Who’s Singing over There? Transnationalism in Post-Yugoslav Popular Music and Its Boundaries

Abstract

This paper examines transnational relations between the Yugoslav successor states from the point of view of popular music, and demonstrates how transnational musical figures (such as Djordje Balašević, Momčilo Bajagić-Bajaga, or Ceca Ražnatović) are interpreted as symbolic reference points in national ethnopolitical discourse in the process of identity construction. Another symbolic function is served by Serbian turbofolk artists, who in Croatia serve as a cultural resource to distance oneself from a musical genre associated by many urban Croats with the ruralization (and Herzegovinization) of Croatian city space. Also, value judgements associated with both Serbian and Croatian newly-composed folk music provide an insight into the transnational negotiation of conflicting identities in the ex-Yugoslav context. Ultimately, the paper shows how the ethnonational boundaries established by nationalizing ideologies created separate cultural spaces which themselves have been transnationalized after Yugoslavia's disintegration.

Keywords

• transnationalism
• boundaries
• popular music
• former Yugoslavia
• Serbia
• Croatia