Защо се гордеем с Балканите?
Why Do You Take Pride in the Balkans?

Summary/Abstract: After the disintegration of Yugoslavia, one of the things, which remained common to the countries, which cropped up in its place, has been the scorn to the Balkans. This scorn is voiced by the political elites, who put forward their programmes for national emancipation, modernization and democratization as a flight from the Balkans. In the rich scholarly literature, dedicated to the Balkan discourse, stand¬ing out first has been the investigation of the negative stereotypes concerning the Balkans. But, as researchers have been noticing, there are also examples of resistance against the negative stereotypes concerning the Balkans, which some authors discuss as “counter-cultural strategies”, referring to the popular culture of the Balkans as to a phenomenon, having found expression during the 1990s. This culture arrogantly glorifies the Balkans as they actually are: backward and oriental, but own and close. Among the genres of the popular culture, being included in that counter-cultural strategy, the new music folklore, should be placed first. It has been called “turbo-folk” in Serbia, “chalga” – in Bulgaria, and “morale” – in Romania. Attempts have also been made to present the Balkan ethno-music as a living evidence that the negative stereotypes concerning the Balkans are ungrounded, or at least, one-sided. These are variants of the positive picture of the Balkans, “wrapped in high culture”. How can the Balkans be “wrapped” in high culture? In what way can they be¬come a valuable quality, something, of which the Balkan people can take pride in the world? The answer to this question can be found in the Balkan ethno-music, belonging to which is the music of Goran Bregovic and the group “The Mystery of the Bulgarian voices”. This music, as people say, is today evidence of the fact that the Balkans are not such an arena of discord, misunderstandings, intolerance and hate, but just the opposite – a space whose cultural tradition and the musical, more particularly, is completely under the sign of mutual interpenetration and cooperation of the different peoples, living here. Therefore the Balkans, practically, turn out also to be a metaphor of multiple culture. At the end of this short review of the positive stereotypes concerning the Balkans, I shall say that we should not be misled and take pride in the Balkans, as we should not hold tight the negative stereotypes and then be horrified by them.

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