Made in Yugoslavia

Studies in Popular Music

Danijela Beard, Ljerka Rasmussen, Danijela Š. Beard, Ljerka V. Rasmussen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781315452319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica

Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of popular music in Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav region across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book consists of chapters by leading scholars and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of music in the region that for most of the past century was known as Yugoslavia. Exploring the role played by music in Yugoslav art, culture, social movements, and discourses of statehood, this book offers a gateway into scholarly explanation of a key region in Eastern Europe. An introduction provides an overview and background on popular music in Yugoslavia, followed by chapters in four thematic sections: Zabavna -Pop; Rock, Punk, and New Wave; Narodna (Folk) and Neofolk Music; and the Politics of Popular Music Under Socialism.

PART I
Zabavna-pop

Beyond the Balkans, Yugoslavia’s popular music invariably raises a question: how could Yugoslavia, a communist state, create a thriving commercial music industry and embrace Western market principles when such an approach was theoretically at odds with the communist ideology and state socialism? The answer is by producing a form of homegrown popular music – termed zabavna muzika or glazba (lit. “entertainment” music) – which embodied the idealized concept of popular culture at home, but that also bolstered Yugoslavia’s international image as the most liberal communist state in Europe. Zabavna-pop, to use the term we propose in this volume, stands for the “mainstream” popular music of Yugoslavia. Because it had neither the subversive connotations of jazz and rock nor the “kitsch” (šund) qualities ascribed to commercial narodna-folk, it was hailed as the most politically and stylistically suitable form of entertainment, one that best corresponded with the aspirational middle-class concept of socialist culture. With strong state support and rapid development of institutional infrastructure, namely through the founding of zabavna music festivals in the 1950s, backed by the national radio and television networks, zabavna-pop evolved into a fully-fledged entertainment industry (estrada) by the 1970s, with megastars who sold millions of records – a capitalist/consumerist mode of operation that distinguished Yugoslavia from much of the Eastern Bloc.

Stylistically, zabavna-pop initially developed through emulation and creative responses to dominant European genres such as Italian canzone, French chanson, and German schlager, as well as Russian romansa and American crooners. Dalmatian klapa group singing and the starogradska (old-urban) variety of music, rooted in local traditions beyond the Serbo-Croatian nexus (namely in Macedonia, Slovenia, and Vojvodina), contributed to the regional diversity of zabavna style. As it grew into an exportable domestic product, especially into the Eastern Bloc, zabavna served as a model for the commercial rise of newly composed folk music (novokomponovana narodna muzika), a process that reversed during the 1980s when neofolk producers and singers forayed into both zabavna-pop and rock cultures.

The first two chapters in this section interrogate the institutional and aesthetic foundations of Yugoslavia’s zabavna music. Jelena Arnautović analyzes the evolution of the zabavna scene through a comparative study of two megastars from the 1950s and 1970s (Đorđe Marjanović and Zdravko Čolić), illustrating how the mechanics of the pop music industry shifted from the emulation of European and American models to a homegrown estrada music business. Anita Buhin continues this theme but looks more specifically at the lucrative links between zabavna and Yugoslav tourism, one of the main drivers of the country’s economy. Buhin explores how Adriatic coastal culture was fashioned as a symbol of “European” and “civilizing” effects on Yugoslavia’s culture during the 1950s and 1960s, and argues that the creation of zabavna was part of Yugoslavia’s policy of “exporting” coastal culture designed to showcase the diversity and optimistic visions of its socialist program of development.

The other two chapters in this section deal with ways in which zabavna intersected with other genres. Vesna Andree Zaimović looks at how Sarajevo’s specific cultural milieu, with its brisk social commentary and humor shaped the lasting legacy of the Sarajevo pop-rock scene. In this competing, pluralist environment, zabavna is an adaptive, responsive form, and artists associated with it consciously blurred the lines between pop and rock. By contrast, Irena Paulus explores zabavna-pop as a more inward facing, soul-searching form of personal and social critique. Focusing on the chanson-inspired aesthetic of the celebrated singer-songwriter Arsen Dedić, Paulus considers how his work as a film composer attests not only to his musical versatility but also that of zabavna music more broadly, with songs that combine a timeless mix of satire, critical commentary, and intellectual acuity. Together these four authors analyze how zabavna-pop not only reflected regional and stylistic diversity but also laid the very foundations for a music industry in the former Yugoslavia.

1
Networking Zabavna Muzika

Singers, Festivals, and Estrada

Jelena Arnautović

The umbrella term zabavna muzika/glazba¹ (mainstream popular music; lit. “entertainment” music) emerged in 1950s Yugoslavia, designating a homegrown form of Western-style popular music. According to Godišnjak RTB (the Yearbook of Radio Television Belgrade 1960, 39–40), the term zabavna muzika was introduced by Yugoslav radio stations in order to distinguish entertainment genres from ozbiljna (art music; lit. “serious”) and narodna (folk) music. Until the 1960s, the zabavna label was used rather arbitrarily to denote a variety of vocal and dance music genres, film music, jazz, operettas, and arrangements of international folk songs. This practice continued the pre-war custom of Radio Belgrade, who used the term “light music” for all types of genres considered entertainment that did not require “great concentration” and were “light, cheerful, almost insignificant pieces that one could listen to ‘with one ear’ ” (Radio-Beograd 1936, 1).

The stylistic variety of Yugoslav zabavna music was particularly pronounced during the early post-WWII years: genres derived from German, Italian, French, Russian, and American models included šlager (Schlager), kancona (canzone), šansona (chanson), romansa (romance), and evergrin (evergreen). Singers like Domenico Modugno and Charles Aznavour held particular appeal for audiences and aspiring singers. The first original songs emerging in the mid-1950s were characterized by simple, tender, and appealing melodies, with lyrics based on sentimental love stories. This ballad-style singing accompanied by an orchestra became known as domestic šlager (from Gr. Schlager). Cultural commentators and even politicians of the day had numerous discussions about the “ideal” style of Yugoslav popular music, some arguing that it must be neither too Western or bourgeois, nor too “folky” or Balkan, while others insisted that it must be neither “boring” nor “erotic” (Buhin 2016, 156). In other words, zabavna music had to be a uniquely domestic product, a form of entertainment that would reflect the “progressive foundations” (napredne osnove) of Yugoslavia’s socialist culture (Marković 1995, 392).

The institutional infrastructure for zabavna music developed rapidly from the 1960s throughout Yugoslavia, primarily with the inception of festivals dedicated to zabavna music, bolstered by strong state support from national radio and television networks. Record companies, which produced festival programs, promoted individual singers and secured the growth of a viable commercial market for domestic popular music. As a result, the festivals of zabavna music became a central hub for networking singers, songwriters, broadcasters, and record producers, and laid the foundation for the development of a national zabavna scene in the 1960s. Over the next two decades, zabavna music was transformed into a fully-fledged national estrada (music entertainment industry), providing an economic livelihood to composers, performers, media, and festival organizers alike.

“The Golden Age”: Festivals and the First Music Stars in the 1950s and the 1960s

The main venues where popular music could be heard in postwar Yugoslavia were igranke (dance-entertainment events), which were held in popular student clubs (including Božidarac and Mažestik in Belgrade), and at open public spaces such as sports stadiums. In order to tailor for the diverse audiences, igranke included medleys of revolutionary songs and dance folk music from different Yugoslav regions, alongside foreign popular songs and the latest arrangements of American dance tunes. At the time, all music performed had to be in accordance with the Communist Party’s official line on popular culture, which in the 1950s implied a “lukewarm” attitude toward the West, and especially the United States. As a result, songs imported from abroad were modified for domestic use in the form of cover versions, so-called prepevi/prepjevi, whose lyrics were translated into the Serbo-Croatian language. The vast majority of songs performed before the 1960s under the label zabavna were not original songs but rather simple adaptations of foreign songs, and even in the 1960s, many zabavna hits followed this trend (for example, Miki Jevremović’s “Kuća izlazećeg sunca” [The House of the Rising Sun, 1964] or “Zbogom Kalifornijo” [California Dreaming, 1966]).

The growth of zabavna music as a distinctive genre began with local authors composing original songs in native languages (Slovenian/Serbo-Croatian), most notably Darko Kraljić, who was the first successful and most prolific songwriter.² He rose to fame with the songs “Zvižduk u 8” (Whistle at 8, 1959), recorded by the then hugely popular singer Đorđe Marjanović (who also played the lead role in the 1962 movie Zvižduk u 8), and “Devojko mala” (Hey, Little Girl, 1958), sung by the actor Vlastimir Đuza Stojiljković in the musical comedy Ljubav i moda (Love and Fashion, 1960). Alongside Kraljić, several other songwriters started composing zabavna songs in the 1950s: Milan Kotlić, Dušan Vidak, Mladen Guteša, Aca Nećak, Bojan Adamič, Ljubo Kuntarić, Žarko Petrović, and Dragomir Ristić.³ The pioneering careers of the singers who became indentified with the genre (in Serbia, for example, Vojin Popović, Voja Milanović, Mara Petrović, Olga Nikolić, Olivera Marković, sisters Jeftić) were launched through Yugoslav radio programs, accompanied by radio orchestras that performed both zabavna and jazz music, including Plesni orkestar Radio Ljubljane (The Dance Orchestra of Radio Ljubljana, founded in 1945), Plesni orkestar Radio Zagreba (The Dance Orchestra of Radio Zagreb, founded in 1946), and Zabavni orkestar Radio Beograda (The Entertainment Orchestra of Radio Belgrade, founded in 1948; renamed The Jazz Orchestra in 1960).

Political opening toward the West in the 1960s led to greater opportunities for artists, which included the founding of new cultural and educational institutions, rapid media development, and a general blossoming of cultural life. The early socialist ideals, such as modesty and collectivism, were now overshadowed by popular singers who introduced glamorous Western lifestyles as new aspirational models for Yugoslav citizens to follow (see Marković 1995, 417–24). Numerous festivals of “light music” (lakih nota) were launc...