Traditional music and the anatomy of the festival network between Yugoslavian cultural politics and vernacular values Cover Image

Традиционална музика и анатомија мреже фестивала између Југословенске културне политике и вернакуларних вредности
Traditional music and the anatomy of the festival network between Yugoslavian cultural politics and vernacular values

Author(s): Rastko Jakovljević
Subject(s): Customs / Folklore, Music, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Rural and urban sociology, Sociology of Art, History of Art
Published by: Muzikološki institut SANU
Keywords: traditional music; festivals; Yugoslavia; rural and urban culture; cultural policy;

Summary/Abstract: As offi cial policies in the post-war Yugoslavia were oriented towards economy, mainly tied to towns, rural areas were focused on agriculture to a large extent, as it had been before. However, the Party was determined to revive villages, being of the opinion that life in those areas should be purifi ed from “primitivism” so that it could be set to a higher level concerning issues of education, political structure, local organisation and cultural life. Since people in villages felt determined to maintain their local culture, customs and music, the State offi cials had to fi nd ways to articulate uncanny social behaviours. At the time, folklore and vernacular creative impulse in Serbia was sustained as a “hard cultural form” that by accident or on purpose converted into “soft cultural form” through a wide range of festival activities in Yugoslavia. This signifi cant turn permitted “relatively easy separation of embodied performance from meaning and value, and relatively successful transformation at each level” (Appadurai 1996: 90). The discussion of this paper intends to form a dialogue on the transformation of social structure and politics, which gradually led to severe changes in the areas of traditional musical practice.

  • Issue Year: 1/2012
  • Issue No: 12
  • Page Range: 103-120
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Serbian