1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans
The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans is a comprehensive overview of major topics, established debates and new directions in the study of popular music and politics in this region.
The vibrant growth of this subject area since the 1990s has been intertwined with the region’s political and socio-economic transformations, including the collapse of state socialism in much of the region, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the advent of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of Romani activism, the complex politics of ‘Europeanization’ before and after the global financial crisis, and the region’s relationship to the European Union border regime. The handbook illustrates the wide range of disciplines and methods that contribute to this field’s interdisciplinary dialogue and highlights emerging approaches such as the study of Black diasporas in the region, popular music’s links with LGBTQ+ communities, and the impact of digital technologies on musical cultures.
This volume will benefit specialist researchers, tutors creating or refreshing courses on popular music in the region, and students interested in these topics, especially those who are at the point of developing their own independent research projects.
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: thinking politically with popular music of the Balkans
Catherine Baker
PART I: Region and ‘the Balkans’ in practice
1 The emergence of the world music concept in the Balkans: early and more recent steps
Iva Nenić and Tatjana Nikolić
2 Lăutari, music-making, and social practices of live performance in southern Romania
Margaret Hiebert Beissinger
3 Politics, activism, and Romani music: interpreting trends in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria
Carol Silverman
4 Electronic dance music festivals in Romania: a case of reversed Balkanism
Ruxandra Trandafoiu
5 The Balkans in the Eurovision Song Contest
Dean Vuletic
PART II: Reviving and revising histories
6 Reviving nineteenth-century Wallachian and Moldavian urban music
Florin Iordan
7 Bosnian discography before World War I: recording artists, repertoire, and politics
Risto Pekka Pennanen
8 The development and institutionalization of Albanian music during the communist period
Erjada Progonati
9 ‘Please, Mile, don’t sing anything political’: Turbo-folk, politics and the restoration of capitalism in Serbia
Aleksandar Momčilović
10 The artistic units of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (ARBiH), popular patriotic music production, and the question of national identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war from 1992 to 1995
Petra Hamer
11 The politics of performance and popular music in Turkey
Gonca Girgin and Merve Eken Kucukaksoy
12 Songs after genocide: music of hatred and triumphalism
Hariz Halilovich
PART III: Defining ‘the popular’
13 Popular music and the ‘mass culture’ of socialist Yugoslavia in the eyes of critics and theorists
Reana Senjković
14 To traghoudhi tou nekrou adelfou: Mikis Theodorakis’ autoethnographic and political perspectives in a contemporary Greek laiki tragedy
Maria Athanasiou
15 Groovy aesthetics, intercultural perspectives, and the rise of Ethnojazz in Bulgaria
Claire Levy
16 The sound of distinction: social class and political orientations as predictors of music taste in Croatia
Krešimir Krolo and Željka Tonković
17 Popular culture and pandemic politics: musically mitigating COVID-19 in 2020 Bulgaria
Donna A. Buchanan
PART IV: Political economies and political aesthetics
18 Women and gender in the early record industry in former Yugoslavia: snapshots of singers, a composer, industrial manpower, and gendered humour
Naila Ceribašić
19 The musical film genre in Romanian cinema: from melodramatic socialism to postmodern irony
Doru Pop
20 In search of national style: Yugoslav popular music between the Balkans and the Mediterranean
Anita Buhin
21 How do you solve a problem like Korea?: Laibach and the poetics of politics
Irena Šentevska
22 White power music and antifascist rap: anti-system music in Greece during the 2009–21 crises
George Kordas
23 Popular culture or resistance?: rap and politics in Turkey since the 1990s
Ozan Eren
PART V: Margins of national belonging
24 The neopontic music of Greece: traditions of modernity and the a/politics of identity
Ioannis (Yannis) Tsekouras
25 Just Mediterranean, please: Croatian neoklapa music and national (Re)positioning
Eni Buljubašić
26 Between the virtual and the make-believe: anthems, bells, and a performance for Liberland along the Croatian and Serbian Danube
Ian MacMillen
27 Queering Bulgarian pop-folk: hybridity, gaga feminism, and defamiliarization in chalga
Elitza Kotzeva
28 Understanding gender and sexuality in sevdah as a popular genre
Damir Imamović
PART VI: Globalizing postcoloniality and race
29 Black popular musics in Yugoslavia
Linda Cimardi
30 ‘The Blacks of Yugoslavia’: racialization, resistance, and Kosova’s ‘MTV generation’
Jane C. Sugarman
31 Br/otherhood and dis/unity: racial differentiations across the former Yugoslav region and Serbian diaspora communities in Serbia’s two major music festivals
Jelena Gligorijević
32 What is this ‘Balkan’ in Balkan popular culture?: Stuart Hall’s sociology of popular culture, identity and race through analogy and connection
Catherine Baker
33 From AfroGreeks to the Black Mediterranean: de/facing whiteness in the rap of Negros tou Moria
Penelope Papailias
PART VII: New technologies and transformations
34 Stacking nightingales, male tears, and albums of the year: how the Balkans and other scales of domestic hip-hop are crafted
Owen Kohl and Dragana Cvetanović
35 ‘Popularity’ in the YouTube era: an anthropological analysis of music trending on Serbian YouTube and IDJTV
Marija Ajduk
36 From turbo music to turbo politics: pop-folk and anti-establishment politics in Bulgaria
Dragomir Stoyanov and Elza Ibroscheva
37 ‘Dajem ti srce, zemljo moja’: patriotic music and national unity in Croatia in the aftermath of the 2020 Petrinja earthquake
Ivana Polić
38 ‘And then we sang’: affective communities and Russian/EU cultural diplomacy in Moldova’s Victory Day and Europe Day, 2022
Domenico Valenza
39 Queer Yugosphere: queer audiences and popular music in the post-Yugoslav space
Mišo Kapetanović
Index
Biography
Catherine Baker is Reader in 20th Century History at the University of Hull.
