, The New York
Times (11 November 2007), accessed 10 March 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/
world/europe/11balkans.html.
9
A documentary film about the making of the statue is available at “Rocky Statue in
Žitište – Serbia 2007”, YouTube (21 March 2012), accessed 10 August 2012, http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=dq7ELHGVRT8.
behind the initiative claim that Weissmuller was born in Međa in 1904 as Janos
Weissmuller and then immigrated to America with his family when he was six
months old.10 He later changed his name and falsified his birth records in order
to be eligible to compete in the US Olympic swimming team. The statue was
planned to ‘simply mark the almost-forgotten fact that a great artist was born as
our fellow citizen’; however, the villagers believe that the statue is also a fitting
icon because Tarzan was left in the jungle with nothing and, against all odds,
managed to survive. Tarzan would transcend the ethnic divisions of multiethnic
Međa, which is inhabited by Serbs, Hungarians and Serbs of German descent,
because ‘he belongs to everyone’. The impetus behind the statue for locals was
that Tarzan was a symbol of a ‘better life in better times’.11 Although the funding
of the project has been raised through donations, at the time of writing this, only
a 75 centimetre statue and bust of Weissmuller exist.
A few months after the announcement of Weissmuller in Međa, the central
Serbian city of Čačak revealed plans to erect a statue of pop singer and former
Playboy model, Samantha Fox, after she agreed to perform at a local music festival.
Although the statue was never built, artist Michael Blum made this story a subject of
his work The Rumor (Or How Samantha Fox Helped Čačak Reach Fame) (2007).
Blum’s work featured an empty plinth with ‘Rumor’ written in Serbian, English,
Chinese and German as a temporary installation in the town’s main square.
In August 2007, a statue of Bob Marley was uncovered during the music festival,
Rock Village, in the local schoolyard in Banatski Sokolac, Serbia. In a symbolic
gesture, both Croatian and Serbian musicians were present for the unveiling of
Marley statue, which depicts Marley holding a guitar and raising his fist. The most
recent addition to the collection of pop culture statues is a life-sized Johnny Depp
statue unveiled in 2010 in the themed village Drvengrad (Wooden Town), built
by Bosnian-turned-Serbian film director Emir Kusturica. There are also reports of
initiatives to build statues of hip-hop icon Tupac, pop star Madonna, and Batman
in Serbia, as well as Winnetou, King Arthur and Doc Holiday in Croatia.
This account confirms the long-standing association of post-socialism in
Eastern European societies with an almost slavish embrace of Western popular
culture. In one sense, the immense popularity of Western culture in post-socialist
societies operates as the sphere that replaces the imposed ideology of socialism,
offering instead the rhetoric of individualism and freedom. Yet, the relationship
towards Western popular culture evident in these sculptures is altogether different.
For instance, if these statues are compared to the way Russian conceptual artists
of the nineties used images of Western culture through the aesthetic language of
socialism, a completely different use of mass-cultural icons can be found. An
example is the painting En Plain Air (1995) by Russian artists Vladimir Dubossarsky
10
D. Dukić, “Tarzan u Medji a Nigde Lijana”, Politika (2 February 2008),
accessed 11 September 2012, http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Srbija/Tarzan-u-Medji-a-
nigde-lijana.lt.html.
11
Ibid.
and Alexander Vinogradov. The work adopted the socialist realist style to depict
Sylvester Stallone painting an open-air portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who
is wearing colourful swimming shorts and flexing his muscles before a group of
adoring children and cats. The work translates the ultra-realist official painting
style of the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the style
of ‘open-air’ – both of which were intended to be taken ‘from life’ – into an ironic
celebration of Western movie stars and pop icons. En Plain Air mixes socialist
realism with pop icons to highlight the aggressive influx of consumerism into post-
communist Russia and to point towards the parallels between the exaggerations of
socialist realism and Western movie stars, both of which are far removed from
the realities they represent. At the same time, despite the proliferation of Western
consumerism in post-socialist Russia, there are almost no examples of public
statues of Western pop icons. I will return to the relation between different kinds
of post-socialisms in the final part of this chapter.
While the ex-Yugoslav states are not the only place where statues of pop culture
icons have been erected through fan-based initiatives, all other examples are not in
post-socialist societies: the US city of Detroit is currently being petitioned through
Facebook to build a statue of Robocop, Philadelphia already has a Rocky statue,
and Bruce Lee’s hometown has a statue of its hero. Nor are the Balkans the only
place where global pop culture icons are imported into local contexts without
any discernible cultural or historical links. Australia received its own addition
in 2011 with the building of a Bruce Lee statue in Sydney’s southern suburb of
Kogarah, facing off with the local Greek Orthodox Church. This suggests that the
use of popular culture for collective memory and identification signals a more
global and Westernised attitude to cultural memory. However, given the particular
cultural and political position of Yugoslavia, the recent history of the region and
the number of statues erected, it seems that the Balkans are a particularly fertile
ground for the new trend in statues, and this raises complex questions about the
remembering of history in the region.
With all these statues featuring popular culture figures, history is identified as
a universal abstraction that replaces recent events in the region. Popular culture
figures are being implicitly positioned as breaks with recent history and the
ongoing corruption and decline in living standards. In addition, they are symbolic
of a different kind of history told through the perspective of popular culture. Bruce
Lee, Rocky and Bob Marley exist not so much as empty sites of cultural amnesia
evacuated of all content, but as the symbols of the ‘end of history’. Boris Groys
articulates this end of history in his discussion of post-communist art. He states
that it is:
Art that passed from one state after the end of history into the other state after the
end of history: from real Socialism into postmodern capitalism; or, from the idyll
of universal expropriation following the end of the class struggle into the ultimate
resignation with respect to the depressing infinity in which the same struggles
for distribution, appropriation, and privatization are permanently repeated.12
In this respect, the relationship between the Bruce Lee statue and other statues
to the communication and mediation of historical time repeats the role of public
statues and monuments in socialist Yugoslavia following World War II. In order to
understand this, it is necessary to first understand the way these statues have been
associated with the media-saturated nationalist culture in Serbia under Milošević.
EPP 1: Turbo-architecture
While Milošević shares many characteristics of some of history’s most notorious

dictators – excessive personal power, abuse of power, political repression, violence
and the cult of personality – he differs in one important respect. Milošević had an
almost complete lack of interest in architecture. He had no grand imperial projects,
no monuments and no attempts to assert his power through built structures.13 As
Jovanović-Weiss notes, the only monument built under Milošević was the ‘Eternal
Light’ erected in 2000 to ‘commemorate the victory of Serbia over NATO’ exactly
one year after NATO’s victory over Serbia:
Not only did the oxymoronic ‘victor’ display severe spelling errors on the plaque
that condemned the western powers of crimes against Serbia, its white concrete
lantern, containing an ‘Eternal light’ powered by electricity, was built at a third
of its projected size in a stripped Neo-Stalinist style.14
As Jovanović-Weiss shows, the eternal light was switched off less than a year
later, during the toppling of Milošević in October 2000, and the lantern became
a graffiti-plastered fixture in the park that Josip Broz Tito built in the optimistic
age of Yugoslav political non-alignment. The short-lived monument provided a
paradoxically symbolic end to the rule of a man who helped Serbia mutate from
communism to nationalism. In another architectural-farcical repetition of history,
the light on Milošević’s monument that was conceived as defiance to global
neoliberalism was extinguished in a park built to commemorate Tito’s refusal to
take sides politically.
Despite his apparent disinterest in built environments, Milošević did leave
a lasting architectural legacy in Serbia. Milošević’s disinterest in architecture
opened a void for open-source, national-socialist anarchy of uncontrolled and
illegal construction, which Jovanović-Weiss describes as ‘turbo-architecture’.
12
Groys, Art Power, p. 168.
13
Srđan Jovanović-Weiss, Almost Architecture (Stuttgart: Merz & Solitude, 2006),
p. 34.
14
Ibid., p. 35.
During the nineties, for a small fee (and a large bribe), city land – including
sidewalks and land planned for highways – was made available for commercial
and private construction. As many as 150,000 material building shells, houses
and additions were built or started in Belgrade from the time Milošević came to
power in 1989 until he lost power on 5 October 2000. This all occurred despite
a deep economic crisis and international embargo. Close to one million houses
were erected in Serbia during this period, at a rate of 28 buildings per day, most of
which were built illegally.15
Turbo-architecture included commercial buildings, such as hotels, banks, gas
stations and shopping centres, as well as private residences. A typical example of
turbo-architecture was the so-called ‘mushroom house’ that proliferated around
Belgrade. As Jovanović-Weiss explains, masonry was put inside the thin walls
of kiosks to support a second level that would cantilever as far as possible over
the kiosk’s front façade. This would become a residence.16 These quickly-built
constructions incorporated diverse and incompatible styles, resulting in a trashy
postmodernist appearance:
By and large this architecture, whether rich or poor, came with bulky forms,
rounded edges, was bold, shiny and clad with an array of metal and glass panels.
It appeared in distorted and sometimes soft shapes, as clashing postures of
primary geometries, as additions of pieces, computer rendered, with mushroom-
like mansards, unfinished, incomplete, symmetrical, as bunker-like mini castles,
with triumphant arches and stripped surfaces. Or this architecture came as
quasi-Byzantine, Neo-Classical, inflated and big-looking, reflective, round,
red, yellow, gold, pitched, lush inside, cheap and glitzy, amorphous, awkward,
clumsy, hulking. It was placed on roofs, on terraces; was impenetrable and
bulbous, silver, clad in marble, domed, wavy, semi-curved with concrete arches,
cantilevering parts, balustrades, round towers, spikes, cornices, tiled roofs,
looking corpulent and hovering.17
The postmodernism of turbo-architecture was not the product of architecture

as a discipline, or of architectural theory. Its symbolism and design did not
emerge out of considerations for postmodern rhetoric. Rather, the resemblance to
postmodernist pastiche and hybridity came as an amalgam of systemic lawlessness
and corruption. This intersection of accidental postmodernism and criminality was
expectedly rejected by the cultural and intellectual elites as being synonymous
with everything that was wrong with Serbia under Milošević. Yet, despite years of
rejection, following Milošević’s arrest and transfer to the ICTY in Hague, turbo-
architecture was paradoxically promoted as a new national style at the Venice
15
Ibid., p. 39.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., p. 17.
Architecture Biennial in 2002, as proof of endurance against the 1999 NATO

bombing of Serbia.
According to Jovanović-Weiss, one of the key examples of turbo-architecture
is the TV Pink Studios building on the outskirts of Belgrade, where turbo-folk
was produced and disseminated. The construction of the building began in the
early 1990s, without legal paperwork and under the control of Milošević’s wife,
Mirjana Marković – a political power broker and leader of the highly influential
party Yugoslav United Left (JUL). During the nineties, TV Pink was one of
most popular television stations, broadcasting turbo-folk, pirated movies and
pornography. The form of the building is a collision of disparate elements that
were rendered monolithically. The building combines a Byzantine style (alluding
to its connection to the past) with a high-tech rendition of aluminium, glass and
steel.18 This building was featured in Serbia’s entry at the 2002 Venice Biennale as
an example of the new national style.
The symbolic end of turbo-architecture (at least in terms of its association with
Milošević) was the publicised and television-broadcast destruction of a building,
following the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić on 12
March 2003. The following day, despite frenetic police activity across Belgrade
attempting to break-up the Zemun crime ‘clan’ associated with the murder, all
television stations switched to the live broadcast of the demolition of a house built
in the 1990s that belonged to one of the criminals accused of plotting the murder.
According to Jovanović-Weiss, the building looked like a sombre mix of new
romantic architecture with high-tech elements: a fanciful, stone-clad, four-storey
centre for storing and distributing stolen goods, located in northern Belgrade. After
the bulldozer failed to demolish the seemingly modestly proportioned columns and
walls, explosives were set around the columns. However, amazingly, these merely
served to erode the cement. The pained efforts to destroy the building persisted for
several days: ‘[A]nd when the ruins revealed steel diameters used for dams and
bunkers, it became clear that this … builder wanted his coerced romance between
organized crime and commercial architecture to remain for good’.19 Although
there were no apparent connections between Milošević and the killers, the images
of the destruction and clearing out of turbo-architecture were seen as removing
traces of Milošević. For Jovanović-Weiss, this is argued to have been a symbolic
attack on turbo-architecture and a signal of its ultimate end.
However, it is important to qualify Jovanović-Weiss’s diagnosis by adding
another chapter to the story. Turbo-architecture did not cease after the fall
of Milošević, but rather took on different forms that marked a continuation of
the aesthetic split between the modernism and postmodernism that underlined
Yugoslav popular culture. The stylistic anarchy and arbitrary symbolic pastiche of
turbo-architecture described by Jovanović-Weiss can be characterised as the defeat
of socialist modernism by postmodernism. Although turbo-architecture was the
18
Ibid., p. 41.
19
Ibid., p. 19.
result of small private investment exploiting the lack of urban planning standards,
its fast production and complete disregard for architecture – as a discipline and a
form of aesthetics – meant that it provided a non-orchestrated, yet systemic, attack
on the modernist aesthetic of socialism.
In the years following the fall of Milošević, this postmodernism has been
defeated by corporate neoliberalism. A good example of this double defeat is the
fate of the army headquarters (also known as the Ministry of National Defence) in
Belgrade, which was bombed in 1999 by NATO during the three-month military
campaign. As one of the most important examples of post–World War II pro-
Western modernism in Yugoslavia, this building became, as described by NATO,
the ‘heart of the war machine’ during the war. Yet its destruction was primarily
of symbolic importance, as all command functions had been evacuated to a
secure location prior to the NATO bombing. In the absence of a strategic military
justification for the bombing, the destruction of the modernist building can be
considered an act of postmodernist criticism.20 More than a decade after the end
of the NATO campaign, the building remains in a state of disrepair, standing as a
monument to the war in the middle of downtown Belgrade. Its survival is not just
a public reminder of the nineties, but is also reflective of post-Milošević neoliberal
Serbia in that the army headquarters were deemed too damaged for immediate
repair and are now an investment opportunity awaiting private investors.21
This current neoliberalist emphasis has another entrepreneurial aspect. Turbo-
architecture demonstrated a bottom-up private initiative of people in desperate
economic times who had no support from the state. In this sense, it demonstrated
the initiative that is also evident in the sculptures of Bruce Lee and other
celebrities. These statues remain as monuments to post-Milošević entrepreneurial
neoliberalism across Serbia. This contrasts with the urban transformation of
Serbia after Milošević invoked large (and often international) capital investment,
the systemic destruction of public and green surfaces, and the conversion of these
public areas into shopping complexes. In comparison to the localised, private and
small-business interests behind turbo-architecture, it involves a higher level of
criminality that goes completely against public opinion. As of 2012, several cities
in Serbia and Bosnia reported the destruction of parks to make room for shopping
centres, despite massive public protests.
Turbo-sculpture? Not Really …
The statues of Bruce Lee, Rocky and other celebrities can be symbolically and
aesthetically positioned between socialist modernism in Yugoslavia, the accidental
20
I am paraphrasing Jovanović-Weiss’s articulation of NATO as an architectural critic.
21
“Šutanovac: Niko Ne Želi Generalštab”, B92 (3 January 2011), accessed 17
September 2012, http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/srbija.php?yyyy=2011&mm=01&dd=03&nav_
id=483372.
postmodernism of turbo-architecture in Milošević’s Serbia, and the entrepreneurial

neoliberalism of Serbia post-Milošević. They offer hybrid historical narratives
generated in the tension between the post-socialist rejection of modernism and the
global circulation of visual culture. This is echoed in Zala Volčič’s suggestion that
the statues of Western pop icons in post-Yugoslav public spaces represent a local
bricolage of globally diffused popular culture under neoliberalism:
this mushrooming of monuments devoted to global pop culture icons must be

situated in relation to other global developments such as the rise of neoliberalism
in the region: in a situation of increasing economic insecurity, the emergence
of new economic opportunities and wealthy elites coincides with rampant
unemployment, the dismantling of a once taken-for-granted social safety net,
and a growing divide between the privileged few and the struggling many.22
Volčič’s analysis is correct in highlighting the entrepreneurial character of these

projects, which see the statues as a means of drawing global attention and raising
revenue through tourism. However, the contemporary bricolage of Western global
pop culture icons in the local context also needs to be considered in terms of the
role these particular Western icons already played in the popular culture of socialist
Yugoslavia. As Volčič notes, the appropriation of these symbols is dependent on
the circulation of imagery in the global media sphere and the increased visibility
of the cultural icons around which identities are structured. However, it must be
emphasised that it is equally dependent on the aesthetic and structural territory that
has been left behind by socialism.
Hence, these public statues need to be delineated quite sharply from the ‘turbo’
concepts circulating in discussions of the legacy of Milošević’s Serbia. Berlin-
based Serbian artist Aleksandra Domanović made a 22-minute documentary video
work entitled ‘Turbo Sculpture’ (2009–2012) about the emerging sculpture trend,
in which she describes it as ‘turbo-sculpture’: a product of the turmoil of early
nineties Yugoslavia. The use of the prefix ‘turbo’ to describe these sculptures – a
trend that has since been taken up in the popular press – is significant because it
not only connects them to turbo-folk music, but also, by implication, connects
these sculptures to the political events associated with that period and to particular
kinds of cultural and ideological connotations.23 The embrace of popular culture
evident in the statues is not an enunciation of the populist nationalism under that
regime, and neither is the trashy kitsch postmodernism of turbo-architecture. In
Milošević’s Serbia, Western popular culture was officially criticised as cultural
imperialism and colonisation that was harmful to the national purity of Serbia.
Further, the appearance of turbo-architecture was postmodern by accident, rather
22
Zala Volčič, “The Struggle to Express, Create and Represent in the Balkans”, in
Globalization and Culture: Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation, Vol. 3, edited
by Yudhishthir Raj Isar and Helmut K. Anheier (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 160.
23
“Turbo-sculpture”, Art Fag City.
than design, and was intended primarily to flaunt the (illegally gained) wealth of
the owners. In turn, the statues approach Western popular culture in a way that
is structurally more akin to the role of popular culture in Yugoslav socialism. In
an immediate sense, the local initiative to build these statues can be traced back
to the Yugoslav brand of self-management socialism that urged people to take
ownership of social property, which often included communities self-financing
statues of local war heroes.
On another level, the aesthetic legacy of socialism embodied in these statues can
also be considered through the question of modernist and postmodernist aesthetics.
In Yugoslavia, the shift from modernism to postmodernism related to the political
split from Soviet influence, and was associated with self-management socialism,
which was the middle point between Russian-style centralist communism and
liberal capitalism. The turn away from the Eastern Bloc after World War II towards
liberal Western democracies was visible in terms of popular culture, art and
architecture. This is evidenced by Yugoslavia’s experimentation with modernism
and the appropriation of Western avant-garde practices and aesthetics as proof of
the shift of Yugoslav politics to the pro-liberal image endorsed by the West. These
experimentations were discussed in more detail in the previous chapter to explore
how, by the fifties in Yugoslavia, there was evidence of artists experimenting with
abstract expressionism. By the sixties, abstract expressionism, and later pop art,
became part of the cultural and political landscape in Yugoslavia through large
exhibitions such as Contemporary American Art (1961), American Abstract
Painting (1964) and American Pop-art (1966).24 These large touring exhibitions
were part of the well-documented US Cold War cultural propaganda campaign.
In Yugoslavia, their official acceptance and promotion was similarly politically
manipulated and used as a sign of Yugoslavia’s departure from Moscow and move
towards the ‘liberal West’ and its aesthetic avant-garde.
Chapter 1 outlined the significance of the split from Stalin for the development
of popular culture in Yugoslavia. As will be made clear in the following section,
this split from Soviet-style communism was equally crucial for the conception
of modernism in Yugoslavia as it was for the creation of a public sphere that
incorporated key aspects of Western liberal capitalist ideology. Statues featuring
popular culture icons reproduce the role they already played under socialism,
even while seemingly rejecting all history. Put simply, pop statues featuring Bruce
Lee, Rocky and Bob Marley reproduce the revolutionary socialist end of history
symbolised through public art, via the end of history symbolised through icons of
Hollywood with a socialist face.
24
Radina Vučetić, Koka-kola Socijalizam: Amerikanizacija Jugoslovenske Popularne
Kulture Šezdesetih Godina XX Veka (Belgrade: Sluzbeni Glasnik Srbije, 2012), p. 240.
Socialist Sculpture and Modernism
The pop statues of Bruce Lee, Rocky and Bob Marley stand in the shadows of
socialist monuments of Yugoslavia. Built in the sixties and seventies through a
government initiative, socialist monuments in Yugoslavia occupied a significant
portion of the public sphere in urban and rural areas and stood as key symbols of
collective identification. They were not only collective social property, but were
also articulated and drew upon collective socialist experiences. To understand
the structural and aesthetic properties of these monuments and the way these
properties have been reproduced, it is necessary to briefly recount the history of
modernism in Yugoslavia.
After World War II, socialist realism under the influence of Soviet politics
was the prevailing view of art and culture in Yugoslavia. From the perspective
of socialist realism, international modernism was an expression of bourgeois
decadence, aestheticism and artistic formalism that was incompatible with
progressive views of art. Socialist realism moved towards realism as a projection
of the revolutionary present and future of communist utopia. However, by the
early fifties, with Yugoslavia’s increasing distance from the Eastern Bloc and
Stalinist influence, the official art shifted from socialist realism into ‘moderate
modernism … a middle path between the abstract and the figurative, between
the modern and the traditional, between regionalism and internationalism’.25
Yugoslavia’s adoption of abstract modernism as the official aesthetic after its break
with Stalin saw abstract painting, sculpture, architecture and monuments become
official symbols of progress and power, and, from 1954 onwards, abstraction
characterised Yugoslavia’s participation in the Venice Biennale.
Emerging in the wake of the split with Stalin, yet still committed to promoting
the official ideology, socialist monuments stood between two dominant modernist
models in Yugoslavia:
[one] that was part of the incipient capitalist society that led to integration into
international movements and helped to constitute national culture, while the
other … a modernism that came forward as the Soviet socialist regime withdrew,
while still moderate uncommitted, and highly aestheticised.26
Much like Yugoslavia, which stood politically wedged between the Eastern Bloc
and Western Bloc, these monuments attempted to mediate a series of symbolic
and aesthetic gaps. Karge’s discussion of official and unofficial commemorative
25
Miško Šuvakovic, “Impossible Histories”, in Impossible Histories: Historical
Avant-Gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991, edited
by Dubravka Đurić and Miško Šuvaković (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), p. 11;
Nevenka Stanković, “The Case of Exploited Modernism: How Yugoslav Communists used
the Idea of Modern Art to Promote Political Agendas”, Third Text 20/2 (2006): 151–9.
26
Šuvaković, “Impossible Histories”, p. 12.
practices in post–World War II Yugoslavia suggests the term ‘mediation of

remembrance’ to articulate ‘the field in which personal grief, local practices,
cultural codes and political desiderata to commemorate the past will merge’.27
From Karge’s account can be extrapolated three different yet interconnected levels
of mediation in socialist public art that reappear in the recent statues featuring
popular culture figures. These three points of mediation are located between
official and local identity, between the historicism of socialism and its future
orientation and between remembering and historical amnesia.
Following World War II, Yugoslav identity was positioned between pan-
Yugoslav shared identity and regional ethnic identity, and socialist monuments
presented mediation points between commemoration practices sanctioned by
the state and localised practices of remembering. While the state commissioned
and financed most of the large and well-known monuments across Yugoslavia,
which were large minimalist steel and concrete abstract works, two thirds of all
memorials were erected in the name of local remembrance and featured figurative
sculptures of local war heroes. The gap between the official and local practices
of commemoration became the staple of the monuments’ symbolic economy.
Socialist monuments did not merely represent the merging of official and local
practices, but rather were commemorations regulated by regional political interests
and representation. The local hero was not the sign of the collective, but a site of
connections and disjunctions within the official narrative.
Socialist monuments were sites that articulated the experience of history, not
in terms of linear narratives, but as the compounding of past, present and future.
While socialist monuments symbolised the sacrifices of the past in the struggle
against fascism and oppression, they simultaneously symbolised the end of
history through socialist revolution, and the seeds for a socialist future. The retro-
futuristic style of many of the monuments served as a reminder of past struggles
and the enormous collective loss and pain inflicted by the war, and yet also
served to articulate a future-oriented narrative that expressed how these struggles
achieved liberation, progress and socialist revolution.28 Belgian photographer Jan
Kempenaers, who toured former Yugoslavia using a 1975 map of the monuments,
captured 25 of these monuments.29 An inspection of Kempenaer’s photographs
strikingly reveals how the monuments have moved from retro-futurism into retro-
futuristic obsolescence through years of neglect. This shift compounds three levels
of historical temporality that are symbolic and symptomatic of a wider social and
historical fracture.
The third level of mediation in socialist monuments (and the most contentious)
is centred on how these monuments celebrate the victory over fascism, while not
naming local collaborators or former enemies. The monuments were abstract in
27
Heike Karge, “Mediated Remembrance: Local Practices of Remembering the
Second World War in Tito’s Yugoslavia”, European Review of History 16/1 (2009): 50.
28
Ibid., 51.
29
Willem Jan Neutelings, Spomenik (London: ROMA Publications, 2010).
order to be representative of a complex history without directly acknowledging

historical responsibility, thereby figuring abstraction as a reflection of the
difficulty of commemorating a war of liberation. The difficulty in representing
historical responsibility came because the civil conflict was fought along tangled
political and ethnic lines, after which both victims and perpetrators had to unite to
collectively form the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.
These three levels of mediation in socialist monuments are repeated in statues
featuring popular culture figures. First, like the monuments, all the statues
were built through local initiatives and intended to be symbolic of the plight of
local communities in the absence of, and incredulity towards, official historical
narratives. As such, they represent mediation points between the state’s refusal to
deal with the recent past and localised practices of remembering. The Bruce Lee
statue in Mostar was built as a ‘local icon’ of justice to counteract the systemic and
institutionalised ethnic animosity and the official refusal to deal with the history of
this animosity. Many locals see the ‘new’ Old Bridge (reconstructed in 2004) as a
standing reminder of the ethnic divisions in Mostar. The Rocky, Bob Marley and
(planned) Tarzan statues in Serbia were erected to honour popular culture heroes
who were ‘more deserving’ than the current leaders of Serbia, and who acted as
reminders of better lives for the locals.
Second, the statues of pop culture icons from the seventies and eighties represent
the retro-nostalgic cultural memory of a generation that grew up in Yugoslav
socialism. These statues are not simply a repetition of socialism, or nationalism
for that matter, but rather a signal of the absence of something that stands in for
the absence of something else. They are an attempt to make monuments to recent
history to replace the non-existing monuments to recent history. In this way, there
is almost a short circuit between popular sculptures and socialist monuments
that bypasses the nationalism of the nineties, which did embrace monumental
remembering in that Milošević did not build any monuments, but rather allowed
uncontrolled, illegal turbo-architecture. The present pop statues are remnants of the
popular culture media saturation of the Milošević era, sustained by the symbolic
economy of action heroes. However, these action heroes represent another historical
era that predates Milošević, and hark back to popular culture collectivist socialist
symbols that also no longer belong to anyone. The pop statues thus confound the
historical temporality of the present and the nationalist past and socialist past into
synchronous and interchangeable time. They substitute the historical causes of the
present with popular culture that fills the void of historical contradiction.
The third level of mediation witnessed in monuments and echoed in statues
comes because they are representative of a complex and politically volatile
recent history, without direct acknowledgement of the specificities or historical
responsibility. Bruce Lee was selected as a symbol of justice ‘far enough away
from us that nobody can ask what he did during World War II’. Yet, as some reports
indicate, there were complaints about the selection of the statue’s location on the
western bank of Neretva river (which is predominantly populated by Croats) and
about the eastward direction of the Bruce Lee statue, which was interpreted to be
pointing towards Mecca, rather than Lee’s homeland of China.30
While socialist sculptures provide the aesthetic and symbolic backdrop
to the understanding of pop statues, in terms of their subject matter, they also
need to be positioned in the context of the prominent role of Western popular
culture in Yugoslav socialism. There are two key symbolic elements to consider
here. First, the historical context for the subjects of the statues is the seventies
and eighties Western popular culture that was widely available in Yugoslavia.
Second, the Western popular culture that was available in Yugoslavia performed
an important function as the primary constituent of the working class and youth
cultures. Therefore, it must be argued that pop statues symbolically recall the role
of Western popular culture under socialism and recast them as the primary cultural
constituent for the new underclass.
EPP 2: Commercial Socialism and Film
Statues of popular culture icons, such as that of Bruce Lee, reveal a historical
relationship between Yugoslav socialism and Western popular culture that is also
evident in film. Much like in the music and art discussed earlier in this chapter, film
in Yugoslavia until the early fifties served primarily as a vehicle for revolutionary
communist propaganda. These films were both domestically produced and
imported mostly from the USSR and, as such, all films were figured as an outright
rejection of American film as the weapon of imperialism. However, following the
split with Stalin and the broader process of the decentralisation and liberalisation
of Yugoslavia, the regulation of the film industry was also relaxed, although never
entirely, to enable easier import of Western films and the growth of the domestic
cinema industry, which became highly prolific and internationally acclaimed.
One of most popular and easily recognisable film genres in Yugoslavia was
‘partisan film’, which featured stories about Yugoslav anti-fascist resistance
fighters in Yugoslavia during World War II. Due to its ideological acceptability to
the authorities, partisan film enjoyed considerable support from the state and high
popularity with its audience. Yet, precisely because of the ideological acceptability
and popularity of partisan film, it also became a cinematic meta-genre: a cultural
frame through which authors expressed contemporary trends within Yugoslav
popular culture, and incorporated other commercial film genres, including action
films, dramas, thrillers and even comedies and children’s films. Thus, through the
frame of socialist cultural propaganda, partisan film, at times, introduced cultural
values and views of life that differed to socialist values. These included the
notions that money is not evil, that glamour is socially acceptable and attractive
30
“Turbo-sculpture”, Art Fag City.
(and highly visible in the lavish lifestyle of President Tito) and that more space
needs to be given to personal initiative and individualism.31
There were two main types of partisan film: historic spectacles and genre film.
The former included some internationally well-known titles, such as the Oscar-
nominated historic war spectacle, The Battle of Neretva (1969), by Director Veljko
Bulajić. The Battle of Neretva was the first large state-sponsored film production,
with a budget of approximately US$10 million (approved personally by Tito),
making it one of the most expensive films of its time. The film was an exercise
in state-sponsored financial excess aimed at attracting international headlines and
raising Yugoslavia’s profile. Featuring an international star-studded ensemble cast
who were reportedly attracted by the large sums of money offered, the film includes
Yul Brynner, Orson Wells and Franco Nero. Pablo Picasso made the promotional
film poster, for which he requested to be compensated with a case of Yugoslav
wine. The Battle of Neretva was filmed over 16 months, with 10,000 extras,
including real soldiers from the Yugoslav army (JNA). An actual railway bridge on
the river Neretva was destroyed for a key scene and four villages were constructed
and destroyed for the film. It thus represented a form of cultural propaganda that
used international stars and Hollywood-style cinematic excess as a way of making
the Yugoslav socialist revolution more appealing to international audiences.32
In comparison to the seemingly unlimited budget of historic spectacles
such as The Battle of Neretva, which were produced in Yugoslavia well into the
eighties, partisan genre film was much more modest, although no less popular
with audiences. While partisan genre film included dramas, thrillers and comedies,
the most significant for this discussion is the hugely popular partisan spaghetti
western. This was the Yugoslav answer to American ‘western’ films, which enjoyed
continuing popularity in Yugoslavia. American western films were screened
as early as 1949 and cinemas regularly held American western film festivals.
Yugoslavia started coproducing spaghetti westerns that were shot on location in
Yugoslavia and starred Yugoslav actors.33 Yugoslav directors monopolised on this
popularity and fused American western iconography and aesthetic with themes
of Yugoslav partisan anti-fascist struggle. Thus, Yugoslav partisan spaghetti
westerns, like their American counterparts, had clear narrative structures, easily
defined dramatic situations and archetypal characters who promoted values such
as friendship, loyalty and heroism. However, unlike American westerns, Yugoslav
partisan films fused these values with socialist humanist insistence on modesty,
self-sacrifice and collectivism. This resulted in the formation of a unique hybrid
genre of film that used the popularity of the western to bring partisan films closer
to the youth, something that was looked upon favourably by the authorities.34
31
32
Ibid., p. 199.
33
Vučetić, Koka-kola Socijalizam, pp. 125–9.
34
Ibid., 138.
The substantial collection of partisan spaghetti western films was also very
popular in Eastern Bloc countries, where these films constituted a form of
mediated Hollywood cinema. Exemplary films in this regard are Žika Mitrović’s
Captain Leshi (Kapetan Leši, 1960) and Hajrudin Krvavac’s Yugoslav cult classic
Walter Defends Sarajevo (Valter Brani Sarajevo, 1972). According to a number of
sources, Walter Defends Sarajevo is one of the most popular films in Yugoslavia’s
cinematography. Owing to its immense popularity in China (where it was watched
by over 300 million people the year it was released), Walter Defends Sarajevo
remains as one of the most-watched war films of all time.35 The movie is reportedly
still regularly shown on Chinese television channels, streets have been named after
the characters from the film, and a beer brand called ‘Walter’ was marketed with a
picture of the character of Walter on the label.
Walter Defends Sarajevo is a spaghetti western partisan fable loosely based
on the life of a partisan leader of resistance, Vladimir Perić ‘Valter’, who was
killed in 1945 when exploring the anti-fascist guerrilla warfare in Sarajevo during
World War II. Featuring an archetypal action hero who speaks with monosyllabic
phrases, has a singular facial expression and has comedic sidekicks, the film’s
protagonist defends Sarajevo by killing seemingly countless German soldiers. He
cunningly manages to avoid capture, despite the persistent efforts of the occupying
forces. Despite its clichéd and schematic representation of the partisan struggle
(or perhaps precisely because of it), Walter Defends Sarajevo remains a hugely
popular cult classic to this day, and its ‘westernised’ characters and expressions
have been incorporated into popular culture and everyday expressions.
Partisan blockbuster action films such as The Battle of Neretva and genre
films such as Walter Defends Sarajevo used western cinema aesthetics to make
partisan film livelier. In this respect, they represent an important shift towards the
international film market. Their genre affiliation with Italian spaghetti westerns,
as well as American war cinema, paved the way for the influx of Western film
onto the Yugoslav market, which included Cold War films such as Dr Strangelove
(1964) and Dr No (1962).
In addition to domestic productions, imported Western film constituted the
other large portion of the cinema market in Yugoslavia.36 While Western-minded
partisan films may have helped, the import of Western film (mainly American)
to Yugoslavia was largely the consequence of the work of the market-based
entertainment industry, as discussed in Chapter 1. The domestic productions could
not produce enough material to meet the demands of the growing audience, and
the imported material was cheaper (because buying films is cheaper than making
films), readily available in higher quantities and very popular with the public.
The popularity of international film, particularly American films, functioned
as a form of cultural sedative, and the importation, exportation and distribution of
35
The Chinese phenomenon of Walter is the topic of a 2012 documentary film: Andrej
Acin, Walter: Myth, Legend, Hero (Hermetof Pictures, 2012).
36
film was almost entirely left off the socialist cultural agenda. As a consequence,
the international film industry in Yugoslavia was almost exclusively left to the
workings of the market, to the commercial interests of the distributors and to the
taste of the general public. This contributed to international films’ proliferation
in the media and led to a thriving pirate video market in the eighties that was
responsible for the dissemination of many popular foreign films. Thus, the success
and influence of the partisan film in Yugoslavia, as well as its openness to Western
popular film, significantly contributed to the creation of popular cinema and the
action hero audience.
The popularity of Western films was evident in several respects, from the use
of Western names and nicknames, such as Rocky, Rambo, Tarzan and Elvis, to
surveys that indicated that socialist youth considered Tito the most respectable
public personality, followed closely by Marilyn Monroe, John Travolta and Bruce
Lee.37 This has led some authors to conclude that Yugoslav popular culture was
a decade-spanning triumph of commercialism over communist idealism.38 The
entertainment industry in Yugoslavia was either imported from the capitalist
West or was Western and commercial in nature, differing only from the popular
culture in capitalist countries in formal terms. While I agree with this diagnosis in
some respects, it is necessary to add an important qualifier. If Yugoslav popular
culture was indeed a triumph of Western commercialism, and by extension a
failure of communist cultural politics, this triumph was only possible because the
commercial culture contained a kernel of communist utopia. The traces of this
utopia can be identified in the sculptures of Bruce Lee and other celebrities, which
seemingly celebrate commercial popular culture, yet do so in a socialist form.
These sculptures represent capitalism with a socialist face, and are therefore not
associated with the triumph of capitalism, but rather with the triumph of capitalist
popular culture within the social sphere of socialism.
***
The statues of Bruce Lee, Rocky and Bob Marley and others all feature popular
culture icons of the seventies and eighties that were immensely popular with young
people growing up in Yugoslavia. Given that these statues represent collective
memories of a generation of pop culture consumers, they raise important questions
about the role of these statues in the forgetting or breaking away from history.
The people who initiated the building of these statues are from a generation born
in the late seventies and early eighties. Real socialism was something they never
experienced directly, but was passed down to them from their parents, the histories
they learnt at school and educational trips to local and regional monuments.
Socialism was experienced by this generation as a mediated cultural memory,
passed down through a variety of institutions and mediated in particular ways by
37
Ibid., p. 288.
38
Ibid., p. 291.
those institutions. One of the crucial ways in which socialism exists in the memory
of this generation is through the prominent role of Western popular culture in
Yugoslavia and the ways this was appropriated into socialist ideology.
All the figures depicted in turbo-sculpture have the recurring themes of ‘rags to
riches’, achievement through struggle, determination to succeed against all odds,
and the figure of the lone underdog. This translates into Bruce Lee being seen as a
fighter against racism and imperialism, Rocky being the working class underdog
who succeeds through personal empowerment and persistence, Bob Marley as the
freedom fighter, and Tarzan as the everyday man.39 Crucial here are the recurring
themes of an outsider hero who works from the margins to assert his right to
belong to a community that rejects him, as well as the struggle for control over
one’s place in society. Thus, these statues demonstrate mediation between the
individualistic ideology of the West (the working-class hero standing alone and
outside of the system) and the collectivist socialist aspiration for utopian good
(equality and justice). Even with the absent Samantha Fox statue, the symbolic
association is with the ubiquity of soft pornographic images on the pages of various
socialist magazines, daily newspapers and current affairs journals. Female nudity
functioned as a symbol of Yugoslavia’s progressiveness, and sexual liberation
became associated with political liberalisation.40
The paradox of statues featuring popular culture icons is that they repeat history,
while simultaneously refusing to address it. Just as socialist monuments were
designed to be grandiose and retro-futuristic in order to conflate the revolutionary
past with the present and future, pop statues perform the trauma of recent history,
disenchantment with the present and insecurity of the future through signifiers of
class associated with socialism.
Repetition of History, Again
By considering the notion of class and performance of class through popular

culture, these statues can be viewed as a standing reminder of (Western) popular
culture as the primary cultural constituent of the socialist working class. As
studies have shown, the cinema audience in Yugoslavia was almost entirely
comprised of the youth and the working class.41 This raises the spectre of class as
the disappearing discourse in the post-socialist reality in the countries within the
territory of ex-Yugoslavia, in which societies are presumed not to be comprised of
workers, but of middle-class entrepreneurs. In the face of the neoliberal erasure of
class discourses and emphasis on social mobility, these statues assert pop culture
39
Vijay Prashad, “Bruce Lee and the Anti-imperialism of Kung Fu: A Polycultural
Adventure”, Positions 11/1 (2003): 51–90.
40
Biljana Zikić, “Dissidents Liked Pretty Girls: Nudity, Pornography and Quality
Press in Socialism”, Medijska Istrazivanja 16/1 (2010): 53–71.
41
icons as the primary cultural constituent for the new precarious underclass. All
the statues were built in regions that are suffering from low living standards,
high rates of unemployment and, in some cases, high crime rates, for which the
locals blame the lack of support from the state. It must thus be suggested that
these statues exist in the genealogy of the failed Yugoslav socialist utopia that has
been transformed into populist anti-statism. All the initiatives to build pop statues
take as their starting point the absence of official symbols (and their cynicism
towards official symbols) and recast them in a localised populist rhetoric of
personal empowerment.
Thus, statues featuring pop culture icons mediate between the failure of the
neoliberal state to provide centralist narratives (because it sees identity as part
of deterritorialised capital) and the attempt by locals to attract public attention
through an entrepreneurial neoliberal privatising approach to popular culture. In
this sense, Bruce Lee and the others are a reminder that the violent transition
between socialism and capitalism in Yugoslavia revealed not just a shift between
two ideological paradigms, but a more fundamental transition from the political
to the economic. This means that the politicised condition of the old socialist
ideology shifted into the economically dominant capitalist ideology, with an
accompanying privatisation of the once taken-for-granted social and public sphere.
This privatisation also included the shared cultural space of Yugoslavia that was
based on Western popular culture.
The statues operate in the vacuum left behind by the demise of the Yugoslav
state, both economically – because public sculpture is now available for private
appropriation – and symbolically – by tapping into what Boris Groys describes as
the legacy of collective emotions that were made available for private appropriation:
[C]ollective property under the conditions of ‘real Socialism’ went along with
a large reservoir of collective experiences … The result was a collective mental
territory whose sovereign was the state. Under the rule of the Communist
Party every private psyche was subordinated to and nationalized by the official
ideology. Just as the Socialist state at its demise made an immense economic
area available to private appropriation, so did the simultaneous abolition of
official Soviet ideology leave as its legacy the enormous empire of collective
emotions that was made available for private appropriation for the purposes of
producing an individualist, capitalist soul.42
Groys maintains that the privatisation of the legacy of socialism is only possible
because it addresses the public in a language that is immediately recognisable.
For Groys, this language, ‘[A]ppropriates from the enormous store of images,
symbols, and texts that no longer belong to anyone, and that no longer circulate
42
Groys, Art and Power, p. 166.
but merely lay quietly on the garbage heap of history as a shared legacy from the
days of Communism’.43
It would be easy to dismiss this common language as little more than a form
of collective nostalgia. The process of the post-communist appropriation and
privatisation of socialist symbols, rituals and products described by Groys has
also steadily been taking place in ex-Yugoslavia since the late nineties. As Zala
Volčič argues, the Yugoslav wars of the nineties helped foster a sense of nostalgia
not just for the dream of pan-Slavic harmony fostered by Titoism, but for the
relative peace and prosperity of the seventies and early eighties.44 Catherine Baker
also suggests that, in post-Yugoslav nostalgic cultural production, ‘the symbolic
language of socialism is a convenient shorthand for a period of readily attainable
consumerist aspirations, ample employment and travel opportunities’.45
In one sense, the practice of erecting of popular culture statues in ex-
Yugoslavia marks the latest stage of this process. The shift away from dealing
with problematic history warrants the change of cultural practices that conflate
history into an abstract and interchangeable commodity. Yet, as Volčič warns, it is
vital that this nostalgia is not dismissed as ‘historically bankrupt’ because to do so
would be to miss:
the real social significance of such ‘inauthentic’ and romanticized cultural

formations … the imagined community of the former Yugoslavia already
blurred this distinction insofar as it was based on the constitutive fiction of a
viable supranational sense of unity. It remained, from its inception, an unfinished
project, whose unity was predicated not on what it was, but what it might
become. Yugo-nostalgia is then, arguably, less a longing for a real past than a
kind of longing for the desires and fantasies that were once possible.46
In an important sense, this shift away from commemorating history in public

sculptures mirrors the broader process of denial. Mostar has no monuments to the
recent war and the ‘new’ Old Bridge is the standing reminder of the contentious
and volatile memory of that war. Serbia also has no monuments to recent history,
except for the failed ‘Eternal Light’, and recent history is not taught in schools.
To an extent, the notion of historical representation in the entire region is no
longer associated with memorial practices (such as sculptures or monuments) or
education, but with media representation. The issue is not that a media-saturated
world is replacing traditional memorial practices, but that historical memory
proceeds from a different source.
43
Ibid., p. 167.
44
Volčič, “Yugo-nostalgia”, 25.
45
Catherine Baker, “Death to Fascism Isn’t in the Catechism”, Narodna Umjetnost 47/1
(2010): 163–83.
46
Ibid., 27.
The statues of Bruce Lee and the other celebrities fill the gap and mediate
between these different levels of historical memory. As much as they draw on
the historical depository of socialist symbolism, they also draw almost equally
upon the global store of pop cultural icons that float around the contemporary
image-sphere. In this sense, the nostalgia of these sculptures is different from the
post-socialism described by Groys, or from straightforward Yugo-nostalgia. It
is more akin to what, following Volčič, can be described as ‘aesthetic-utopian’
Yugo-nostalgia: a request for the preservation of an authentic Yugoslav past as
something to be cherished; yet a preservation that relies on a shared experience of
commercial (Westernised) symbols of Yugoslav identity.47
Volčič uses the example of the German film Goodbye Lenin (2004) to distinguish
Yugo-nostalgia from other forms of post-socialist nostalgia. In Goodbye Lenin, a
young East Berliner rewrites history to shelter his ill socialist mother – who has
emerged from an eight-month coma into a newly reunified Germany – from the
shock of the historical transition. The film illustrates the historical and cultural
complexities of the transition from socialism into capitalism through the frame
of longing for life in communist East Germany. Volčič argues that this has been
read as symptomatic of the post-socialist nostalgia of Eastern Europe. However,
Volčič maintains that Yugo-nostalgia is a historically and geographically distinct
phenomenon from communist nostalgia in the rest of Eastern Europe. This is
because Yugoslavia was not under the control of the USSR, and its shift from
socialism to capitalism took place through a violent civil war. Most importantly,
Yugo-nostalgia commemorates a period of wholeness and unity before
fragmentation, in contrast to what Germans call ‘Ostalgie’ – nostalgia for life in
communist East Germany prior to national reunification.48
Here, there is also one crucial difference between the Eastern Bloc post-
socialist nostalgia and ex-Yugoslavian nostalgia that needs to be added to the
present context, and that is found in the symbols of that nostalgia. If Goodbye
Lenin is the cinematic representation of post-socialist nostalgia, the symbols of
47
Volčič describes three (overlapping) aspects of Yugoslav nostalgia. 1. Revisionist
nostalgia is primarily a political phenomenon. It mobilises the promise of the past as part of
a political programme of reunification. In so doing, it partakes of some of the other aspects
of nostalgia described below by rewriting history and issuing the call for the renewal of a
shared sense of belonging to an imagined Yugoslav community. This revisionist form of
nostalgia presupposes the existence of a verifiable historical reality in order to transform
and reshape it in accordance with contemporary political priorities. It is invoked by
politicians within the context of public debates. 2. Aesthetic nostalgia is primarily a cultural
phenomenon calling for the preservation of an authentic Yugoslav past. It purports to revere
Yugoslav culture and its socialist past as something sacred that should be cherished and not
exploited for political or commercial gain. 3. Escapist, utopian nostalgia is a commercial
phenomenon that celebrates and exploits the longing for an idyllic Yugoslav past. This type
of nostalgia tends to be the most ahistorical. It eschews historical narratives, relying instead
upon commodified symbols of Yugoslav identity. See: Volčič, “Yugo-nostalgia”, 28.
48
Ibid., 26.
that nostalgia are groceries (food and drink), communist party songs, children’s
uniforms and the news in socialist-speak. In other words, they are all symbols of
the missing communist state. In Yugoslavia, nostalgia is anchored on the socialist
civic space or the social sphere, and is perceived through the frame of popular
culture. Further, it is communicated through popular culture, film and music in
particular. With regard to film, this is evident in documentary films such as Cinema
Komunisto (2010), which explores the popularity of Yugoslav partisan film, and
Walter: Myth, Legend, Hero (2012), which explores the cultural phenomenon
of the film Walter Defends Sarajevo. Both documentaries address the Yugoslav
socialist past through the frame of popular culture by placing particular emphasis
on the historical and cultural legacy of partisan cinema. With respect to popular
music, this is evident in the documentary films Happy Child (Sretno Dijete, 2003)
by Igor Mirković, which explores the emergence of Yugoslav punk and new wave
music, and Orchestra (2011) by Pjer Žalica, which traces the career of Sarajevo pop
band Blue Orchestra (Plavi Orkestar), which was one of the biggest pop cultural
sensations of Yugoslavia. Both films are essentially rock-umentaries that devote
considerable time to interviews and nostalgic recollections of the ‘good way of life’
and ‘togetherness’ of the seventies and early eighties in Yugoslavia. This symbolic
difference of nostalgia is also evident in the films of Srđan Dragojević, which will
be discussed in the next chapter. Dragojević articulates the question of shared
Yugoslav identity and history through the ownership of the popular culture from
that past. As will be suggested, key scenes of Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames are
structured around the symbolic and cultural ownership of popular songs, as well
as the ownership to narrate the history of Yugoslavia (and its violent destruction)
through those songs.
The nostalgia of ex-Yugoslavia is translated through popular culture icons
in statues to produce a vernacular and localised interval in the recent history
of ex-Yugoslavia that runs counter to the official inability to articulate recent
historical narratives and contrasts the media-saturated representation of history.
Sites featuring statues of Bruce Lee, Bob Marley and Rocky evoke a genealogical
relationship with socialist public culture and particularly with the role of Western
popular culture as a marker of liberal socialism in Yugoslavia. While these statues
might be considered atavistic, even Yugo-nostalgic gestures, they might also
be considered the evocation of these memories of socialism mediated through
popular culture as attempts to uncover the utopian possibilities of popular culture.
This sense of a bottom-up vernacular articulation of history is clearly contrary
to the official denial or amnesia of coming to terms with recent historical
traumas. The fact that popular culture – or, more precisely, a certain kind of
popular culture – plays an important part in this complicates understandings of
how identity is generated around historical narratives. It also highlights some of
the problems and complexities of using popular culture for collective memory
and identification, and the need for historical approaches to understandings of
contemporary popular culture. These statues cannot simply be interpreted as
cases of a post-socialist embrace of Western populism or as another example of
hybrid glocalisation of Hollywood. Rather, they are a demonstration that capitalist

and socialist popular cultures have altogether more complex histories. It is these
interlinked and overlapping histories that respond to shifting personal, cultural,
social and economic relationships in the territories of ex-Yugoslavia, generating
new cultural compositions and new ways of engaging with history.
Chapter 6
Singin’ in the Film: Turbo-folk
and Self-exoticisation in the
Films of Srđan Dragojević
Three nationalists and war profiteers – a Serb, a Muslim, a Croat – and a homosexual
are driving to Kosovo in a pink Mini Morris covered in nationalist and homophobic
graffiti. They are all in a trancelike state of exaltation, singing along to a turbo-
folk song, ‘No One Can Touch Us, We’re Stronger Than Destiny’, blasting on the
car stereo. Carried by the emotional affect of the song, they play chicken with a
United Nations (UN) armoured vehicle and almost drive it off the road. The Croat
pokes his head out the window and insults the peacekeepers: ‘Fuck your mothers,
you American shitheads, you fucked the Indians and the Vietnamese, but not us!’.
This description, which reads like a setup for a (crude) joke, is the central scene
of Serbian director Srđan Dragojević’s film The Parade (2011). Its invocation of
turbo-folk as the medium for the eruption of excessive enjoyment into the social
sphere is key to understanding film representations of turbo-folk.
The previous chapters examined the relationship of turbo-folk music as
a cultural phenomenon to visual art, public sculpture and architecture. They
demonstrated the way these spheres of culture, traditionally viewed as removed
from the ‘cultural trash’ of turbo-folk, open up new perspectives on turbo-folk
as a broad cultural trend. This previous discussion evidenced the critical use
of turbo-folk by visual artists as a cultural and political readymade to question
the process of national identification in global and international contexts. The
discussion also elucidated the impetus behind initiatives by local communities
across ex-Yugoslavia to build statues of ‘heroes’ of Western popular culture
as demonstrating a willingness to engage with the legacy of recent wars and
recall social spaces of consumerist–socialist Yugoslavia. As was the case with
visual art and the local sculpture initiatives, the relationship of turbo-folk with
national identification and the legacy of the shared culture of Yugoslavia can also
be evidenced in cinema. This chapter critically examines the representation of
popular music, particularly turbo-folk, in Dragojević’s films Pretty Villages, Pretty
Flames (1996), Wounds (1998) and The Parade (2011). By closely examining
these films, it will be made clear that on-screen turbo-folk shifts from a symbol
of stolen enjoyment in Pretty Villages, to a symbol of pathological nationalism in
the nineties in Wounds, to a regional fear of globalisation that is expressed in The
Parade as a form of transnationalism steeped in a shared enjoyment of music.
This trajectory of turbo-folk in Dragojević’s films follows the changes in broader
conceptions of the music, as outlined in the second chapter, and adds another layer
to the history of the shifting position of turbo-folk within the broad post-socialist
culture of ex-Yugoslavia. Building on the insights from previous chapters about
the gradual de-nationalisation of turbo-folk, this chapter demonstrates the way
Dragojević invokes the emotionally charged expression of identity in turbo-folk
as a signifier of ‘new Balkanness’ self-exoticism.
Dragojević’s films present an important addition to case studies of cultural
representations of turbo-folk, both because of their popularity and their concern
with turbo-folk as the shared cultural memory of Yugoslavia. Dragojević’s films
are some of the most well-known (and controversial) cinematic representations of
the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. Pretty Villages was widely criticised for its
representation of the war in Bosnia as pro-Serb1 and Wounds was boycotted in Serbia
by the authorities for its critical view of the Milošević regime and because it was the
first film from Serbia to be officially distributed in Croatia, albeit with (completely
redundant) subtitles. Despite these criticisms, or perhaps precisely because of them,
Dragojević also achieved commercial success with The Parade, which remains one
of the highest grossing box office hits across the region in the last ten years.
Although Dragojević is not the only director to include turbo-folk in his
films, his sustained interest in turbo-folk as part of Serbia (and the whole region)
represents the most visible and recognisable view of the music as a cultural
phenomenon. This is partly because Dragojević’s films are about popular culture
as the cultural memory of Yugoslavia. Dragojević communicates this cultural
memory through sophisticated and accomplished cinematic bricolages of familiar
symbols that operate on three levels: film history – the importance of popular
cinema, including partisan films and Western war films discussed in the previous
chapter; icons of popular culture – Yugoslav pop celebrities, including political
figures such as Tito; and ethnic stereotypes and slang terminology communicated
through popular music – as a sociocultural signifier of identity.
Thus far, most critical attention has been devoted to the way Dragojević
represents Yugoslav film history and pop culture icons in relation to national
identity, history, gender and violence.2 Yet almost no attention has been given to
the role that popular music plays in his films, despite music being a key part in
1
See Iordanova for a summary of these debates: Dina Iordanova, Cinema of Flames:
Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (London: British Film Institute, 2001).
2
Ibid.; Pavl Levi, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav
and Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Nevena
Daković, Balkan kao (Filmski) Žanr: Slika, Tekst, Nacija (Belgrade: FDU, 2008); Ivana
Kronja, “The Aesthetics of Violence in Recent Serbian Cinema: Masculinity in Crisis”,
Film Criticism 30/3 (2006): 17–37; Matthew Evangelista, Gender, Nationalism, and War:
Conflict on the Movie Screen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Igor Krstić,
“‘Showtime Brothers!’ – A Vision of the Bosnian War: Srđan Dragojević’s Lepa Sela Lepo
Gore (1996)”, in Celluloid Tinderbox: Yugoslav Screen Reflections of a Turbulent Decade,
edited by Andrew James Horton (Telford: Central Europe Review, 2000), pp. 43–61; Igor
Krstić, “Serbia’s Wound Culture – Teenage Killers in Milošević’s Serbia: Srđan Dragojević’s
Singin’ in the Film 157
Dragojević’s cinematic aesthetic since his earliest works, such as the retro-teen-
comedy We’re Not Angels (1992) and the television musical comedy Two Hours
of Quality TV Programming (1994). Dragojević’s films have provided an entire
generation of film audiences in Balkan pop cultural scripts for the discovery,
understanding and representation of popular music.
This critical oversight of Dragojević’s films can perhaps partly be explained
by the general absence of theoretical work centred on the role of film music as a
locator of national identity.3 However, it may be more accurate to suggest that, in
Dragojević’s case, the significance of music is lost on non-native commentators,
whose works comprise a large portion of the available literature. Music in
Dragojević’s films is often not translated with subtitles, thus the subtlety of the
cultural meaning it traces is obstructed. In the rare instances where music in
Dragojević’s film is discussed by local commentators, it is skimmed over as little
more than a readymade signifier for cultural identity.
Dragojević’s films lend themselves to this reading precisely because of his
fascination with popular music as a signifier for identity. His films regularly feature
a bricolage of oddball characters who at times border on clichés. These characters
are defined socially, culturally, nationally and politically through their taste in
music: criminals and opportunists listen to turbo-folk; simple-minded Serb yokels
listen to nationalist propaganda music; drug addicts listen to Western music, such as
rave music; and cool urban types listen to Yugoslav rock. In Dragojević’s universe,
these characters exist as critical perspectives of the present and are often defined
through their music of choice. The criminals take advantage of any situation to
ensure a lavish lifestyle, the nationalists respond to the ‘patriotic calling’ of the
propaganda music, the drug addicts seek isolation and escape in the music beats,
and the cool urbanites cynically view the present through rock rebelliousness.
These differentiations between characters, defined through their taste in
music, enable Dragojević to reproduce the cultural divides that have informed
the reception of popular music in Yugoslavia, particularly NCFM and turbo-
folk: East–West, rural–urban and backwards–cosmopolitan. Such divides are not
new, having been the staple of Hollywood cinema for decades. They also exist
within Yugoslav cinema and have been addressed in films such as rock comedies,
including The Boy With A Promise (Dečko Koji Obećava, 1981), in which the main
character is a young punk called Slobodan Milošević, Strangler Against Strangler
(Davitelj Protiv Davitelja, 1985) and How Rock ’n’ Roll Declined (Kako Je Propao
Rokenrol, 1989). Each of these films deals with the lives of young urbanites and
their encounters with other social groups, such as urban peasants.
Rane (1998)”, in Celluloid Tinderbox: Yugoslav Screen Reflections of a Turbulent Decade,

edited by Andrew James Horton (Telford: Central Europe Review, 2000), pp. 89–103.
3
Mark Brownrigg, “Hearing Place: Film Music, Geography and Ethnicity”,
International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3/3 (2007): 308. For one example,
see: Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight, eds, Soundtrack Available: Essays on
Film and Popular Music (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
However, importantly, Dragojević views turbo-folk as the only survivor of the

lost cultural space of Yugoslavia, and as the space of ‘new Balkanness’. Dragojević’s
films are marked by a distinctive sense of cynicism, embodied through the character
of the noble criminal or ‘colourful thug’. Dragojević’s perspective on the present
emerges from the cynical perspective of the colourful thug who states that ‘it is all
one big lie’ and believes that energy should not be wasted on anything other than
enjoying oneself. Turbo-folk’s thundering exalted melancholy – another staple of
Dragojević films – is the soundtrack to this worldview. In this sense, turbo-folk might
better be understood as the symbolic synthesis of cynicism, hedonism and historical
relativism, which has an altogether more complex relationship to the present. It
embodies a form of cultural reconciliation, yet, crucially, this reconciliation is based
on escapism through enjoyment, rather than a confrontation with historical reality.
Dragojević articulates on-screen turbo-folk through the eruption of enjoyment
into the social field. As suggested in the introduction, this understanding of
national identification through music comes from Žižek’s account of the way
communities organise their enjoyment through cultural practices: ‘A nation exists
only as long as its specific enjoyment continues to be materialized in a set of social
practices and transmitted through national myths that structure these practices’.4
Žižek’s criticism of national myths in the Balkans is directed primarily at the way
in which ethnic communities selectively perform and exoticise certain aspects of
their identity. As suggested earlier, the notion of the ‘timeless Balkan carnival’
(of enjoyment and violence) has been routinely invoked in media and popular
culture representations. The crucial aspect of this performed self-exoticisation is
that it only exists for the gaze of ‘the Other’ – in this instance Western Europe.
For Žižek, the prime example of this performance of the Balkan is in the work
of film director Emir Kusturica. Žižek argued that Kusturica pandered to the
Western gaze by presenting the Balkans as a timeless spectacle of drinking,
singing and fornicating.5 Following Žižek, Pavle Levi develops the concept of
overflowing enjoyment in relation to the representation of Yugoslav national
identity in Kusturica’s film Underground. Levi argues that Underground frames
the question of national identity through ‘the eruption of enjoyment into the social
sphere’ – seen in trancelike festivities, non-stop music, intoxication, exaggeration
and eroticisation of verbal and gestural expression.6
This idea can be extended to suggest that, in Dragojević’s films, turbo-folk is the
key to the eruption of enjoyment. Žižek argues that a key component of enjoyment
is that it is ‘conceived as something inaccessible to the other and at the same time
threatened by him’.7 In Pretty Villages, the representation of popular music from
ex-Yugoslavia is structured by the fear of enjoyment being stolen or corrupted by
4
Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 202.
5
Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 60–64.
6
7
Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 203.
the ‘excessive’ enjoyment of ‘the other’. Pretty Villages positions music as the
centre of the struggle over the ownership of the cultural legacy and memory of the
shared space of Yugoslavia. In Wounds, enjoyment of turbo-folk is constructed as
something that is inaccessible to all ‘others’ except the Serbs, and is threatened by
those ‘others’. Yet Wounds also insists that the imagined threat to Serbs’ enjoyment
is the consequence of the pathologies of the nineties. The Parade completes this
cycle by reversing the enjoyment of turbo-folk into shared transnational enjoyment.
The Parade represents turbo-folk as ‘reverse nationalism’ that constitutes itself as
stolen by an external enemy represented through globalisation.
Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames: The Theft of Enjoyment
Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames is a back-and-forth narrative about two friends:

Milan, who is a Serb, and Halil, who is a Muslim. Growing up in a Bosnian village
in seventies and eighties Yugoslavia, the film traces the events that lead to Milan
and Halil fighting on opposite sides of the war. The story is told from Milan’s
perspective through a series of flashbacks he experiences while recovering in a
military hospital in Belgrade. The main narrative of the film centres on a week-
long siege of Milan’s unit inside the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ tunnel near his
village, surrounded by a Muslim unit that is later revealed to be Halil’s. Between
the outbreaks of fighting, the two sides psychologically taunt each other by playing
popular songs from Yugoslavia and exchanging obscene jokes.
These exchanges between Serb and Muslim soldiers frame Pretty Villages as
a film about the ownership (and theft) of the shared social space of Yugoslavia,
symbolised through popular music and jokes. Importantly, Dragojević establishes
a dynamic of these verbal skirmishes that foregrounds the Serbian perspective as
being that of the audience. The viewer witnesses the exchanges from the Serbs’
perspective, as the besieging Muslim soldiers remain an invisible assemblage of
voices, sounds and silhouettes. Pavle Levi reads the invisibility of the Muslim
side as crucial for understanding the representation of national identity in Pretty
Villages, where the Muslim side of the exchange is presented as an ‘acousmatic
voice’ – the sourceless disembodied voice of the ethnic other.8 Igor Krstić provides
a compelling analysis of this dynamic in the film:
The Muslim voices symbolize perfectly what Žižek described as the ‘neighbours’
ugly voice’, which stands for the hated jouissance of the neighbour-‘other’, his
‘ugly jouissance’. The invisible Muslim ‘voice-over’ in Pretty Villages, Pretty
Flames sing songs that are ‘theirs’ and the Serbs respond with their ‘own’ songs.9
8
9
Igor Krstić, “Re-thinking Serbia: A Psychoanalytic Reading of Modern Serbian
History and Identity through Popular Culture”, Other Voices 2/2 (2002): 1–29.
The dynamic of this juxtaposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is grounded in the
familiarity of the music used and the implied shared ownership. For example, the
Muslim soldiers intimidate the Serb soldiers by singing the Yugoslav anthem ‘Hey
Slavs’ (‘Hej Slaveni’, 1834) and suggesting that ‘they should stand up’. This is an
intentional play on words, where standing up for the national anthem is a bitter
reminder of the shared past and the murderous present in which ‘standing up’ for
the anthem would lead to getting killed.
This dynamic reflects Žižek’s articulation of nationalism as theft of enjoyment,
where the ethnic ‘other’ threatens one’s identity by attempting to ‘steal’ some
crucial aspect of it, or debasing it through their excessive enjoyment. In Pretty
Villages, this enjoyment is configured through the sphere of popular music.
However, a crucial aspect of the Serb–Muslim exchange in Pretty Villages is
precisely that the ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ songs are identical, and effectively become
echoes of each other.
The potency of popular music to convey a bricolage of multiple temporalities,
different histories of Yugoslavia and different perspectives on Yugoslav shared
culture is evident in Dragojević’s use of the progressive rock song ‘She Threw
Everything Down The River’ (‘Bacila Je Sve Niz Rijeku’, 1972) by iconic Yugoslav
band, Indexes (Indeksi). The Pretty Villages sequence that uses the song focuses on
the repetition of its chorus line ‘She threw one life away’ through several scenes.
The first is in the ‘present’ (1992–1993), during which Muslims taunt the Serbs
in the tunnel with this song, announcing it to be ‘the song from yours and our
youth’. The second is a scene with Milan and Halil as children, peeking at the local
postman having sexual intercourse with their teacher, when the announcement of
Tito’s death comes on the radio. The postman ‘respectfully’ removes his cap and
laments the loss of Tito, while proceeding to thrust. The onlookers, Milan and
Halil, ‘dare’ each other to cry (Tito’s death is usually identified as the turning point
in Yugoslav politics towards nationalisation). The third scene switches back to the
tunnel, where Velja (one of the Serbs) is provoked by the song to begin dancing
and singing in full view of the Muslim besiegers, taunting them to shoot.
On the one hand, the song is a clear reference to the destruction of shared
Yugoslav heritage. The emotional anguish of rejected love in the lyrics is
transformed into the broader social trauma of being ‘thrown down the river’ by
the shared country of origin. The main melody of ‘She Threw Everything Down
The River’ – played on a mournful and melancholic accordion, instead of the
organ in the original version – bookends the film with scenes of Milan and Halil
drinking and discussing whether there will be war with opportunist war criminal,
Slobo (a reference to Slobodan Milošević) in the background. On the other hand,
the song operates as a signifier of the shared identity against which the soldiers –
representing nationalised ethnic groups, as well as different social groups within
each ethnicity – seek to distance themselves.
Thus, the popular songs in Pretty Villages represent a shared culture over which
an audio-cultural warfare is fought through a series of detournements. The songs
are used ironically against their original meaning. ‘Count On Us’ (‘Računajte
Na Nas’, 1978) is a youthful pop declaration of allegiance to socialist ideals that

is sung by two Serbian nationalists while they are looting and burning Muslim
villages. ‘Through Valleys and Over Hills’ (‘Po Šumama I Gorama’, 1928)
is a partisan anthem that was adopted from a Red Army song. It is sung by a
junkie, Brzi, who, in a drug-induced delirium, throws himself off an overpass and
accidently lands in the military truck taking Milan’s unit to Bosnia. Popular pro-
Yugoslav rock song ‘Whole Yugoslavia is Dancing Rock ’n’ Roll’ (‘Igra Rokenrol
Cela Jugoslavija’, 1988) is juxtaposed against scenes of wanton destruction and
looting by Serb soldiers.
Dragojević further highlights the ambiguity within the shared heritage of
popular culture by demonstrating the split between the ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ music
to be present between the Serb soldiers. ‘The Internationale’ (1871) is played by
Velja in the tunnel as a provocation to the veteran communist soldier Gvozden,
while one of the peasant-nationalist soldiers curses the song and tries to explain
in Serbian to an American journalist (trapped in the tunnel with the soldiers) that
this is ‘their [the communists’] song’. He says that after the communists’ song,
she will hear ‘our song’, and decide which is nicer. The impact of the scene builds
on the confusion of the American journalist (and by extension the international
audience), who cannot speak Serbian, and to whom these songs sound very similar
(especially when played on harmonica). This confusion is repeatedly reinforced
in Pretty Villages to represent the inability of the international community to
understand the ‘narcissism of small differences’ that form the roots of the conflict.
A similar dynamic also characterises the exchange of obscenities and jokes
between the soldiers. In the tunnel, Brzi tells a sexist and nationalist joke about
‘Mujo’ and ‘Fata’ – two main protagonists of ex-Yugoslav jokes (with Muslim
names) – that is equally enjoyed by the Serbs and off-screen Muslims. What at first
appears to be a nationalist taunt quickly turns into a shared understanding of the
world that swiftly returns to nationalism a few moments later. The transition from a
harmonious exchange to an aggressive point of difference (and back) suggests the
social, ideological and political perspective concealed in the content of the joke.
However, it also highlights humour as a key form of expressing and demarcating
the ‘narcissism of small differences’. Simon Critchley suggests that ethnic humour
delineates the frame and boundaries of national identity by drawing a humorous
line of differentiation between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ based on cleverness and
idiocy.10 One of key modes of transnational exchange in everyday life of ex-
Yugoslavia was sharing ethnic jokes, which were based in stereotypes. These
jokes established a transnational social bond – what Žižek would call ‘obscene
solidarity’ – through shared obscenities. Importantly, one of the earliest symptoms
of the rise in ethnic tensions was the disappearance of this kind of humour, or
rather the mutation of jokes from a form of social bonding into nationalist insults.
This symbolic economy of ethnic humour is not only crucial for understanding
Pretty Villages, but is also revisited by Dragojević 15 years later in The Parade.
10
Simon Critchley, On Humour: Thinking in Action (London: Routledge, 2002).
Obscene jokes and popular music are thus the medium through which the
protagonists of Pretty Villages attempt to carve out a new symbolic space in which
shared Yugoslav culture can be ‘nationalised’ or contested. Crucially, there is only
one scene in the film in which popular music is shown without being contested
on the grounds of national belonging. This is a scene in which young Milan and
Halil pay a local woman, Đana (who is implied to be a prostitute, and whose
name is a slang term for ‘vagina’ that would translate into ‘Auntie Vagina’) to see
‘her thing’. The actress playing ‘Teta Đana’ is Milica Ostojić – better known as
Mica Trofrtaljka (an artistic name that translates into ‘Three-inch Kitty’). She is a
legend of trash-folk who appears in most films by Dragojević. During the scene,
Teta Đana sings the first verse and chorus from the song ‘Davorike Dajke’, which
was a 1968 hit single by the actress.
Lyrically, ‘Davorike Dajke’ is a collection of highly suggestive and crude puns
on sexual inexperience in a relationship (‘it has to go in, even with tears’). In
contrast to the lyrics that are playfully sung by Ostojić, the music is performed
in the traditional 2/4 Serbian metre, with instrumentation by an acoustic guitar,
bass and accordion that weave around the basic melody of the vocals. As with
‘Apollo 9’ and ‘Two Roads Lead from the Water Spring’, discussed in previous
chapters, ‘Davorike Dajke’ is representative of the first wave of NCFM in the
late sixties, which shifted away from idyllic representation of rural life towards
modern themes. However, in contrast to the other two songs, ‘Davorike Dajke’
is considered to be a marginal ‘folk-kitsch’ phenomenon, and is frequently listed
in the top ten worst songs of NCFM. This is largely due to the lyrical content,
which was labelled ‘kitsch’ at the time of the release and boycotted by the media.
‘Davorike Dajke’ survived through grass roots popularity and grew into one of the
most well-known ‘cult folk trash’ songs.
Dragojević positions ‘Davorike Dajke’ within the narrative of Pretty Villages
to signify the sexual maturation of the two boys, but also to signal their culturally
marginal status. Living in a small and isolated Bosnian village, Milan and Halil
resort to ‘people’s wisdom’ to navigate puberty. Their young age is contrasted
against Teta Djana’s homeliness and alcoholism, just as ‘Davorike Dajke’ is
juxtaposed through a montage with a popular Yugoslav rock song. Thus, turbo-
folk in Pretty Villages plays a small, but crucial, role in the pop cultural landscape
created by Dragojević, suggesting backwardness and cultural marginality. These
two aspects became even more crucial in Wounds and The Parade, as illustrated by
the repeated use of one turbo-folk song, ‘No One Can Touch Us’ by Mitar Mirić.
EPP 1: Tarmi Rićmi
The cultural significance of Mirić’s song ‘No One Can Touch Us’ in Wounds
and Parade can be summarised by the following joke: Chuck Norris calls Mitar
Mirić and asks: ‘What do you mean by no one can touch us?’. This joke points
to two key elements of the cultural mythology of Mirić. The first refers to his
cultural status, which, like Chuck Norris’s ‘tough guy’ image – which serves as the
inspiration for the ‘Chuck Norris facts’ global phenomenon – also revolves around
his image. Mirić’s status as a cult ‘trash’ celebrity owes a lot to his image. His
public personality, especially during the eighties, featured garish outfits: brightly
coloured leather jackets and vests and tight pants, combined with a bare hairy
chest and Native American warrior headbands. This imagery, which stylistically
drew heavily from the famous Village People, became well known and shocking
to the Yugoslav public, which Mirić only used to further his career. His ‘peasant-
yokel’ appearance was often accentuated with the use of make-up such as blush
and lipstick, and eighties permed hair. Mirić became lampooned for his stylisation
as a ‘super-yokel’, and ‘Tarmi Rićmi’ – the pig-Latin version of his name – became
street slang for primitivism and shameless backwardness. The cultural status of
Mirić as a trash-legend was acknowledged by the Belgrade band Straight Jackin’
with the song, ‘Tarmi Rićmi’ (1995). This song incorporates some of Mirić’s lyrics
and features a chorus that repeats ad nauseum the phrase ‘Tarmi Rićmi’.
The second aspect of the mythology of Mirić refers specifically to his well-
known song ‘No One Can Touch Us’ (‘Ne Može Nam Niko Ništa’, 1989). The
lyrics draw heavily on romanticist aesthetics, with love and destiny as central
concepts.11 The short verses use fragmented statements about love and devotion
that build to a catchy and highly emotional chorus. The language combines
universal statements about love with colloquial (local) figures, such as Morning
Star (‘Zvezda Danica’ in Serbian). They also connect the song narrative of love
against all odds to the power and symbolism of natural elements.
‘No One Can Touch Us’ has a verse–chorus–verse structure with extended
instrumental sections, in which Mirić’s highly melismatic vocals intermingle with
the instruments. The polyphonic intermingling of different instruments is key to
the sound by providing upbeat fast-paced dance parts. The two main instruments in
this interplay are the accordion and the synthesiser, whose electronically processed
sound emulates the Turkish wind instrument, the Zurna. The accordion functions
as the symbolic link with the folk spirit, while the electronic Zurna is the signifier
of the ‘orient’. Thus, in one sense, the song is one example of artists who were not
on par with the Southern Wind production team, but monopolised the popularity
of the sound. The combination of two instruments associates ‘No One Can Touch
Us’ with different local traditions of ‘East’ and ‘West’, which is also evident in the
shifting rhythmic patterns between Serbian dance and Macedonian mixed metre.
‘No One Can Touch Us’ effectively mixes references associated with various
local Balkan traditions – Serbian, Bosnian and Macedonian – with a universal
message that translates into local (rather than national) patriotism. In the song,
the affect of romantic love that survives against all odds becomes symbolic of a
broader social context of standing up to greater forces. Emotional fidelity signifies
defiance and bravery against external threat and aggression. This signifier is
11
Routledge, 2002), pp. 248–50.
important because it shifts between the registers of nationalism (Serbia’s isolation

and strength to withstand that isolation) and transnationalism (Balkan resistance
to globalisation). As will be discussed below, this shift between registers of
nationalism and transnationalism is evident in the changing meaning and
significance of the song in Dragojević’s Wounds and Parade.
This ideological shift in the perception of ‘No One Can Touch Us’ in many
ways mirrors the nationalisation of the Yugoslav public sphere in the early
nineties, as outlined in the Chapter 2. ‘No One Can Touch Us’ was popular upon
its release, but its popularity peaked during the early nineties, when it became
the battle cry for Serb nationalist siege mentality (as shown by Dragojević in
Wounds). The chorus line became a manifesto that combined the siege mentality
paranoia of a global conspiracy against Serbia with a self-exoticising reference to
the others’ coveting of the Serbian passion for life. This song was equally popular
in the ex-Yugoslav diaspora, where it tapped into the ex-Yugoslav migrant’s newly
discovered sense of national identity. Yet this song was also popular in all the
ex-Yugoslav republics, even during the war. Here, it is worthwhile recalling the
musical–national paradox that I witnessed during the summer of 1992 in Mostar –
discussed in Chapter 2 – to add a second song to the repertoire. As the Croat and
Muslim soldiers returned to their neighbourhoods after fighting the Serbs, they
would listen and sing along to Ceca’s ‘If You Were Wounded’, followed by an
even louder sing-along to Mirić’s ‘No One Can Touch Us’.
On the one hand, the ideological malleability of the song can be described
as an example of what Žižek calls postmodern or reverse nationalism, which
celebrates the exotic authenticity and lust for life in contrast to inhibited anaemic
Western Europeans.12 Here, it is instructive to recall Žižek’s understanding of ex-
Yugoslavia as a network of thefts of enjoyment, in which each nationality has
constructed its own mythology about how the other nations deprive it of some
essential part of enjoyment:
Slovenes are being deprived of their enjoyment by ‘Southerners’ (Serbians,

Bosnians …) because of their proverbial laziness, Balkan corruption, dirty and
noisy entertainment, and because they demand bottomless economic support,
stealing from Slovenes their precious accumulation of wealth by means of which
Slovenia should otherwise have already caught up with Western Europe. The
Slovenes themselves, on the other hand, allegedly rob the Serbs because of
Slovenian unnatural diligence, stiffness and selfish calculation.13
The antagonism described by the mythologies of ‘theft of enjoyment’ was

‘structured into the Yugoslav state apparatus and its forms of ideological
12
13
Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative, p. 204.
legitimation’.14 The stereotypes of noisy and corrupt Serbs and calculating and cold
Slovenes are clearly nationalist fantasies, yet they are fantasies that were already
present in Yugoslavia through ethnic jokes. ‘No One Can Touch Us’ taps into
this network of mythologies on a sufficiently abstract level to allow transnational
identification. The reverse nationalism of ‘No One Can Touch Us’ also operates
through a network of myths. However, rather than describing theft of enjoyment,
it constructs a narrative about how this enjoyment is protected. The enjoyment
of the song is located in the construction of ‘our thing’ (or put differently ‘our
Balkanness’) and the displacement of the threat to that Balkanness to an external
observer. Thus, during the war, the embrace of ‘our thing’ refers to protecting the
national ‘thing’ celebrated in ‘No One Can Touch Us’, while, in post-war societies,
it represents a turn to ‘new Balkanness’.
The collective enunciation of ‘new Balkanness’ through ‘No One Can Touch
Us’ does not automatically preclude the ‘narcissism of small differences’ still
implicit in the understanding of the music. Thus, to the Slovenes and Croats,
the embrace of turbo-folk represents a reversion to Balkan primitivism of the
southern Serbs, while, to the Serbs, turbo-folk is an Islamic-Ottoman corruption
of traditional Serbian folklore. This is best illustrated by Bulgarian filmmaker
Adela Peeva’s documentary film Whose is This Song? (2003). The film follows
the director as she travels to Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, tracing the origins of a popular melody that
has been claimed by different national communities in the Balkan region. Each
country has a different version of how the song came to exist and what story it
tells. Depending on whom you ask, the song concerns a beautiful gypsy woman
who stole the heart of a town, the advance of Islam and the marching Ottoman
armies who spread their religion into the Balkan region, or a drunken celebration
of a local festival day. During the course of the film, it becomes apparent that the
melody has been so widely appropriated that not only is its cultural provenance
obscured, but so is its significance and even its genre. In Turkey and Bosnia, it
is a religious and a military song; in Albania, it is a love song; in Serbia, it is
a drinking party song; in Macedonia, it is a Dervish chant; and in Bulgaria, it
has become a nationalist anthem.15 As each side passionately maintains that their
version is the real one, the filmmaker makes the mistake of playing the Bosnian
version of the song in a bar full of Serbs, and they explode with anger. She never
discovers the origin of the song, but her effort gives insight to the ‘narcissism of
small differences’ that underpins these cultural debates, and that is at the core of
Dragojević’s film Wounds.
14
15
For a more thorough analysis of the film, see: Zala Volčič, “The Struggle to Express,
Create and Represent in the Balkans”, in Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation,
edited by Helmut Anheier and Yudhishthir Raj Isar (London: Sage, 2010), pp. 158–65.
Wounds: ‘No One Can Touch Us’ (Version 1)
Wounds (1998) is the story of two Serb teenagers, Pinki (Pinky) and Švaba (Kraut),
and their rise in the Belgrade criminal underworld between 1991 and 1996. The
backdrop of the story is the ultra-nationalism of nineties Serbia and the gradual
breakdown of the country devastated by economic decay, corruption and UN
sanctions. The normalisation of criminality and violence during the nineties in
Serbia is one of the main themes of the film, explored through an eclectic and
fast-paced world ‘where nationalism, suburban violence and a degraded Serbian
folklore-trash culture exist side by side’.16 Pinki and Švaba are shown growing up
idealising a local small-time criminal, Kure (Dicky), and a television talk show,
The Pulse of the Asphalt, which hosts interviews with other ‘publicly prominent’
criminals. Pinki and Švaba quickly rise to criminal notoriety after a spree of
killings, become rivals for the affections of the femme fatale host of The Pulse of
the Asphalt, and end up shooting each other with the sounds of an anti- Milošević
demonstration in the background.
Music plays a prominent role in the film, both as a way of signalling and
framing the criminalisation and carnivalisation of everyday life in key scenes, and
the rise of paranoid nationalism. For example, glaring Serb nationalist propaganda
folk music plays during the opening scenes and recurs in the background of all
crowd scenes, while turbo-folk plays every time television is shown on screen.
In Wounds, turbo-folk symbolises the essence of nineties Serbia: pathological
nationalism, cultural backwardness, poverty, media brainwashing, the kitsch of
the nouveaux riches and the cult of criminality. This is evident in the character
Kure and his turbo-folk starlet girlfriend, Suzana. The on-screen couple is a
direct reference to the real life dream marriage of turbo-folk and criminality in
Ceca and Arkan.17 Kure is a small-time opportunistic war criminal. He is shown
returning from ‘weekend trips’ to Croatia with bloodied clothes, Croatian flags and
a car full of loot. Kure also deals in smuggled drugs, petrol and weapons, and is
addicted to heroin. His Serb nationalism is repeatedly parodied as driven by pure
opportunism: he makes grand claims of ‘bleeding’ to protect Serb homes in Croatia
while unloading stolen stereos, he demands that Pinky and Švaba sing patriotic
Serb songs while he shoots up heroin, and he constantly wears an oversized
golden crucifix. Kure is also shown as obsessed with his public image, which is
ironically juxtaposed against his garish clothing, excessive jewellery and quaint
hairstyle. He invents stories about his imaginary heroic exploits in Germany, and
is obsessed about appearing on the television show, The Pulse of the Asphalt. Yet,
16
Krstić, “Serbia’s Wound Culture”, p. 91.
17
The turbo-folk couple is also present in other films: We’re Not Angels 3: Rock
’n’ Roll Strikes Back (2006), in which the female in the couple is played by turbo-folk star,
Seka Aleksić; and The Tour (2008), which features a scene in which a character, clearly a
reference to Arkan, forces a Croat soldier to sing ‘Coward’, which is one of the biggest hits
by Arkan’s wife, Ceca.
Kure’s profile in the underworld hierarchy of criminals is too low, and he does not
appear on the show.
His girlfriend Suzana is a local turbo-folk star, with garish clothes, golden
jewellery and other similar symbols of trash culture. She performs a song, ‘Money
Bills’, with exaggerated bad singing and chorus lines that include, ‘mother buy
me a cannon, buy me a syringe’. Importantly, each time her song is heard, the film
features scenes of mindless mobs or violence. This is evident in the scene in which
Suzana performs in a bar, while Kure engages in a massive brawl during which he
wields a spit-roasted pig as a weapon. The exaggerated trashiness of the song and
the matching bar and its patrons are a clear reference to the cultural backwardness
of rural Serbs. Shortly after, the same song plays in a popular youth nightclub
(the folk instrumentation is substituted with an electronic beat), frequented by a
younger crowd of Dieselmen and sponsored girls who are nothing more than a
younger version of their parents fighting.
Dragojević’s representation of turbo-folk in Wounds recalls Žižek’s suggestion
that nationalism is the product of the way a community organises its enjoyment.
Žižek describes the fusing of pleasure and pain into an unbearable intensity
and suggests how ideological formations work as economies of directing and
commanding enjoyment. Ideology takes hold of the subject at the point of excess
outside the meaning that the ideological formation provides. In Wounds, turbo-
folk provides such a point of excess by inviting the audience to turn their worries
into joy and suspend all concerns in the name of heightened libidinal exuberance.
Turbo-folk, symbolised through Kure and Suzana, celebrates materialism,
hedonism, excess and sexual innuendo during the worst years of war and sanctions
against Serbia, thus presenting a rosy and escapist picture of reality.
The first scene in Wounds that features ‘No One Can Touch Us’ is set in the
winter of 1992. Pinki’s parents enter their ageing and dishevelled flat carrying
cans of food and a large bag of flour, symbolising the food shortages and, by
implication, the surrounding political and economic climate. The father curses
Bill Clinton (mispronouncing his surname as ‘Clicton’, which makes it sound like
‘clitoris’) and rushes to the television to watch the news. The opening sequence
of the news programme features a map of the world with a giant Serbia that is
seen to take up most of the Balkans. This pans out to show a flat earth resting on
the backs of four elephants that are standing on the shell of a giant turtle – all of
which is a clear reflection of Serb nationalist propaganda and media brainwashing
about ‘great Serbia’. The news opens with the anchor declaring that ‘the greatest
crime in world history’ has been committed against Serbs: the ‘unjust and
unprovoked’ international sanctions. The shot shows actual documentary footage
of Serb politicians leaving the UN Council in protest, then switches to the anchor
who says that ‘sanctions can also have a positive effect, because as our people
say’ – and switches to the song chorus line of ‘No One Can Touch Us’, with
Mitar Mirić juxtaposed against the footage of the UN parliament. Pinki’s father,
Gvozden, sings along with flour on his face, while Pinki masturbates in the toilet.
This scene connects media propaganda, backwardness, nationalism and the use
of music in the process of propaganda into one big Freudian parody of the Serb
siege mentality. Seconds later in the film, we see Kure arriving from a ‘business
trip’ in Croatia and unloading stolen goods from his car while ‘No One Can Touch
Us’ blasts from his car stereo.
These two scenes use turbo-folk to couple aggressive retrograde patriarchy
with anti-intellectualism and the cult of criminality. The aesthetic content of
the song about ‘independence’ (of two defiant lovers) is manipulated through
propaganda and materialised in everyday social practice. Pinki’s father, Gvozden,
lovingly stares at the screen and sings along to the hymn of the Serb siege with a
mentality of defiance. Yet, the juxtaposition of the news broadcast, the song and
Gvozden singing in a trance against Pinki furiously masturbating in the toilet is
not only a critique of the media, but also a way of identifying strong libidinal
investment as the essence of the national spirit.18 Pinki’s seeming disregard
for what is happening around him should not be read as apolitical, apathetic or
removed from reality. Rather, Dragojević’s repeated indications of Pinki being
overwhelmed with enjoyment through drugs, sex or violence suggests that the
ideal subject of the Serb community organises around the enjoyment of excess.
Overtly, Wounds is a study of the interconnectedness of turbo-folk and the
sexualisation of national identity to the Milošević regime. Turbo-folk is conceived
less as a subject matter than as a method of framing the narrative. Dragojević
does not explain the fascination of the characters with turbo-folk. Instead, he
positions turbo-folk as synonymous with what Alexei Monroe describes as
‘porno-nationalism’ – the sensory overload of the Serbian media in the nineties.19
If Wounds tells a story about Serbia of the nineties, it is not in the manner of direct
reference, but in the mode of manic fast-paced montage. Put another way, turbo-
folk in Wounds serves as a way of identifying and connecting the components of a
nationalist pathology that was conceived in terms of its media representation and
forged from a conflation of national identity and sexual practices.20 At the heart
of this representation of national identity, as in Pretty Villages and The Parade,
is a conception of the nation as excessive enjoyment operating on a number of
levels: through sexuality, music and the exchange of obscenities. In the absence of
ethnic ‘others’ in Wounds – in contrast to Pretty Villages, where they are reduced
to voices – this excessive enjoyment gets focused onto Serbs. In The Parade,
Dragojević turns towards articulating the sharing of this enjoyment through turbo-
folk between the ex-Yugoslav ethnic groups.
18
19
Alexei Monroe, “Balkan Hardcore: Pop Culture and Paramilitarism”, Central
Europe Review 2/24 (2000), accessed 12 October 2012, http://www.ce-review.org/00/24/
monroe24.html.
20
Dušan Bjelić and Lucinda Cole, “Sexualising the Serb”, in Balkan as Metaphor:
Between Globalization and Fragmentation, edited by Dušan Bjelić and Obrad Savić
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 279–310.
The Parade: ‘No One Can Touch Us’ (Version 2)
The Parade is a story about Limun (Lemon), a war criminal from the nineties.
Divorced from his previous marriage, with a son who is a member of a right-wing
skinhead group, Limun runs Judo classes and owns a security firm that protects
the nouveaux riches and turbo-folk stars. At a request from his fiancé, Biserka, he
agrees to organise and operate security for a gay pride parade in Belgrade. This
agreement is forged in exchange for the services of a gay activist and unemployed
theatre director who has become a wedding planner, Mirko, who will organise the
wedding of Limun and Biserka. The film follows Limun as he attempts to organise
security personnel to protect the parade. After his failed attempts to convince
his staff members in Belgrade to protect homosexuals, Limun, accompanied by
Mirko’s gay partner, Radmilo, travels to Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo to recruit his
fellow war profiteers, Roko (from Croatia), Halil (from Bosnia) and Azem (from
Kosovo) to work with him as security during the gay parade.
The Parade deals with two serious, divisive and politically volatile issues:
the legacy and memory of the nineties war in Yugoslavia, and the issue of LGBT
rights in Serbia. In contrast to Dragojević’s two previous films, and most of
the post-war cinematic output in ex-Yugoslavia, The Parade deals with these
issues through light comedy. The film is full of popular culture references and
nods to Dragojević’s previous films that are laced with crude jokes about ethnic
stereotypes and homosexuals. In many ways, The Parade is a comedy of Balkan
ethnic clichés, with most of the main characters borrowed directly from jokes.
Limun is a stereotypical Serb nationalist-patriot who lives in a house decorated
with nationalist insignia, religious icons and war trophies taken from dead soldiers,
while his body is covered in tattoos of Serb ‘war heroes’ from the nineties, such
as Ratko Mladić, a war criminal currently under trial at ICTY. His Croat friend,
Roko, owns a bar decorated with Croatian nationalist insignia, has the Ustasha
‘U’ tattooed on his neck, and proudly talks about his smuggling business activities
during the war. The Kosovar Azem wears the compulsory white cap, speaks in
a way that is taken directly from countless television sketches about Kosovars,
deals drugs to Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops and enjoys bestiality. The Bosnian
Muslim, Halil, is dressed in green, speaks in clichés, wears an Islamic beard with
a shaved moustache, and is decorated with symbols pertaining to Islam. Similarly,
the two main protagonist homosexuals, Mirko and Radmilo, are represented as
excessively effeminate, hysterical and possessive drama queens.
What is the effect of using comedy in The Parade – especially if compared
to Wounds and Pretty Villages – which deals with the legacy of the war in ex-
Yugoslavia through biting black satire? Žižek’s discussion of ‘holocaust comedies’,
such as Life Is Beautiful – that approach the representation of the Holocaust
through comedy – suggests that these films are never complete comedies and that
‘at a certain point, laughter or satire is suspended and we are confronted with
the “serious” message’.21 For Žižek, when approaching films that purport to deal
with difficult issues through comedy, there are two key questions to ask. The first
question is: ‘At what does one laugh here?’. This is aimed at the ethical dimension
of the film, found in the ‘target’ of the jokes. The second question is: ‘At what point
does the comedy stop?’. This addresses the limits of comedic representation – the
point at which the film ‘needs’ to be serious.
The same two questions can be asked of The Parade. As a film claiming to deal
with key issues of the day – the legacy of the war in ex-Yugoslavia and violence
against the LGBT population in Serbia – most of the jokes in The Parade are aimed
at ethnic and homophobic stereotypes. Dragojević’s film exalts in demonstrating
its clever use of street slang to describe the three main ethnic groups and to play on
crude gay stereotypes. The main characters lovingly refer to each other as ‘Četnik’
(Serb), ‘Ustaša’ (Croat) and ‘Balija’ (Bosnian Muslim), recalling nationalist insults
routinely heard in the nineties and used in the exchanges between the soldiers in
Pretty Villages. In this sense, The Parade re-establishes what Žižek calls obscene
solidarity between the ethnic groups, which was one of key modes of transnational
exchange in ex-Yugoslavia. The names no longer serve as nationalist insults, but
as friendly name-calling. This also includes the gay characters whose labels such
as ‘queer’ and ‘arse parliamentarian’ function to initiate them into the social bond
established through shared obscenities (even though it must be noted that the number
of insults directed at gay men in The Parade far outnumbers those directed at others).
This dynamic of one-liners characterises The Parade until the very last scene,
when the film dramatically changes in tone. The comedy stops when Radmilo
sees the dead body of his gay partner, Mirko, who is killed by skinheads in a
street brawl. This leads onto Mirko’s funeral, which shows all the main characters
crying while an emotional Limun reads a eulogy about ‘the freedom to walk the
street as a dignified man’. Even Radmilo’s homophobic father lays flowers on
Mirko’s grave. This then switches to faux documentary footage of the 2010 gay
pride parade in Belgrade. The cue card informs that 5,600 police officers guarded
the first ‘successful’ parade against 6,000 hooligans, who demolished downtown
Belgrade. The last sentence states that ‘on the streets of Belgrade people are still
beaten up because they are different’.
It is evident that the intended effect of this shift from cynical comedy to serious
drama was to draw attention to the ongoing systemic discrimination and physical
violence against the LGBT population in Serbia, evident in the real violence that
accompanied the parades in 2001 and 2010. Yet, given the context of this drama and
the role of ‘colourful thugs’ as protectors in the narrative, the second effect of this shift
in tone in The Parade is to redeem the nationalism of the nineties and re-establish
the transnational social contract against a common enemies: globalisation and ‘bad’
nationalism. In this dynamic, the colourful thug as the signifier of nationalism from
21
Slavoj Žižek, “Laugh Yourself to Death: The New Wave of Holocaust Comedies!”,
Lacan Dot Com (15 December 1999), accessed 11 October 2012, http://www.lacan.com/
zizekholocaust.htm.
the nineties is established as the defender against ‘bad’ nationalism (of neo-Nazi
skinheads and right-wing extremist groups), and turbo-folk is positioned as the
symbolic resistance to globalisation and neoliberalism (of the faceless NATO and
KFOR troops presented as arrogant exploitative colonisers of the Balkans).
Pavle Levi describes this perspective as a ‘war is madness’ relativism that:
easily turns into a comfortably depoliticized truism, the universal appeal of which
sidesteps all the issues that potentially may compromise or contradict one’s
ideological persuasions. Thus, for instance, critique of excessive, murderous
manifestations of nationalism – those manifestations that usually reach their
peak in times of war – is often successfully utilized by nationalism itself as a
means of rescuing and recuperating its ‘pure’ or more ‘moderate’ incarnations.22
In The Parade, Dragojević positions the gap between healthy and unhealthy
nationalism as the central vector of the cultural memory of ex-Yugoslavia. The
Parade expresses this shift between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalism framed around
two key issues: turbo-folk and the ‘colourful thug’.
Turbo-folk in The Parade
In The Parade, turbo-folk is symbolised through the song ‘No One Can Touch
Us’, which prominently features twice in the narrative. The choice of this song
by Dragojević is crucial because it connects The Parade not only to the cultural
symbolism of the song and ‘Tarmi Rićmi’, but also to Wounds, which also
prominently featured the song. The position of ‘No One Can Touch Us’ in The
Parade shifts turbo-folk from the symbol of Serb nationalist isolationism shown in
Wounds to a ‘new Balkan’ defiance of neoliberalism. This shift takes place on two
levels: the first is to open up the transnational space of enjoyment between the war
criminal ‘colourful thugs’, and the second is to facilitate understanding between
the thugs and the LGBT community.
This shift corresponds to the two scenes that feature ‘No One Can Touch Us’.
The first is the scene described at the beginning of this chapter, in which Limun,
Roko, Halil and Mirko are on their way to pick up Azem, and play chicken with a
UN armoured vehicle, nearly driving it off the road. The song produces a collective
enunciation of ‘Balkanness’ through trancelike enjoyment of the song. The scene
is a quick cut to the interior of the car, cued to the explosive chorus line of ‘No one
can touch us’. The loud and emotional singing of the three war veterans, as well as
the juxtaposition against NATO vehicles, transforms the line into a carnivalesque
military chant. The enjoyment of the song, visibly displayed by the three ‘colourful
thugs’, is so contagious that it even draws in the reluctant Radmilo.
22
The affective contagiousness of turbo-folk is further highlighted in the second

scene featuring ‘No One Can Touch Us’. Set in Limun’s house, the song is played
again as a way to lift the morale of the depressed LGBT group. The transnational
thugs start dancing first and invite the LGBT group to join by saying, ‘Come
on, even if you are gay, you are still people’. One of them replies, ‘They are cute.
Let’s dance for pride, and later we will play something of our own’. The seemingly
irresistible song draws in everyone who hears it, regardless of their musical taste
or status as a minority or marginalised group, because they are ‘all people’. This
play on the word ‘people’, despite its obvious demeaning effect to the LGBT
‘people’, is a reference to turbo-folk as ‘people’s music’. It taps into the social
space of NCFM in Yugoslavia, suggesting that all Balkans are now marginalised
minorities faced with a much larger enemy. Thus, The Parade seemingly harnesses
a progressive attitude towards the LGBT community as a way to reposition the
image of the ‘colourful thug’ in the film, from a protector of the nation (seen in
Pretty Villages and Wounds) to a protector of all minorities within the nation. This
form of progressive branding by implication ignores the recent history of the war,
and casts the colourful thug in an entirely different light: it ‘pinkwashes’ the thug.23
EPP 2: The Colourful Thug
In her discussion of main character archetypes featured in Dragojević’s film, Dina

Iordanova describes the colourful thug as an amalgam of mythologies:
Criminals have waived many of the stipulations of standard moral behaviour,

but as far as patriotic feelings are concerned, they are often seen as brave men in
possession of an inborn nobility, who care deeply about the national wellbeing.
They have dared to take an unconventional and dangerous path in life, and they
are equally daring in their patriotic commitment … The simple, violent boldness
of everyday organised crime is transformed into heroism once transposed to the
sphere of patriotic warfare.24
Even though the stereotype of the colourful thug was formed earlier as part of
Yugoslavia’s seventies and eighties urban folklore, it was through Dragojević that
23
The term ‘pinkwashing’ originates from a campaign targeting advertisements that
supported breast cancer by selling carcinogenic products. The term now carries a new
meaning, following Sarah Schulman’s op-ed in The New York Times in November 2011,
which argued that the Israeli government has actively branded itself as ‘relevant and
modern’ by financing a marketing plan: ‘harnessing the gay community to reposition
its global image’. See: Sarah Schulman, “Israel and Pinkwashing”, New York Times (22
November 2011), accessed 25 July 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/
pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html.
24
Iordanova, Cinema of Flames, p. 178.
they achieved full cinematic exposure.25 All of Dragojević’s films dealing with the
history of the nineties civil war in Yugoslavia and post-war societies feature some
version of this archetype, and, in almost all cases, the well-known Serbian actor
Nikola Kojo plays the colourful thug. Through this inclusion, Dragojević suggests
that criminality is an intrinsic part of contemporary Balkan societies. However,
this criminality is always marked by the moral, ethical and political ambiguity of
the colourful thug. Dragojević casts Kojo as the thug, hedging on the audience’s
popular perception of him. Kojo’s career in ex-Yugoslav cinema, which began
early and moved from playing teenage heartthrobs to cool types with unforgettable
one-liners, is marked by the public’s perception of a handsome rebel.
In Pretty Villages, Kojo plays ‘Uncle Velja’ – the rebel without a cause and
delinquent whose ironic humour reflects on the hypocrisy within the film. His
character is equally a representation of cool urban Belgrade cynicism and a
cultural reference to the ‘outsider’ in American seventies Vietnam films, aimed at
uncovering the corrupt system that sends soldiers to die for political gains.26 His
portrayal in Pretty Villages is caricatured and tongue-in-cheek, yet emerges as
essentially sympathetic: Velja returns to Serbia from a ‘business trip’ in Germany
(consisting of looting and selling stolen goods) and goes to war by taking his
younger brothers’ place in the compulsory draft. His paternally protective instincts
are reinforced in the film through his relationship with a younger soldier. Yet, they
are also juxtaposed against his misogyny and acts of violence against the female
American journalist trapped in the tunnel with the Serbs.
Through the character of Velja, Pretty Villages repeatedly and explicitly
suggests this link between a life of crime and violence and the commitment to
the nationalist cause. In the scenes where he acts violently towards the American
journalist, this violence is explained as Velja’s resistance to ‘Western propaganda’
and the objectification of the Serbs. Thus, despite his violent psychopathic
behaviour, he is still presented as a noble, self-sacrificing hero. Dragojević creates
this contradictory character by drawing on the mythology of media stories about
heroic gangster figures who were very popular in Yugoslavia before the war.
Ivan Čolović provides a compelling analysis of the mythology of the criminal
in Serbia as heroic protecting pater familias by showing the way it taps into the
tradition of ‘saviours of the people’ that operate outside the law. Predominant in
societies where long-term occupation created permanent distrust towards the law
and governments, this mythology created a space for admiration of anyone that
resists the law:
The popularity of stories about criminals in ex-Yugoslavia, especially ones that

made their name in the criminal underground of large European cities … was
25
Marko Zivković, Serbian Dreambook: National Imaginary in the Time of Milošević
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), p. 95.
26
Vladislava Vojnović, “Lepa Sela Lepo Gore”, Pulse, accessed 21
February 2014, http://pulse.rs/lepa-sela-lepo-gore/.
partly based on the understanding that they represented and defended a notion
of authentic and heavily paid justness and humanity that stood in contrast to the
law and accepted societal values.27
Dragojević synthesises the Western rebel with the outlaw patriot in the character
of Velja in Pretty Villages. He is positioned as a ‘healthy’ Serb patriot in contrast
to the pathological ‘primitive’ nationalism of the rural Serbs, the redundant Serb
intelligentsia, the cynical pacifists and the misguided ex-Yugoslav communists
still clinging to their ideals. This is repeatedly reinforced in the film through his
disagreements and arguments with his fellow soldiers. He also provides one of
the key moments in Pretty Villages – a lengthy monologue on the cynical causes
of the war and the needless loss of young life. This monologue provides a cynical
perspective on nationalism, as the result of the failures of the previous generations.
The second version of the colourful thug is presented in Wounds via a generation
of criminals with no concern for national identity. Kojo plays one of the criminals
nicknamed Pepper (Biber), whose main motivation is money. Rather than being
a critique of the colourful thug, this gesture by Dragojević can be interpreted
as intended to further the archetype into a syntheses of contradictions: a brutal
executor and self-sacrificing protector and loved outlaw and hated opportunist,
who is both kind and ruthless. This supports Čolović’s suggestion that a key
aspect of the criminal mythology lies precisely in the ambiguity felt towards the
characters, who can simultaneously be feared and admired. More importantly,
the mythological criminals can also shift between being an opportunist and
a passionate (Serb) patriot, capable of transcending nationalism to become a
transnational defender against all forms of oppression.28
This is clearly demonstrated by the way the colourful thug transcends
nationalism in The Parade. Kojo’s character, Limun, is a continuation of the
character of Velja from Pretty Villages, which is acknowledged by Dragojević.
He is also not only a Serb patriot, as indicated by his tattoos and war trophies,
but his ‘healthy’ patriotism is contrasted against his sexist, racist and homophobic
skinhead son. The relationship of Limun to his son is also a reference to the
paternal impulse in the colourful thug. The success of Limun as the paternal figure
is affirmed when his son changes from a homophobe to a defender of LGBT people
by the end of the film (albeit an indirect choice demonstrated by his decision to
defend Limun in the final street fight scene). He is thus also redeemed, not by
accepting homosexuality, but by defending his father, who is wounded and noble.
The figure of the colourful thug thus functions as the medium through which the
fear of difference, both ethnic and sexual, is externalised.
The colourful thug is the spokesperson for the audience, and for the emotions
conveyed by the films. Velja and Limun are the central symbolic points of the films
27
Author’s translation. See: Ivan Čolović, The Warrior’s Brothel (Belgrade: 20th
Century, 2007), p. 189.
28
Ibid., p. 11.
around which all the narratives are constructed. In The Parade, this is not only
evident in the transformation of the character of Limun (from a homophobe to a
public supporter and protector of LGBT rights), but also in the other thugs in the
film. The Croat, Roko, weeps when his mule gives birth, and the Kosovar, Azem,
deals heroin to the KFOR peacekeeper soldiers and promptly hands out the money
to local children. The way the colourful thug serves as the point of identification
for the audience is evidenced by the perception of the films in the public. For
instance, over 15 years after the release of Pretty Villages, its play on cultural
stereotypes and its use of music remain the staples of everyday conversations in
the region. This is evidenced by the second wave of popularity for Mica Trofrtaljka
and ‘Davorike Dajke’ and also by the proliferation of the ironic (and non-ironic)
use of nationalist insults, both of which were consequences of the popularity of
the film. This is even more true of the one-liners from Pretty Villages. The quips of
the film’s colourful thug, Velja, are virtually unavoidable at any social gathering.
The audience identification with The Parade is evident when conversations
around the film arise, particularly within the region. Conversations that discuss
how the film was experienced and received typically highlight two aspects: first,
the film’s clever use of Mitar Mirić’s song, and second, its playful attitude towards
nationalist stereotypes in the region. Yet, even more interesting were the reactions
of several openly homophobic individuals towards the representation of LGBT
people in The Parade. When asked whether the film altered their perceptions of
homosexual people and the prejudice these people experience in Serbia on a daily
basis, the same response was overwhelmingly heard: ‘I can see how killing gays
is wrong, and how they actually have a hard time, but I still don’t like them’. The
striking point within these responses rests in the way The Parade appears to present
a particular humanist impulse. This impulse appears by centring attention on the
plight of a particular group in Serbia. In so doing, it recalls a form of shared cultural
history and experience. It is the ‘people’s’ colourful thug that is representative of
this history and functions as a mediator of historical remembering.
The colourful thugs of Dragojević’s films take pride of place in his work
precisely because of their ability to function as potential mediators of historical
remembering. For Dragojević, film is itself a form of historical remembering, and
it is the archetypical character of the colourful thug that allows cultural memory to
resurface. It is through the colourful thug that Dragojević generates his perspective
on national identification and cultural memory. This perspective is framed around
the gap between healthy and unhealthy nationalism as the central vector of cultural
memory in Pretty Villages, Wounds and The Parade. Dragojević repeatedly
returns to this gap in all three films, shifting the coordinates for tracing national
identification: the thug moves from a self-sacrificing patriot, to an opportunistic
criminal, and finally to a paternal protector.
Turbo-folk is crucial in emotionally charging these narratives, as an expression
of the cultural margin, as an expression of defiant nationalism, and as a signifier
of cultural resistance to globalisation. In this sense, turbo-folk in Dragojević’s
films is an expression of the lyrical tradition of folkloric epic songs about heroes
‘from the people’, who rise to the occasion guided by an inbuilt sense of morality
and loyalty. Yet, almost equally, turbo-folk mirrors the ambiguity felt towards the
colourful thug: the audience may not completely agree with the thug and may by
frightened by him, but he protects the people from the oppressors and is the only
thing left that is untainted.
***
To return to the discussion of turbo-folk as a broader cultural phenomenon, it is

important to remember that cinematic representations of turbo-folk are the most
widely known in the Balkans. While there is some familiarity with the sculptures
of popular culture icons (although many residents of Mostar were unaware of
the Bruce Lee statue and its surrounding events), and while the events of the
‘Exception’ exhibition and Tomić’s ‘use’ of turbo-folk were surrounded by a
degree of media hype, most popular culture knowledge about turbo-folk is derived
from movies (and from the music itself, of course). However, it is important to
stress that this cinematic representation of turbo-folk is itself a cultural bricolage
comprised of perceptions and approaches to turbo-folk that have been identified in
visual art, sculpture and architecture. For instance, Dragojević’s use of turbo-folk
as a readymade of marginal identities – to be affirmed, but also to be questioned –
recalls the approach of Naskovski, Tomić and others. Similarly, the positioning
of turbo-folk as a signifier of the (lost) social sphere of consumerist–socialist
Yugoslavia operates in a similar way to the statues of Bruce Lee and Rocky.
This is perhaps one of the key questions surrounding the understanding of
turbo-folk as a broader cultural phenomenon. Characterised by fluctuating sets
of relations – whether cultural, ethnic or political – and marked by the absence of
clear identity attributes, turbo-folk is constituted through collections of shifting
and politically charged perceptions. Dragojević’s cinematic perspective of turbo-
folk may be, in this sense, characterised as distinctly populist and pandering to
the lowest common denominator of daily politics. Viewed from the perspective
of national representation through turbo-folk, Dragojević may even be accused
of acting as a historically relativist apologist for the pathological nineties in
comparison to the trappings of neoliberal globalisation. Yet, if the question of
turbo-folk as a shifting cultural barometer for a wider set of relations is important,
then Dragojević’s illustration of this shift provides vital insight.
This insight into broader transnational relations in the Balkans was vividly
illustrated by real events in late 2012. On 16 November 2012, Croatian army
generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač were found not guilty by the Appeals
Panel of the ICTY, which overturned their 2011 verdict of being guilty for war
crimes against Serbs in Croatia during the ‘Storm’ operation in 1995. The verdict
reawakened the ghosts of nationalist rhetoric from the nineties, causing elation in
Croatia and angry indignation in Serbia. Yet the verdict and the public furore that
followed also brought back an image that circulated in the press and online. The
image in question was one of the obituaries of Milošević published in Serbian
daily papers following his death in 2006. The text of the obituary reads: ‘Last
greeting to a comrade from the Hague Slobodan Milošević. We extend our sincere
condolences to his family’. Beneath this is a list of 34 names of the other ‘Hague
comrades’, including Ante Gotovina (among other Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians
on trial). In an act of transnational solidarity, the Balkan ‘comrades’ on trial in the
Hague – just like the colourful thugs in The Parade – united in opposition to the
ICTY that was cast as the bigger, common enemy.
Turbo-folk in the movies is thus perhaps less of a subject matter than a
conceptual category. Dragojević’s movies are an indispensable part of that
category insofar as they have supplied much of the popular cultural language
for the comprehension and communication of turbo-folk. His films have meant
that the song ‘No One Can Touch Us’ is now irrevocably linked to the symbolic
universe of the colourful thugs and LGBT groups. This discussion has identified
some of the flaws in this transnational and trans-sexual association under the
banner of enjoyment into new forms of hedonist collectivity. However, it can also
be suggested that this gesture may be a first step to opening up new insights into
the contemporary political and everyday reality of the Balkans. In this respect, it
may be cause for a degree of cautious optimism about the critical awareness of
the pitfalls of national identification through popular culture in the entire region.
Conclusion
As a way of concluding this argument about turbo-folk, I once again return to

the definition with which I began. At the start of Turbo-folk Music and Cultural
Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia, I argued that there
was a significant absence in ‘The Vice Guide to the Balkans’ regarding turbo-folk.
At the heart of this absence was the report’s neglect of turbo-folk’s transnational
popularity in the Balkans. In turn, this absence enabled the report to describe
turbo-folk as the Serbs’ exotic and hyper-sexualised ‘soundtrack to genocide’.
However, here I can reverse this suggestion to argue that perhaps it was precisely
this absence in ‘The Vice Guide’ – the construction of turbo-folk as a dangerous
and disturbing popular culture – that enabled its transnational consumption.
It is easy to dismiss reports such as ‘The Vice Guide’ as cheap sensationalism
designed to arouse interest in a quirky and over-the-top style of music in a
troubled part of the world. Yet, as this book has demonstrated, it is just as easy to
identify such impulses towards the exoticisation and sensationalising of turbo-
folk within the region itself. In fact, there is a distinct sense that the guides
and interviewees in ‘The Vice Guide’ are intentionally pandering to the camera,
attempting to outdo each other in their performance as the exotic Balkan for the
reporting journalist. This sense of self-exoticisation permeates every aspect of
public and intellectual discourse about turbo-folk, and often characterises more
broadly the way the region perceives itself in light of recent history. This recalls
the joke about Serbs that the then Prime Minister of Serbia, Boris Tadić, told a
televised public gathering in March 2012:
Experiments are conducted on mice in a Brussels Laboratory. First group of mice

is drinking whiskey, second is drinking cognac, third vodka and fourth slivovitz
(Serbian plum brandy). The group that drank whiskey was a bit nervous and
spread unease through the mice world, the group that drank cognac behaved
like bohemians, the group that drank vodka was oblivious to everything, and
the group that drank slivovitz did something surprising: they grabbed the bars of
their cage started shaking them and calling ‘here kitty kitty … ’
Tadić claimed that the joke was ‘told to him by a certain President of a European
country’. However, given that the punch line reveals ‘our guys’ to be the defiant and
courageous underdogs, one could also suspect a carefully constructed focus-group-
tested joke designed to raise morale and perpetuate a self-exoticising patriotism.
In this sense, the crucial question regarding turbo-folk is not a question
of what the genre means, but rather what it stands for. The list of all the usual
answers – unrestrained hedonism and consumerism, nationalism, projection of

sexual desire, excess and primitivism – does not manage to capture the full extent
of the fascination with turbo-folk as a cultural phenomenon in the Balkans. This
is because turbo-folk, in the context of ex-Yugoslavia, stands for what Žižek calls
an ‘empty signifier’. Turbo-folk does not have content of its own; it fills the empty
space created by a series of anxieties inherent in transitional societies, including:
globalisation and the vanishing stable sense of national identity; neoliberal
capitalism with privatisation that has dismantled the social sphere; rampant
consumerism and its threat to traditional morality; and information overload in
the age of global information. As an almost mythical cultural construct, turbo-
folk stands for all of these anxieties, and this is why its meaning is necessarily
inconsistent and incomplete. It takes all the signifiers of contemporary anxieties –
caused by political and economic shifts – and introduces consistency through one
term that stands for them all. In other words, rather than being a noisy obstacle to
insight into contemporary Balkan societies, it is precisely the perfect framework
through which to observe them.
Thus, the real question might be why turbo-folk is necessary as a symbol to
maintain a sense of identity in the Balkans, whether it be local, national, transnational
or regional. The answer is that it is necessary because turbo-folk is the synthesis of
all the past epochs of Yugoslavia: from socialism, it took commercialised socialism;
from nationalism, it took passionate (even obsessive) attachment to a cause; and
from capitalism, it took calls for unrestrained consumption. Turbo-folk Music and
Cultural Representations of National Identity in Former Yugoslavia examined this
structural role of turbo-folk. By doing so, the book looked specifically at the way in
which turbo-folk functions as popular culture that holds up an exaggerated mirror
to the idiosyncrasies of the culture that produced it. I have suggested how different
political systems reacted to this mirror, from political manipulation, to demonisation,
to opportunism. I also outlined the ways art, architecture and film have used this
mirror to provide insight into the societies that created them. Yet, what is crucial to
remember about turbo-folk is that its mirror image of the Balkans was conceived
from the outset as a parody. It is within the consideration of this parody that I can
provide some final thoughts about turbo-folk.
Turbo-folk, as it is often heard, was ‘named’ by Montenegrin avant-garde jazz
musician Antonije Pušić, better known as Rambo Amadeus (Rambo Amadeus
World Mega Tzar, henceforth RASMC). He first used the term in the late eighties
to describe his own approach to music, which was designed as a parody of the then
popular NCFM. Much like RASMC’s artistic name, turbo-folk signals the blurring
of distinctions between high and low culture, as well as the fusion of tradition with
advanced machinery. RASMC’s naming of turbo-folk was thus a postmodernist
gesture, steeped in irony and parody. The term turbo-folk soon started to be used
as a form of cultural branding for different performers with little consideration to
what kind of parody it entailed.
The form of RASMC’s music is postmodern pastiche. His sound is based in
hybridisation and an intentionally awkward joining of musical genres, such as
Conclusion 181
classical, rap, jazz, techno and Balkan folk music. This included playing snippets
of melodies from popular songs, as well as the use of samples. On RASMC’s first
album Oh Autumn Sorrow (Oh Tugo Jesenja, 1988), a number of songs used folk
melodies as RASMC ‘sang’ in an exaggerated caricature of the falsetto-melismatic
voice that was characteristic of NCFM, and Southern Wind in particular. The songs
also thematically lampoon NCFM by singing about love-struck aliens, space truck
drivers with oedipal obsessions, and homemade sex tapes. An example of the
intentional mismatch between form and content is found in the song ‘Gaudeamus’
from the first album, in which RAMSC covers the popular academic graduation
hymn. He keeps the Latin lyrics but sings them in an exaggerated Southern Wind
falsetto over a repetitious melody of synthesised trumpets. In the second verse
RASMC mixes Serbo-Croatian lyrics with Latin to create nonsensical lines such
as ‘my joy is in vain, because I have no humus’ (Latin for earth). ‘Gaudeamus’
illustrates the way in which the parody in RAMSC’s music did not only work
through the lampooning of folk sounds – which became more sparse in his later
albums – but by framing these sounds through cultural attitudes and perceptions
that informed the consumption of NCFM. The turbo-folk of RASMC is not a
musical or lyrical parody, but a theatrical simulation, or a performance, of the
‘turbo-folk mentality’ or ‘turbo-culture’. In other words, RASMC conceived
turbo-folk as a combination of impossible and incompatible pastiche achieved
through technology (turbo) and the mentality that makes that pastiche possible by
understanding its cultural codes (folk).
In his music, RASMC adopts and performs exaggerated megalomaniac alter-
ego personalities: Rambo Amadeus is the main one, but these also include corrupt
politicians, shady businessmen, village Casanovas and overzealous nationalists.
He performs these characters because of their recognisability, and also to satirise
the ignorance, egoism and backwardness that he sees as synonymous with the
Balkans that produced turbo-folk. Most of the songs are told in first person, where
the narrators spend a significant amount of time boasting about love conquests,
easily earned money and the benefits of their quickly gained nouveau riche status.
On his second album We Want Gusle (Hoćemo Gusle, 1989), RASMC released
one of his best known songs ‘Balkan Boy’ (‘Balkan Boj’). This first-person rap
narration describes the rise to fame of an arrogant simpleton. While the lyrics have
significant autobiographical overtones – such as the description of how RASMC got
his first record deal – ‘Balkan Boy’ is primarily a fictionalised persona intended to
exaggerate the primitivism of Yugoslav show business in the eighties. ‘Balkan Boy’
starts with an announcement by Mica Trofrtaljka, the cult trash-folk star featured in
Srđan Dragojević’s films: ‘Women say to you Rambo that you are a Tzar, because
you have a full wallet in your pants.’ It then chronicles Balkan Boy’s rise to fame,
and the personal and financial benefits of fame. The song combines the brash
arrogance of a rising rock star with NCFM lyrical expression evident in lines such
as ‘The stage is my mother, show business is my father, I play anywhere that pays
well’; and ‘I consume whiskey and drugs, and only have sex with women that shave
their legs’. This joining or disparate elements peaks in the chorus line that features
the lyrics ‘I am a Balkan Boy and I have B.O. [body odour], and sooner or later I
will be yours’ sung over the main riff from The Rolling Stones’ song ‘(I Can’t Get
No) Satisfaction’ (1965). RASMC’s parody of the Balkan mentality is even more
apparent in his live performances that feature long instrumental jazz improvisations
and semi-improvised monologues that lampoon the daily politics in the Balkans.
Turbo-folk in RASMC’s sense is not achieved through the exaggerated
mismatch between form (a postmodern pastiche of every musical genre
imaginable) and content (Southern Wind melismatic vocals). Nor is it achieved
through the mismatch between the traditional folk vocals and the lyrical content
of contemporary life and politics. Rather, turbo-folk, as conceived by RASMC,
operates by revealing the symbolic exchange that takes place in the consumption
of popular music. This symbolic exchange is hinged on a sensory overload that
creates a state of exaltation. Turbo-folk locates its audience’s enjoyment outside
of time and space, communicating via a familiar and recognisable language that
commands an affective response. This is best evidenced in the extended interactive
sing-alongs, a staple of RASMC’s live performances. One of RASMC’s most
popular live songs is ‘Shepherd has Just Left the Building’ (‘Čoban Je Upravo
Napustio Zgradu’, 2000), which involves the audience singing: ‘Shepherd come
back, your sheep can’t do without you.’ This is an intentional play on the way in
which the enjoyment of popular music reflects a longing for the symbolic paternal
‘leader’. The audience willingly participates in the cathartic request for the return
of a powerful symbolic figure, recalling the proximity between enjoyment of
popular culture (a catchy song) and willingness to subordinate oneself to political
authority. This relation between the audience’s enjoyment and political power is
made even more explicit in another of RASMC’s live routines. RASMC asks the
audience to sing ‘Rambo master, we vote for you, be the president of our state,
Rambo master’, to which RASMC replies with ‘Thank you people for voting for
me, but my ambitions are greater than your tiny state’. Thus, RASMC’s turbo-folk
is a performed critical strategy that seeks to unearth the ideological components of
popular culture. This is strategy works through repetition and through symbolically
short-circuiting popular culture.
Regarding repetition, RAMSC’s turbo-folk is based on the repetition of a
catchy slogan. RASMC’s music routinely features songs with a lengthy section
in which one phrase is repeated ad nauseam. In addition to the live routines
discussed above, RASMC also performs a song entitled ‘One And The Same’
(‘Jedno Te Isto’), which involves the audience repeating the phrase ‘one and the
same’ for extended periods of time to the dance beat performed by RASMC’s live
band. In this way, he mimics the technological reproduction of slogans, which
lose all meaning and create a trance-like experience. The best example of this
trance-like repetition is the song ‘Dick, Pussy, Shit, Tit’ (‘Kurac, Pička, Govno,
Sisa’, 1993), whose live performances involve the audience repeating the phrase
for minutes at a time. The repetition of the excessively and intentionally crude
expression in a live setting has the effect of creating a trance-like exaltation in
which words lose all meaning. Yet, it is precisely in this affective state, opened up
Conclusion 183
by RASMC’s understanding of turbo-folk, that the symbolic exchange in popular

music is revealed: that crude or meaningless words can become a catchy slogan,
that love anguish can easily turn into anger and alienation, that obsession with
death and mortality can easily slide into paranoid melancholia, and that longing
for a leader can easily change into nationalism.
It is in this act of repetition that RASMC creates a short circuit between the
seemingly opposite cultural values that inform the perception of turbo-folk:
rural–urban, East–West and rock ’n’ roll–NCFM. These are joined on an affective
level as the logical extensions of each other. RASMC’s approach to turbo-folk
reveals it to be less music than a form of critical cultural methodology for the
unpacking of slippages and inconsistencies in the symbolic universe of the Balkans.
If turbo-folk is considered in this way, it is possible to begin to understand how
its influence reaches beyond music and seeps into the whole cultural and social
sphere, and consequently how the term ‘turbo’ can be used as a derogatory term
for political and cultural phenomena alike. It can also help explain and account for
the almost complete absence of turbo-folk parodies on a musical and lyrical level.
While there are performers in all ex-Yugoslav states that seemingly lampoon
the ‘sound’ of turbo-folk – by exaggerating the vocal delivery, musical aspects or
trivial lyrical content – their approach is no different to a number of turbo-folk
performers. For example, bands such as Nervous Postman (Nervozni Poštar) from
the eighties and nineties, and Pero Defformero and Moustache (Brkovi) perform
parodies of NCFM and turbo-folk by combining melismatic falsetto vocals with
heavy metal or rock music. While this is intended as a parody, it is no different to
turbo-folk performers such as Indira Radić or Dragan Kojić Keba, who have used
heavy metal guitars in their music. Furthermore, it is well known that these parody
bands are often just as popular with turbo-folk fans as they are with heavy metal
music fans. Put differently, if these parodies work by pushing the ‘conventions’ of
turbo-folk, they are indiscernible from a number of turbo-folk performers who also
intentionally push the conventions lyrically or musically. By obsessively quoting
from the turbo-folk aesthetic, even while insisting on an ironic distance from it, the
music remains intrinsically attached to turbo-folk. Further, turbo-folk performers
regularly engage in self-deprecating humour. This understanding of turbo-folk
fails as a parody because it treats turbo-folk as an aesthetic or musical category (a
ridiculous cultural monster), rather than a conceptual or methodological approach
to culture that was conceived as a parody and that does not take itself seriously.
If, as Adorno and others have argued, music contains the contradictions of the
cultures that produce it, then turbo-folk’s contradictions are the mirror image of
the contemporary Balkans. Although turbo-folk was conceived to mirror those
contradictions, the adoption of the name ‘turbo-folk’ by the music industry has
meant that the term has itself become a contradiction. In an ironic twist, the deep
economic crisis in which ex-Yugoslavia found itself at the end of eighties, together
with (even resulting in) the effects of populist nationalism and neoliberalism in the
nineties, have placed the whole of its society under turbo-folk values. The values
of turbo-folk are those of transitional societies shifting between ‘independent
socialism’ and cutthroat capitalism under the banner of freedom of speech and
democracy. The fact that the values of turbo-folk are continually upheld as the
opposite of democracy only confirms the extent to which this music is symptomatic
of the state of the Balkans.
Turbo-folk is thus a cultural expression of the idiosyncrasies of the Balkan
mentality. However, as a product of a set of economic and political circumstances, it
reflects a broader set of attitudes that can occur not only in the Balkans, but anywhere
in the world. As such, it offers an important lesson about the seductive power of
populism, as well as the critical potential that may be hidden beneath the surface. At
a time of the rise of various forms of nationalist populisms across Europe, turbo-folk
holds a truly significant lesson, albeit beneath its glitter and noise.
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Index
abstract art 140, 141 Armenulić, Silvana 43

abstract expressionism 140 art 3, 8, 21, 45, 54, 66, 127, 140
abstract monuments 142–3 and communism 43–4
abstraction 72, 130, 134, 141, 143 and everyday life 22
academia 6, 16, 17, 19, 58 postmodern 10
accordion 9, 11, 51, 63, 85, 89, 113, 160, readymade 105, 106ff
162, 163 responses in 105
action films 146 turbo 20
actors 145, 147 art exhibitions 105, 117ff, 120, 122, 140
aesthetics 4, 8, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 25, and censorship 122
30, 38, 59, 70, 92ff, 116, 123, art history 21, 22, 105
130ff, 140ff, 151, 163, 168, 183 artists 25, 45, 47, 62, 105–6ff, 120
military 82 and periphery 122, 123
nationalist 57 artworks 106, 122–3
and socialism 44 assassinations 108ff, 111, 137
affect 25, 59, 82, 98ff, 112, 172, 182–3 Atomik Harmonik 82, 89
aid donors 91 atrocities 2, 11
Albania 121, 122, 165 Attali 115
Aleksić, Seka 92–3 attitudes 38, 52, 82, 84, 99, 100
Amadeus, Rambo see ‘Rambo Amadeus’ audiences 16, 17, 19, 24, 40, 41, 45, 62, 64,
amateurs 40 67, 94, 98, 117ff, 182
ambiguity 15, 20, 23, 31, 37, 161, 173, and affect 100
174, 176 art 117, 118, 122
American Effect, The 109, 111 and cultural memory 105
amplification 7, 8, 16, 62, 98, 99, 100 film 144ff, 174, 175
Anderson, Benedict 95 responses of 105, 108ff, 117
anti-capitalism 18, 26 Australia 7, 24, 68, 81, 94–8, 134
anti-fascist struggle 131, 144, 145, 146 Yugoslavs in 94
anti-fashion 66 authenticity 5, 53, 59, 63, 71, 81, 88, 118,
anti-intellectualism 65, 66 150, 151, 164, 174
anti-NATO protests 71–2 avant-garde 140, 141, 148, 180
anti-neo-liberalism 55, 69, 72, 80 Avsenik Brothers Ensemble 89
anxieties 15, 23, 31, 53, 81, 107
Apollo 9 113–17, 128 backwardness 17, 20, 22, 56, 72, 74, 80,
Appadurai, Arjun 95 81, 83, 85, 119, 162, 166, 167, 181
archetypes 172ff. Baker, Catherine 20, 73, 75, 78, 84, 85,
architecture 3, 8, 21, 54 86, 150
styles 136, 137, 142 Balboa, Rocky 25, 131–2
turbo 20, 131, 135ff Balkan 93
Arkan, Z. 58, 65, 74, 75, 166 Balkan artists 105–8, 122, 123
critique by 108, 110, 122 Bulgaria 2, 165

and readymades 106 Burek 13
Balkan Boy 181 businesses 92
Balkan folk music 1, 181 Butler, Judith 19
‘Balkan ghost’ 5, 7, 25, 57, 108 Button Box Accordion 89
‘Balkanism’ 50 Byzantine tradition 4, 15, 30, 131, 136, 137
Balkans 5, 6–7, 13, 22, 77–8, 81ff, 184–5
identity 15, 20, 22, 25, 97, 165 Čačak 133
and pop icons 134, 156 capitalism 4, 6, 14, 15, 22, 23, 30, 33, 60,
Western view of 22, 25, 108 61, 73, 75, 79, 80, 114, 119, 131,
banality 54, 117 140, 141
Banatski Sokolac 133 carnival 6, 7, 22, 57, 58, 71, 114, 128, 158
Bas, Mile 50–51 cars 65, 67, 94
Battle of Neretva, The 145 Ceca, Svetlana R. 24, 25, 58–9, 63–4, 65,
beats 11, 89 72, 74–5, 76ff, 92, 94, 119, 164,
beauty 63, 95 166
Belgrade 1, 5, 29, 68, 69, 70, 71, 113, 114, and affect 98–102
116, 123, 125, 170 and Australia 95–8
buildings 136 and Croatia 85, 87
destruction of 137, 138 popularity of 58, 59, 98ff
crime in 137 as religious icon 127
belonging 9, 97 sincerity of 82, 98
Bennett, Jill 100, 123 and Slovenia 88
Bishop, Claire 116, 118, 119 Ceca 12
Blackout 12 celebrities 48, 92, 112, 117, 120, 147, 163
Blue Orchestra 152 statues of 131–4, 147–8
Blum, Michael 133 censorship 39, 43, 44–5, 49, 84, 121–2
body 93, 99 centre-periphery relations 107, 114, 122,
Borbaš, Alen 85 128
Bosnia 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 29 change 6, 18, 20, 30, 56, 74, 79, 114
and film 156, 159ff, 169, 170 see also transitions
music of 50, 52 characters 66, 132, 145, 146, 157, 158,
see also Bosnia-Herzegovina 172ff, 181
Bosnia-Herzegovina 24, 49, 70, 78, 81ff, chauvinism 72, 79
90–94, 165 children 16, 29, 160
statues in 129 China 144, 146
Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 96 Chinese art 107
Bourriaud, Nicolas 106 Cinema Komunisto 151
Boy With a Promise 157 Cirjaković, Zoran 18
branding 74, 92, 105, 120, 121ff City Records 17
Bregović, Goran 85, 86 civil wars 1, 7, 11, 32, 47, 78, 83, 90–91,
Brena, Lepa 29–30, 47–8, 63, 93 129
bribery 136 and film 156, 169
bricolage 139, 156, 157, 160, 176 class 16, 18, 45, 54, 72, 96, 148
Bridge on the Drina, The 14 classical music 181
buildings 136–9 clichés 83, 87, 157
destruction of 136, 137ff closing 79
Bulajić, Veljko 145 clothes 10, 29, 42, 51, 67, 68, 163, 167
Index 197
coding 6, 9, 10, 11, 18, 25, 181 critical theory 21, 157
Cold War 140, 146 criticism 25, 52, 107, 156
collective identity 20, 107, 115, 148 Croatia 1, 2, 18, 24, 25, 69, 73, 74, 76ff,
Collins, Phil 106 81, 82–7, 166, 176
‘colourful thug’ 158, 170–71, 172–6, 177 and cinema 156
Čolović, Ivan 16, 20, 31, 40, 41, 173 signifiers 86, 87
comedy 89, 167, 169ff statues 133
commodification 119, 120, 149, 150 Croatian Woman 82, 85, 87
communication 42, 62, 75, 95, 99, 100 Croats 129, 133, 143, 164, 165, 169, 170
communism 32, 33, 35, 36, 61, 107, 108, Crush 50
161 ‘cultural capital’ 96
and art 140, 141 cultural difference 10, 16, 49–50, 122
and culture 43–4 cultural groups 96–7
and nationalism 62 cultural mediator 15, 20, 30
and NCFM 36–7, 52 cultural memory 3, 8, 21, 25–6, 54, 105,
and popular culture 39ff, 147 107, 115ff, 142
and sculpture 141, 148–50 and film 156ff, 175
see also socialism and pop icons 134, 147–8, 150–51
communities 4, 5, 94, 95, 140, 143, 158 cultural nationalism 58, 80
composers 40 cultural practices 4–5, 150, 158
concepts 20, 21, 37, 67, 75, 78, 177 ‘cultural racism’ 18
concerts 87, 94 cultural theory 21
conflict 100, 124, 125 cultural values 15
consciousness 99 culture 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 20, 21, 53, 105, 113,
construction, illegal 135–6 127, 158, 176, 180, 181
consumerism 1, 4, 23, 30, 33, 34, 54, 61, and emotion 100
62, 63, 65, 66, 73, 131 and musical taste 15, 16, 40
contemporary art 117 and oppositions 14, 22, 31
audiences 117–118, 122 shared 6, 7, 13, 14, 55, 56, 58, 115, 160
content 20, 60, 78, 79, 100 and socialism 36, 43ff, 52–3
context 68, 79, 85, 88, 91, 98, 118, 122, syncretic 18
144 and transition 79
contradictions 37, 80, 88, 143, 174, 183, Culture of Power, The 17
184 Čvoro, Uroš 7
controversy 24, 57, 73, 87, 92, 93, 112, cynicism 158, 173, 174
119, 156
corruption 22, 38, 59, 64, 136, 164, 165, Dalmatian coast 87
173 dance 117, 161
cosmopolitanism 15, 16, 18, 31 dance music 11, 89, 163
Coward 12, 66, 100 Davorike Dajke 162, 175
craziness 88 Dean, Jodi 80
credit 35 death 56, 59, 100, 108ff
criminality 1, 2, 12, 17, 59, 64, 65, 68, 69, Death in Dallas 108–13, 115, 122, 128
72, 136, 137, 166 reactions to 111–13
mythology of 173–4 debates 15, 19, 31, 38, 49, 106
criminals 157, 158, 166–7, 170ff decasyllable 109
see also ‘colourful thug’ defiance 5, 71, 72, 100, 101, 115, 125, 135,
Critchley, Simon 125 163
degeneration 16, 20, 31, 38, 41 Eastern tradition 4, 8, 10, 15, 22, 30, 49,
democracy 22, 33, 46, 72, 79, 185 52, 119, 131, 163
demonstrations 71, 114 economic management 34
Depp, Johnny 133 economic problems 22, 29, 30, 35, 47, 49,
deregulation 18, 35, 45 67, 68, 69, 149
derision 20, 75 and populism 55
Detroit 134 Economic Propaganda Program (EPP) 23,
developing world 131 43ff, 66ff
dialectics 21, 22, 60 education 36, 41, 61, 64
dialogue 48, 91n, 122 electronic instruments 51
Diamonds 12 electronic pop 10, 24
Diana, Princess 112 elites 16, 18, 31, 40, 54, 63, 64, 67, 120,
diasporas 95, 96 136
dictatorship 114 emancipation 36, 64
Dieselmen 68, 167 ‘emotional politics’ 100
difference 50, 52, 83, 91, 97, 161, 165, emotions 7, 14, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 42, 55,
174, 175 59, 62, 65, 66, 74, 75, 88, 95, 112,
Dimitrijević, B. 18–19 160, 163, 171
Đinđić, Zoran 58, 72, 74, 110, 111, 126, and Ceca 98ff
137 collective 149
disciplines 21, 23, 136, 138 conflicting 100
discourses 20, 52, 122, 148 and films 174, 175
displaced mediator 80 and privatisation 149
documentaries 110, 113, 114, 151 and sincerity 82
Domanović, Aleksandra 139 empowerment 95, 100, 148, 149
Đorđevic, Ivan 87 see also female empowerment
double-metre 50, 119 empty signifier 78, 90, 180
Dragičević-Šešić, M. 17 En Plein Air 133–4
Dragojević, Srđan 23, 71, 77, 83, 152, English culture 96, 97
155–9ff English lyrics 11, 89, 90
and ‘colourful thug’ 172–3 enjoyment 4–5, 7, 15, 21, 26, 74, 78, 94–5,
criticism of 156, 157 120, 158–9, 171, 177, 182
and music 156–7 collective 70, 155
and nationalism 171, 175 concept of 21
and turbo-folk 158, 162, 166, 171ff, excessive 4, 57, 93, 155, 159, 168
175–6 and film 155, 158, 167
drinking songs 165 and nationalism 167
drug addicts 157, 161 theft of 5, 159, 160, 164ff
Dubioza Kolektiv 22 transnational 159
Dubossarsky, Vladimir 133–4 entertainment industry 3, 5, 8, 15, 30, 42ff,
Duchamp, Marcel 22, 106 54, 117, 119, 146, 164
duets 13, 77 ambiguities of 31
Đurić, Vladislava 127 deregulation of 18, 34–5
Ðurković, Miša 18 and film 147
growth of 42
East Germany 151 entrepreneurs 131, 138, 139, 148, 149
Eastern bloc 8, 39, 43, 140, 141, 146, 151 epic narratives 109, 113, 122, 175
new form of 123
Index 199
escapism 11, 12, 17, 48, 64, 158 post-socialist 148–53ff

‘Eternal Light ‘ 135 and socialism 144ff
ethnic cleansing 91, 114 spectaculars 145
ethnic groups 5, 13, 14, 47, 91, 92, 97, 121, Western 23, 145–7, 156
129, 133, 143, 156, 158, 160, 164, film companies 34
165 film directors 145, 156
and comedy 170 film history 156
ethnic identity 15, 31, 96–7, 156, 160, 165 film music 157
ethnic violence 2, 90–91, 143, 156 Fluxus 105
EU 22, 72, 88 ‘folk’ 38
Europe 3, 7, 15, 22, 26, 55, 72, 73, 80, 88, folk music 1, 2, 3, 9ff, 14, 15, 20, 31, 74,
158, 185 85, 112, 114, 181
art audiences 122 concept of 20
and Bosnia 91 and cultural memory 105
Euro-pop 31, 76, 89 instruments 12
Eurovision Song Contest 13, 84, 93 and Serbian state 61
everyday life 9, 10, 12, 22, 41, 56, 57, 62, Slovene 89
86, 107, 114, 127, 161 in Yugoslavia 38, 39–40, 44, 45
Exception: Contemporary Art Scene of folklore 38, 39, 40, 41, 63, 85, 114, 165,
Prishtina 123, 125–6 175
excess 4, 11, 12, 57, 64, 70, 79, 93, 158, foreign investment 35
159, 167, 168 forgetting 142
exclusion 94 form 20, 60, 79, 123
experiences 99, 100, 120 former Yugoslavia 20, 21, 56, 164–5
experimentation 9, 10, 11, 16, 20, 31, 48 and cultural memory 105, 107–8
expertise 120 and film 148–53ff, 164
and national identity 2, 5, 8, 76–7
falsetto 181, 183 pop culture in 74
fame 95 and celebrity statues 132–4,
family 9, 51, 66, 100 150–51
farce 21 and turbo-folk 73–5, 81ff
fascism 82, 142 and visual art 105ff.
fashion 33, 66ff ‘found’ art 106, 109, 128
father 174 and video 109
fear 155, 175 ‘found’ music 109, 112, 128
Fejza, Shkurte 121, 122 Fox, Samantha 133, 148
female empowerment 29, 48, 59, 66, 74, fracture 142
95, 100 Frajtonerca 89
female sexuality 12, 19, 29, 48, 59, 63, 93, freedom 69, 70, 133
127, 148 Frith, Simon 98
feminism 19 Frula 74
Fijolić, Ivan 129 fusion 48
film 3, 8, 10, 21, 29, 44, 54, 57, 66, 83, future 35, 47, 77, 141, 142
108ff, 131, 132, 144–6, 151
and comedy 169–70 gangster heroes 173
genre 145, 156 gangster rap 68
and music 157, 159, 166 Gas, Gas 86–7
‘partisan’ 144–5, 146, 152, 156 Gasterbeiter songs 41, 50, 117, 119
Gaudeamus 181 historical repetition 68ff, 110, 111

Gavrilović, Ivan 11, 69 history 1, 2, 6, 8, 14, 15, 20, 21, 31, 55,
gay stereotypes 170 107, 110, 115, 121, 130, 158, 175
gaze 57, 112, 158 and cultural memory 105, 110,
gender 18, 19, 66, 156 147,150–51
genres 10, 38, 180 end of 3, 140, 142
film 144, 145 recycling of 68–9
Germans 88, 133, 151 and statues 134, 141ff, 148, 150
Gibbs, Anna 99, 100 and visual art 105, 109, 110
girls 12, 51 Hollywood films 10, 17, 109, 145, 146,
glamour 69, 144 157
globalisation 2, 18, 21ff, 69, 72, 80ff, 117, Holocaust 169
118 homogeneity 69, 95
and film 155, 159, 170, 175, 180 homophobia 155, 170, 174, 175
and national communities 95 homosexuality 169, 170
and peripheries 107 houses 136
resistance to 55 humour 112, 114, 123, 124–5, 159, 161,
global/local views 106, 107, 110, 122, 123 184
Goodbye to Lenin 151 hybrids 67, 96, 97, 123, 136, 139, 145,
Gordy, Eric 17, 18, 20, 41n, 61, 62, 69 153, 180
Gotovina, Ante 176, 177
Gotthardy-Pavloski, A. 86 icons 126–8, 133, 135, 139, 143, 176
Greece 2, 3, 31, 55, 165 and film 156
Groys, Boris 131, 134, 149 and socialism 148–50
‘grunge art’ 66 ICTY 3, 113, 136, 169, 177
guitar 9, 11, 65, 112, 113, 133, 162, 183 idealism 16, 20, 69
Guns N’ Roses 94 Ideally Bad 74
gusle 109, 110, 113 identity 7, 10, 15, 19, 20, 21, 31, 33
Gypsy music 15, 31 Balkan 22, 95
collective 20, 150–51
Hage, Ghassan 96–7 and diaspora 96
Happy Child 152 and film 155, 156, 157, 160
hardship 75, 100 and musical taste 15–16
harmonic structures 9, 10 politics 17, 24
heavy metal 184 shared 14, 20, 50, 52, 61, 142
hedonism 1, 11, 35, 48, 62, 65, 70, 73, 76, theft of 160
93, 158, 167 Yugoslav 36, 50, 142, 150, 152
Hegel 21, 22, 60 ideology 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 14ff, 49, 71, 113
heroes 148, 173, 175–6 in film 144, 164
see also war heroes paradox of 6, 83
Heroes 122–4, 128 socialist 35, 46, 62
Herzegovinians 85 I Loved a Girl from the City 9
Hey, Sheki Sheki 48 If You Were Wounded 65, 78, 100, 164
Hey You 121–2, 128 Ilić, Miroslav 9, 85
hierarchy 118, 120 Ilidža 63
high art 19, 43 images 100, 108ff, 112, 126, 139
high culture 53, 118 immediacy 60, 61
Hirst, Damien 66 immigrants 3, 50, 119
Index 201
imperialism 139, 144, 148 kitsch 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31,
In the Land of Blood and Honey 22 37, 45, 52, 65, 75, 85, 88, 89, 98,
inclusion 94 107, 139
Indeksi 160 and vanishing mediator 61, 69
individualism 80, 133, 145, 148 ‘Kitsch Tax’ debate 15, 24, 38, 43ff
industrialisation 34, 36, 61, 113, 114, 126 Knindža, Baja Mali 84
information exchange 95 knowledge 110, 119
insiders 161 Kojo, Nikola 173
intelligentsia 16 Kontekst Gallery 124–6
international art 106, 122, 123 Kosovo 25, 69, 72, 105, 121, 122ff
exhibitions 105, 107, 122 and Serbia 124–6
International Criminal Tribunal for the Kronja, Ivana 11, 17, 66–7, 68
Former Yugoslavia see ICTY Krstić, Igor 159
international films 146–7 Kusturica, Emir 22, 57–8, 158
international styles 11, 50
Internet 88 labour 42, 116, 118, 120
interviews 95, 96 Lacan 22
invisibility 117, 118, 159 Laibach 90
Iordanova, Dina 172 lampoons 181, 182
Iran 50 language 6, 37, 38, 83, 86, 89, 96, 149–50,
irony 25, 47, 82, 89, 90, 134, 175, 180, 184 160
Islam 49, 50, 52, 122, 169 slang 156, 170
radical 91 and symbolic meaning 97
‘Islamisation’ 47, 49ff, 52, 53 Lasić, Božo 110
Israel 115 Latin, Denis 85
Izetbegović, Alija 13 Latinica 85, 86
izvorna music 38 lawlessness 136, 173
Lee, Bruce 25, 129, 130, 134, 135, 138,
Jameson, Frederic 20, 60 143–4, 147, 148, 176
Janjetović, Zoran 34, 39 Legija 126, 127
Jashari, Adem 126, 127 Lepi Dasa 89
jazz 9, 20, 181, 182 lesbianism 66, 118
Jerić, Vladimir 126 Lethal Glow, The 17
jewellery 67, 68, 166, 167 Let’s Go Crazy Little One 12
John, Elton 112 Levi, Pavle 50, 70, 158, 159, 171
jokes 159, 161–2, 162–3, 169, 170, 179 LGBT 118–19, 169, 170, 172
Jovanović-Weiss, S. 131, 135, 136, 137 audience 118, 175
liberalism 10, 15, 34, 40ff, 73, 140, 148
Karadžić, Radovan 57, 70, 113 libidinal economy 57
Karamatović, Jozo 116 liminal space 30
Karge 141, 142 literature 14, 16, 19, 21, 36, 37, 44, 45
Karleuša, Jelena 12, 86 live performance 182
Keba, Dragan K. 184 living standards 34
Kempenaers, Jan 142 local level 9, 106, 107, 110, 122, 123, 142,
Kennedy assassination 108–13 143, 163
Kerbaj, Mazen 115 loops 110
Khomeini, Ayatollah 50 loss 62, 100
love 9, 10, 12, 42, 51, 65, 75, 77, 98, 100, Milošević, Slobodan 1, 2, 4, 5, 13, 17, 46,
163 53, 56, 71, 114, 131, 137, 176
low culture 20, 53, 75, 83, 118 and architecture 135ff, 143
Lukić, Lepa 42 and nationalism 61–2, 83, 125
Lukić, Mašinka 113, 116 and turbo-folk 69–70
Luković, Petar 42 Ministry of Defence, Belgrade 138
lyrics 9, 10, 11, 17, 29, 30, 41, 45, 51, 59, Mirić, Mitar 70, 162–3, 167, 175
86, 89, 97, 98ff, 110, 113, 122, Mirković, Dragana 50, 91, 117, 118–19
163, 181 Mirković, Igor 152
modernisation 3, 5, 15, 30, 36, 41, 42, 130
Macedonia 10, 11, 25, 49, 50, 90, 163 critique of 114
and visual art 105 problems of 43
McNeill, David 107 modernism 110, 138, 140
mafias 1 see also crime; criminals and socialist sculpture 140–44
Majka, Edo 87 Monroe, Alexei 87–8, 168
male warrior 12 Monroe, Marilyn 147
Manifesta 4 122 Montenegrin 1
marginalisation 16, 19, 39, 44, 45, 54, 83, Montenegro 49, 90
116, 119, 162, 172, 176 monuments 141–4, 147–8
market economy 23, 30, 34, 73, 92, 93, 147 moral values 17, 19, 46
Markovič, Mirjana 137 Mostar 7, 78, 129, 143, 150, 164, 176, 151,
Marley, Bob 25, 133, 134, 143, 148 164
marriage 12, 66 motifs 9, 10, 41, 42, 51, 114
Marx, Karl 115, 130 multi-ethnic communities 129, 133
masculinity 19, 89 murders 69, 108ff, 111, 137, 166
meaning 4, 15, 21, 35, 36, 53, 55, 75, 78, music 22, 25, 38, 50, 61, 72, 83, 96, 97,
90, 98, 111, 122 115, 160
double 80 and art scene 123
excess of 79 and cultural memory 105, 115
of films 157 in film 157, 159, 166
Međa 132–3 and nostalgia 152
media 23, 43, 44, 46, 64, 71, 73, 84, 91, 92, politicisation of 52
110, 120, 167ff readymade 106–8
mediation 8, 15, 20, 21, 79, 127, 130 symbolic role 106–7
and socialist monuments 142, 147, 149 music companies 30
see also vanishing mediator music industry 24, 30, 31, 183, 184
melancholy 14, 75, 77, 112, 158 musical genres 10, 38
melisma 13, 50, 51, 119, 184 musical instruments 9, 11, 15, 24, 50, 51,
melodies 1, 9, 10, 11, 13, 31, 50, 51, 65, 65, 74, 82, 85, 122, 162, 163
89, 162, 165, 181 musical taste 15
memory 3, 8, 21, 25–6, 142, 149–51ff musicology, cultural 21
men 12, 66, 67 Muslims 13, 29, 49, 78, 91, 129, 159, 160,
Merlin, Dino 13 164, 165, 169, 170
methodology 21 My Beautiful Thunder 75, 100
micro-politics 24–5, 82 My Stiletto 84–5
middle class 16, 46 mythology 5, 8, 22, 31–2, 112, 113, 127,
migrants 40, 41, 42, 50, 61, 94, 95, 97, 158, 164, 172
117, 118, 119 of criminal 173–4
Index 203
narratives 99, 109, 110, 139, 145, 165 Nervous Postman 184
Naskovski, Zoran 25, 105, 106, 107, ‘new Balkanness’ 13, 22, 24, 53, 55, 69, 74
108–17, 120, 176 in film 156, 158, 165
national anthems 160 new wave music 16, 17, 152
national branding 25, 105, 108, 118, 121 Newly Composed Folk Music (NCFM)
national capital 97 9–10ff, 14, 15, 23, 24, 30ff, 40ff,
national identity 2, 3, 4–5, 7, 21, 24, 36, 89, 90, 114, 116, 162, 180, 181
49, 53–4, 73, 90, 94, 95–6ff, 118 ambiguities of 31
in art 122–3, 128 audiences 16, 40–41
codes 18 and cultural identity 15–16, 47
in film 164, 168 and ‘Islamisation’ 47, 52
performers’ perceptions of 82ff musical style 50
and pop music 6, 15, 20, 107, 115 and self-management 34, 37
and Serbia 47, 55, 64, 82ff and socialism 35–8, 40–42, 52–3
Slovene 87–8 terminology 38, 52
symbols 25, 82–3 Nino 12
threat to 14, 50, 164–5 No One Can Touch Us 70–71, 155, 162–5,
and visual artists 105–6ff 177
national myths 5, 158, 164, 165 norms 19
nationalism 1, 2, 6, 13, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, nostalgia 4, 26, 41, 42, 69, 114, 150ff
47, 53, 58, 70, 73–4, 100, 107, 123, symbols of 151–2
164, 174, 184, 185 nouveau riche 17, 20, 75, 166, 169, 181
in Australia 95 novels 44
in Bosnia-Herzegovina 92 Novi Sad 124
and capitalism 80 nudity 43
Croatian 76–783ff
and cultural capital 96–7 objects 23, 100, 106, 125, 126
and enjoyment 167 Obraz 125
and film 155, 158, 166, 170–71 obscenity 161, 162, 168, 170
good and bad 171, 175 Olympic Park, Sydney 94–5
new Balkan 74, 77–8 opening 79
permissive 4 oppositions 14, 15, 20, 22, 30, 31, 70, 85,
‘porno’ 168 107, 183
resurgent 3 and film 157
Serbian 61–2, 71–2, 95 oppression 113, 125, 142, 174, 176
as vanishing mediator 60–61 Orchestra 152
and visual art 105 ‘ordinary people’ 94
see also ‘reverse nationalism’ oriental style 10, 22, 31, 48, 51, 93, 119,
NATO air strikes 70, 71, 72, 114, 135, 137, 122
138 ‘orientalisation’ debate 15, 24, 38, 48, 49,
negation 60, 61, 64, 79 51ff, 119
neo-folk 38, 45, 46, 62, 63 see also Newly Orthodox Church 126, 127, 134
Composed Folk Music (NCFM) Orthodox icons 65, 101, 126, 127
neoliberalism 2, 21, 24, 38, 55, 72ff, 86, Osijek 86
135, 138, 171, 183 Ostojić, Milica 162
and popular culture 139 Other 5, 7, 50, 52, 81, 83, 84, 87, 94, 97,
and vanishing mediator 61, 75–6 98, 113
Neretva river 120, 143, 145, 146 in film 158, 159, 161
Ottoman tradition 4, 10, 15, 30, 51, 52, photographs 112, 142
113, 125, 165 Picasso 145
outlaw patriot 174 pictures 10, 112
Pink TV 16, 17, 18, 64, 88, 91
pan-Balkanism 56, 71 studios 137
Parade, The 77–8, 155, 156, 159, 161, 162, piracy 64
164, 168, 169–72, 174–5, 177 pitch 99
and turbo-folk 171–2 Pjevović, Obren 113
paradox 2, 6, 30, 36, 37, 83 pleasure 167 see also enjoyment
paranoia 70, 164 poetry 37
Parker, Ian 32, 125 political space 3, 47, 49,
parks, destruction of 138 political speech 99
Parma TV 16 politicians 38
parody 20, 54, 75, 122, 123, 168, 180, 182, politics 2, 8, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 24, 26, 57,
183 127, 141, 176
partisan films 144–5, 146 and emotion 100
passion 20, 22, 25, 57, 70, 74, 88, 93, 164 and music 52, 99, 107, 113, 115
past 14, 55, 56, 69, 112, 142, 143, 152, 160 Serb 47, 65, 114, 115
pastiche 67, 131, 136, 180, 181 Yugoslav 30ff, 35–6ff, 52, 121, 140
pathology 21, 24, 55, 166, 168 pop art 105, 107–8, 117, 140
patriarchy 12, 17, 59 ‘pop folk’ 13
patriotism 1, 65, 71, 86, 113, 115, 127, 157 popular culture 2, 5, 23, 25, 61, 152, 182
and outlaws 174 in Croatia 83ff
peasants 7, 18, 42, 113, 161, 163 see also and film 147–8
‘urban peasants’ icons 3, 48, 54, 74, 131ff, 139, 143,
Peeva, Adela 165 147–8, 156
‘people’ 37, 38, 40, 71, 112, 116, 172 and memory 25, 107
perceptions 5, 8, 14, 16, 21ff, 32, 38, 47, and national identity 115
52ff, 81ff, 108, 115 and public sculptures 130–5, 138ff
performance 9, 22, 39–40, 71, 72, 112, in Slovenia 90
117, 121, 181 statues 131–5, 138ff, 143–4, 152
‘delegated’ 116, 118, 120 in Yugoslavia 3–4, 5–6, 8, 15, 29ff,
performance art 105, 117ff 39ff, 107, 114, 130–31, 139–40 and
performers 12, 14, 16, 19, 25, 40, 42, 51, market economy 34
59, 73, 85, 87, 98, 99, 112, 116, and socialism 37–8, 44
117, 183 popular music 1, 2, 3, 5, 80, 89, 90, 128,
in Bosnia 92 181
and national identity 82ff and cultural memory 107
and nationalism 62 and diasporas 96
persecution of 45, 83 and film 155, 156–7, 161ff
Slovene 88, 89 and folk idioms 9ff
peripheries 107, 114, 122, 128 and identity 15, 16, 20
Perković, Ante 5, 32, 76–7 and socialism 5–6
permissiveness 70 and Yugoslavia 8, 9ff, 30ff
persecution 45 and liberalisation 34–5ff
personal triumph 99 populism 3, 15, 26, 40ff, 55, 80, 107, 114,
Pezo, Vesna 85 115, 128, 176, 184, 185
philosophy 21 parody of 122
Index 205
pornography 17 Ražnatović, Svetlana 12, 24

post-communist art 107–8, 134–5 ‘readymade music’ 22, 105–6, 108, 115,
postmodernism 4, 5, 9, 10, 15, 30, 44, 53, 118ff
54, 131, 136ff, 140, 164, 180, 182 realism 141
in architecture 136, 137, 138ff reality television 120
in fashion 67 reconciliation 2, 158
‘postproduction’ art 106 recording companies 16, 34
poststructuralism 16 recordings 45, 48, 50, 63, 112
post-Yugoslav states 3, 4, 19, 32, 93, 123, regional monuments 142
139, 150 regional music 9, 10, 50, 56, 74, 82
poverty 4, 22, 40, 64, 66, 67, 149, 166 regulation 34, 44, 47
present 18, 24, 31, 38, 55, 58, 79, 158 relativism 158, 171, 176
Presley, Elvis 126, 127, 147 religion 60, 126–7
Pretty Villages, Pretty Flames 83, 152, 155, remembrance 142, 175
156, 158, 159–62ff, 174, 175 repetition 47, 105, 110ff, 121, 122, 128,
primitivism 15, 20, 22, 31, 50, 74, 80, 83, 135, 148ff, 182, 183
85, 98, 119, 165, 181 representation 3, 5, 6, 19ff, 33, 54, 57ff,
print media 110 63ff, 68, 71ff, 110, 112, 123, 128,
private companies 16, 17, 30, 34, 64, 138 158
privatisation 4, 18, 31, 64, 72, 149, 150, of Serbia 113ff, 168
180 repression 70, 135
Prlja, Nada 25, 105, 108, 120 Republika Srpska 92
production, musical 13, 17, 30, 34 research 14, 16, 17, 19
progress 21 resilience 75
progressive politics 10, 19 resistance 2, 22, 24, 55, 69, 70, 71, 80, 82,
propaganda 39, 57, 144, 145, 157, 167 114–15, 147, 171
Protestantism 60 responsibility, historical 142–3
psychoanalysis 22 retro-futuristic style 142
public art 3, 130, 132ff retromania 68n, 69
public monuments 135–8, 148–9 ‘reverse nationalism’ 5, 26, 53, 159, 164,
public space 3, 91, 149 165
publishers 34 Reynolds, Simon 68, 69
punk music 16, 17, 79, 80, 152 rhythm 9, 11, 50, 51, 119, 162, 163
Pušić, Antonije 180 see also ‘Rambo right-wing politics 26, 73
Amadeus’ rock comedies 157
rock music 14, 15, 16, 30, 48, 61, 94, 184
queer studies 19 audience for 17, 157
documentaries 152
racism 18, 148, 174 ‘Rocky Balboa’ 131–2, 134, 143, 148, 176
Radić, Indira 184 Roma 11
radio 40, 41, 64, 65 Romania 2, 132
rai 56 Rumor 133
Rambo 147 rural life 14, 15, 30, 31, 40, 41, 51, 61, 62,
‘Rambo Amadeus’ 20, 75, 180–83 63, 64, 83, 85, 113, 114
rap music 11, 181 and film 157, 162
Rasmussen, L.J. 9, 10, 14, 38, 41, 48, 51 Russian art 107, 133–4, 140
rationality 22
rave music 157 Saint Ceca 127
Sala, Anri 115 Serbian Unity Party 65

Salecl, Renata 35 Serbo-Croat language 110
samples 181 Serbs 125, 159–60, 164, 165
sanctions 64, 66 in Australia 95, 97
Sarajevo 11, 63 and enjoyment 158, 159
satire 169, 181 Severina 82, 84, 85, 86–7
Savić, Sonja 10 sexism 1, 2, 12, 65, 174
Schlager 89 sexuality 12, 19, 29, 48, 49, 56, 62, 65, 87,
Schwartzenegger, Arnold 134 93, 148, 158, 162, 168
sculpture 3, 8, 21, 25, 54, 129–52, 176 shared culture 6, 13, 14, 29, 50, 52, 54, 55,
modernist 138, 139, 140ff 56, 63, 107, 108, 142
and socialism 140–44, 147–8 and film 160, 170
and working class 148–9 jokes in 161, 162
self-empowerment 95, 100 meaning of 58, 75
self-exoticisation 5, 6, 49, 70, 74, 75, 156, Shargia 122
164, 179 She Threw Everything Down the River 160
self-management 5, 6, 30, 31–5, 43, 49, Shkololli, Erzen 25, 105, 106, 121–2
140 shopping 33
and music industry 34–5 shopping-centres 138
self-parody 89, 112 Sidran, Abdulah 37
self-sacrifice 65, 145, 173ff siege mentality 164, 168
self-victimisation 5, 75 signifiers 4, 13, 14, 18, 24, 31, 38, 53, 65,
sensations 100, 128 67, 77, 86, 89, 118, 163–4, 170,
sentimentality 65 175, 180
Serb nationalism 2, 3, 55ff, 61–2, 70–72, and sculptures 130
76–8, 82ff, 123, 166ff and visual art 105, 110
and enjoyment 5, 57, 167 see also coding
and Kosovo 125 sincerity 82, 98ff
phases of 58ff sing-alongs 182
and transition 6 Skopje 120
Serb Orthodox Church 127 slang 89
Serbia 1, 7, 10, 11, 13, 16–17, 18, 24, 25, Slavs 88
68, 71, 113, 123, 164, 175, 177 Slovenes 164, 165
and affect 99ff Slovenia 1, 18, 24, 25, 69, 79, 81, 87–90
art exhibitions 123, 125–6 national identity 87–8, 89
and Bosnia 92, 93 and Serbia 89, 164
censorship in 45–8 smuggling 68
and cinema 156 soap operas 17
and Croatia 76–8, 82ff social mobility 29, 93, 148
folk music 52, 163 social sphere 17, 22, 38, 100, 147, 152, 158
and ‘Islamisation’ 47 socialism 3, 4, 15, 21, 25, 29, 30ff, 114,
and Kosovo 124 130, 139, 140
and national representation 113ff, 123 and censorship 121
performers’ perceptions in 82ff and culture 43ff
public monuments 135ff, 143, 150 failure of 149–50
and visual art 105ff and film 144–7
see also Serb nationalism; Serbs and modernist sculpture 141–4
Serbian Communist Party (SKS) 44 myths of 5, 6, 32, 33
Index 207
and NCFM 35–8, 52–3 statues 129–35, 138ff, 147–8, 152

negation of 79 see also sculpture
and popular culture 48, 61, 131, 139 stereotypes 50, 156, 157, 161, 165, 169,
statues 140ff, 148–9 170, 175
and Western pop 23, 133, 140ff Straight Jackin’ 163
and youth 35 Sturken, Marita 130
‘socialist development’ 38 styles 10, 11, 13, 17, 50, 67
socialist elite 18, 31 sub-cultures 53, 66–8
socialist realism 4, 15, 30, 131, 134, 141 subject 14
society 15, 19ff, 30, 33, 37, 100, 148, 184 subjectivities 95
soldiers 78, 83, 90ff, 145ff, 159–60, 164, Superman 13
169ff, 173, 174 Sydney 94, 134
see also warriors symbolic communication 42, 62, 63
song competition 120 symbolic meaning 97, 112, 142, 183
songs 11, 29, 41, 45, 48–9ff, 65–6, 70, 75, symbolic space 46, 94, 97, 162
77, 84–5ff, 109, 113, 167, 175, 181 symbolic structure 16, 32, 38
Albanian 121 symbols 4, 33, 35, 53, 57, 71, 75, 76–7,
and art exhibitions 117 82, 91, 93, 94, 97, 107, 112, 114,
and film 155, 159–60ff 125, 127
functional 41 and film 156, 174
and national identity 160–61, 164–5 of nostalgia 151–2
ownership of 165 and sculpture 129, 133, 139, 141ff,
parody 122 148, 149
structure 9 and turbo-architecture 137
themes 9, 11–12ff, 48, 51, 65, 66, 85, syncretism 50
86, 100, 113, 163ff synthesiser 10, 11, 12, 50, 51, 86, 163
sound 10, 12, 13, 109, 111, 112, 115, 163
Southern Wind 10, 11, 49–52, 85, 93, 119, Tadić, Boris 179
163, 181, 182 Tarzan 132, 133, 143, 147, 148
Soviet Union 39, 134, 141, 151 taste 14, 15, 21, 36, 37, 41, 43, 46, 83, 118
spaces 3, 4, 13, 14, 30, 46, 47, 73, 74, 115, technology 13, 17, 51, 113, 181
120, 158 techno-pop 11, 13
spaghetti westerns 145–6 television 16, 23, 47, 64, 65, 71, 88, 91,
Splashing Hose, A 89 120, 137, 166ff
sport 94 temporality 111, 115, 142, 143
Stalinism 5, 32, 33, 39, 141 terminology 21–2, 37–8
Stallone, Sylvester 132, 134 theatre 45
stardom 120 theft 5, 158, 159, 160ff, 164
Stari Most bridge 29 themes 9, 11ff, 42, 56, 75, 83, 100, 113–14,
state 8, 10, 15, 17, 18, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 148, 163–4, 181
43, 47 theory 6, 17, 18, 21
and film 144, 145 This Is Contemporary Art 117–18
and media 64 ‘Thompson’ 76–7, 83, 84
and NCFM 41ff, 48, 53 see also Perković, Ante
censorship of 45–7 threat 14, 50, 95, 122, 125, 158, 163
and public monuments 142, 149 Tito, J.B. 32–3, 48, 62, 135, 145, 147, 156,
and shared culture 61 160
and turbo-folk 70 Todorova, Maria 22, 50
Tomic, Milica 19, 25, 105, 108, 117–20, meaning of 1, 20, 54, 56, 75, 177,
176 179–80
Tomkins, Silvan 99 and nationalism 55, 56, 58ff, 62, 70ff,
tourism 139 171–2, 175
tragedy 21 and NCFM 11, 53
transgression 120 origins of 10–11
transitions 4, 6, 20, 26, 60, 79, 114, 184–5 paradox of 2
transnationalism 6, 13, 14, 18, 24, 26, 48, perceptions of 5, 10, 14, 20, 57, 81,
50, 63, 69, 71, 74, 77, 78, 107, 113, 88, 115
119, 179 and politics 57
and enjoyment 159 popularity of 1, 2, 7, 17, 18, 46, 55, 70
and film 155, 161, 164ff, 170, 172ff, transnational 63, 73, 74, 81, 90
180 reaction against 72–3
and populism 55ff turbo-polka 88–9
and Serbia 61ff, 82 turbo-sculpture 138–41ff
and symbolism 93, 82ff see also turbo-architecture
‘trash’ 7, 40, 41, 44, 46, 48, 52, 85, 155, Turkey 50, 165
166, 167, 181 200 mph 11, 65, 69
songs 162, 163 Two Roads Lead from the Water Spring
trauma 35, 43, 106, 111, 112, 113, 124, 42, 43
130, 148, 152, 160
Trofrtaljka, Mica 162, 175, 181 underdog 148, 179
trumpets 181 Underground 57, 158
truth 22, 32, 110 unemployment 4
Tuđman, Franjo 83 United States 71, 91, 108ff, 113, 140, 146,
Turbo Angels 88 155, 173
Turbo Polka 89–90 universalism 60, 61, 69
Turbo Sculpture 139 urban life 10, 14, 15, 16, 30, 31, 51, 61,
Turbo Star 120 62ff, 85, 87, 113, 157
turbo-architecture 20, 131, 135–8 ‘urban peasants’ 40–41, 46, 62, 157
turbo-art 20 utopianism 147, 151
turbo-culture 26, 181
turbo-folk music 7–8, 53, 69–70, 139, 165 Vågnes, Øyvind 111–12
and art 117ff values 17, 20, 31, 38, 44, 46, 48, 51, 69,
audiences 17, 62, 64, 67, 117 75, 128, 144, 145, 184–5
in Bosnia-Herzegovina 92–3 vandalism 126ff, 129, 130
and cinema 155, 158, 159, 162, 166, vanishing mediator 6, 24, 55, 58, 60–61, 75
171–2, 175–6 concept 60, 78–9
and collective identity 7, 8 Venice Biennial 136–7, 141
concept of 20, 75, 177 Vesić, Jelena 123
in Croatia 84–5ff vibrato 51
cultural context 2, 4ff, 8ff, 16–17, 53ff, Vice Guide to the Balkans 1, 2, 179
57, 107, 176, 180, 181, 183 videos 9, 11, 42, 51, 65, 82, 87, 89, 106
differences within 82 documentary 113–14, 139
as empty signifier 78, 180 montage 109
and enjoyment 159 Vienna 117–18
ideology of 8, 11, 14ff, 56ff village music 9, 51
Village People 163
Index 209
Vinogradov, Alexander 134 and culture 54

violence 100, 126ff, 129, 156, 158, 167, migrant 117–18, 119
170, 173 and music 35, 36, 40, 46
vision 127–8 and sculptures 144
visual artists 3, 105 world music 9, 10, 18, 48, 56
and music 106–7ff World War II 31ff, 39, 50, 61, 76, 107, 112,
and performance 117ff 114, 129, 131, 140, 142, 143, 144,
and video 106, 113–14 146
visual culture 105 Wounds 83, 155, 156, 159, 162, 164,
vocal styles 11, 13, 50, 51, 163, 181, 184 165–8ff, 175
voice 99, 100, 159
Volčič, Zala 130, 139, 151 ‘Year of Culture’ 46, 69–70
Volčič, Z. and Erjavec, K. 73, 88, 95, 99 yokels 157, 163
Vučetić, Radina 30 youth 35, 36, 65, 67, 69, 87, 144, 145, 147
Vučković, Severina see Severina in films 157
Yugoslavia 3, 7–8, 29ff, 93, 114, 121, 130
Walter Defends Sarajevo 146, 151 architecture in 131ff, 138ff
war crimes 1, 169, 176 East/West mix in 8, 15, 30, 49, 52
war films 146, 151 economy 32–3, 47, 49
war heroes 122ff, 140, 143, 146, 151, 169 exhibitions 140
war songs 57, 65 and film 144–7, 152, 155ff
‘Warrior-chic’ style 66–7, 68 and identity 7, 14, 152, 158
warriors 66, 78, 83, 90–91 see also soldiers popular culture in 3–4, 8, 15, 32ff,
wealth 48, 67, 68, 140 39ff, 44, 130–31, 139
Weissmuller, Johnny 132–3 and pop music 5–6, 8ff, 45, 152
West 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, 22, 25, 30, public monuments in 135ff, 141ff,
33, 34, 36, 39, 49, 52, 58, 75, 91, 148ff
108, 113, 131, 140, 148 and nostalgia 151
gaze of 57, 112, 158 role of music in 106–7, 152
resistance to 71 sculptures 135ff, 141–44, 147–8
Western art 106 see also former Yugoslavia; post-
Western culture 44, 49, 79, 116, 144 Yugoslav states
Western films 110, 145–7, 157, 173
Western pop 13, 16, 25, 30, 36, 45, 108, zabavna music 16, 38
139–40 Zemun crime clan 137
icons 132–3, 143–4 Zequiri, Lulzim 25, 105, 106, 121, 122–4
Whose is This Song? 165 Žitište 131–2
Wild Literature 16 Žižek, Slavoj 4–6, 7, 20, 21, 22, 32, 37,
women 12, 14, 19, 29, 36, 59, 66, 93, 166, 57–8, 83, 114, 158, 161, 164, 167
173 and comedy 169–70
objectification of 65, 67 criticism of 6
working class 3, 4, 16, 18, 22, 29, 33, 43, and vanishing mediator 60, 69, 78–9
87, 94, 116, 148 Zurna 51, 93, 163

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Turbo-folk Music and Cultural

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

ISBN 9781472420367 (hbk)

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

List of Figures  vii

Introduction: The Three Stories of Turbo-folk  1

Part I Turbo-nation: Turbo-folk and

1 The People’s Eastern Kitsch: Self-management, Modernisation

2 Remember the Nineties?: Turbo-folk as the Vanishing

3 Beyond Serbia: Turbo-folk across Cultural

Part II Turbo-culture: Cultural Responses

4 Turbo-art: Music and National Identity in the Work

5 They Can Be Heroes: Popular Culture and Public

6 Singin’ in the Film: Turbo-folk and Self-exoticisation

2.1 Ceca, Sydney 2010 (Dragana Marinković – One Love

4.1 Zoran Naskovski, Smrt u Dalasu, installation view. The American

5.1 Rocky Balboa, Sculpture, 3 metres. Žitište, Northern

Professor Derek B. Scott,

EPP Economic Propaganda Program

Turbofolk is tacky, high-octane techno with melodies based loosely on traditional

This description accompanies Part 2 of ‘The Vice Guide to the Balkans’ – an

character. The popular culture in Yugoslavia was located between a divergent

the role of popular music as a cultural mediator of identity remains key to

The Musical History of Turbo-Folk

Newly Composed Folk Music

Adopted were the verse–chorus–verse structure of the pop song, with an

NCFM combined pop sensibilities with ‘regional codes’, such as a distinctive

The distinguishing stylistic trait of NCFM, however, is what is ambiguously

Turbo-folk celebrated materialism, hedonism, excess and sexual innuendo

folk. Thus, the ‘folk’ of turbo-folk is mainly a suggestion of folkloric instruments

The Ideological History of Turbo-Folk

1970s to 1980s: Socialist Norms of Taste

Yugoslavia was a liminal space located between divergent and contradictory

1990s: Critique of Brainless Nationalism

The appearance of turbo-folk in the early nineties caused something of a shock

represented a narrativisation of experiences, some based on gender codes and

2000s: ‘Cultural Decontamination’ and ‘Cultural Racism’

The Cultural History of Turbo-Folk

What is severely lacking in the existing accounts of turbo-folk is an explanation of

for a range of phenomena. One frequently finds references to turbo-art and

Hence, turbo-folk as a political mediator describes the process through which

use of particular linguistic expressions. Taking these musical micro-politics as its

Yugoslav revolution towards a more open, democratic form of self-management

introduced a shift towards a market-based economy that removed government

The Relationship of Socialism with NCFM

As explained in the introduction, turbo-folk is rarely, if ever, discussed as a

outright totalitarian and manipulative.18 While these accounts provide detailed

identity.22 They reflected ongoing attempts by the communists to differentiate

Zoran Janjetović’s discussion of the birth and growth of popular culture in

the lowest common denominator.35 Thus, there is reason to be suspicious of the

EPP 1: Kitsch Tax

za Ljudska Prava u Srbiji. Svedočanstva 32 (2008): 144.

The orientalist concepts of ‘Islamisation’ and ‘Tehranisation’ emerged in public

EPP 2: Southern Wind

denationalization of Yugoslav music and the regression of culture. Belgrade

The attacks on Southern Wind demonstrated the ongoing rejection of NCFM as

of studies of NCFM, and turbo-folk in particular, these signifiers are frequently

As outlined in the introduction, turbo-folk is high-energy pop mixed with

the former republics of Yugoslavia. As a result, the popularity of turbo-folk can

Figure 2.1 Ceca, Sydney 2010 (Dragana Marinković – One

in 2003, her subsequent four-month imprisonment and, in 2011, the charges of

List of Figures vii

Introduction: The Three Stories of Turbo-folk 1