Music in Postsocialism – Looking Back at the First Three Decades

2022

This article aims to give a broader understanding of Lithuanian music’s contribution into the formation and transformation of historical and cultural images of and narratives about European identities after the end of the Cold War. Based on a new post-historical approach to the description of history and culture ‘in many different voices’, it is intended to explore post-communist musical imagination in Lithuania and its international reception through analysis of assembled case studies and musical criticism. In addition, it is aimed to discuss how individual artistic expressions of belonging to or exclusion from the European past and present were included or rejected into artistic discourses and cultural exchange on both sides of the ‘Velvet Curtain’, a metaphor for the post-communist state, that is, an invisible yet palpable divide, which separated “Old Europe” and “New “Europe” in the period of eastern enlargement of the European Union at the turn of the 21st century.

As the distance from the Cold War increases, we are able to understand that the image of the period's culture has been conceived with a bipolarity that leads to unrealistic interpretations. Although such bipolar looks to the immediate past/ are as a rule moderated with the process of time, in the case of the Cold War it will take, it seems, much longer than usual because of the propaganda techniques and nets --brutal or refined--that have been cultivated in both sides. Also, because one of the poles has the significance of the war's winner, and the advantage of a globalised language.

Südosteuropäische Hefte, Jg 1, Nr. 2, 77-87., 2012

Cultural traditions in their local understanding are bound to particular places and to a particular social setting, possessing generally a high degree of interaction. The exercise of political power and the commercialization of traditional music have fundamentally shaken this interactive relation between sound, space and social action. Local identities and histories became confronted with constructed national identities and a homogenized national history. Musical practice witnessed a process of uprooting, the division of performers from their audience related to an emotional reconfiguration. The emotionally and spatially-bound cultural practice became redefined in terms of a static “cultural object” whose aesthetic properties were highlighted over its dynamic functional and interactional character. This progression from local tradition towards national folklore had many implications and was often accompanied or accelerated by state-directed audiovisual media. The symbolic distancing of musical practice from its origin had undeniable socio-political implications. Especially in the communist regimes of Southeastern Europe this act was interpreted as a logical parallel movement to the break with the ill-famed past in other spheres of the society. After the fall of the communist regimes cultural practice was re-appropriated and re-contextualized on an impressive scale by local actors. The return of the Local was guided by wider (cultural) politics of regionalization and re-traditionalization and the needs of a world-wide music market with a growing interest in what was called “authentic” and “rooted” musical practice. At the same time the brand “Balkan music” emerged, depicting an apolitical “emotional territory” which stood in sharp contrast to the image of the Balkans in the Western mediascape.

Marija Golubović, Monika Novaković, Miloš Marinković (eds.): Shaping the Present by the Future: Ethno/musicology and Contemporaneity, 2020

Young Musicology Belgrade is the third conference in the series that began with the Young Musicology Prague conference, organized by Department of Music History, Institute of Ethnology, of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 2016, and followed by the Young Musicology Munich conference in autumn 2018 that was held at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In this instalment in Belgrade, our starting point is the following question: what is the place of ethno/musicological thought in the contemporary world? The notion of contemporaneity, while constantly provoking theorization, provides us the opportunity to self-reflect and analyze our own methodologies, strategies and scientific challenges in the present moment. What is happening in ethno/musicology after modernist historicism and its postmodern critical self-examination in movements such as the New Ethno/Musicology? Are the familiar methodologies still relevant, have they improved or changed, and in what ways? How can we establish fruitful inter/transdisciplinary collaborations between ethno/musicology and other humanities, social or natural sciences? What is the impact of technology and media in today’s musicology and ethnomusicology? These are just a few questions faced by the humanities by the contemporary world, and the aim of our conference is to draft possible answers by giving voice to the young experts in our fields. In this conference, PhD students and young scholars will reflect upon these topics, and share their methodologies, experiences and challenges in dealing with various subjects of contemporary ethno/musicology. The starting points of our conference include contemporary challenges in ethno/musicology; methodology of contemporary ethno/musicology; the future of ethno/ musicology; inter/trans-disciplinary collaborations; ethno/musicology and technology; ethno/musicology and media – important subjects which occupy the minds of our keynote speakers as well as our participants. Dr. David Beard asks the following questions: Have there been new conflicts and tensions? What does the current situation indicate about the future? With intention to answer those and associated questions in his keynote lecture Musicology, Crisis and the Contemporary, Or: Musicology’s Oedipus Complex focusing on two concepts: crisis and the contemporary. In his search for answers, he will navigate his way through the context of quality of musical education, political and ideological ramifi cations of the humanities as well as concerns and problems in society musicology is becoming aware of. What can musicology do against such concerns and in what way? Dr. Selena Rakočević will, in her keynote lecture Challenges of ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological research within the ever changing world. A view of a scholar from Serbia, provide us with the invaluable insight into the challenges she met as a scholar practicing ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological research since mid-1990s, but also those of her colleagues from Serbia and other former Yugoslav countries. Rakočević also states that it is her intention to confront all various voices which shaped her current personal view of what is being done in our ethnomusicological and ethnochoreological research, the way it is done and the reason behind doing just that in the first place. In the end, she will try to identify the importance this reason carries within itself and for whom. Our participants will encompass the wide range of topics in regards to musical performance, the relationship of ethnomusicology and contemporaneity, challenges in researching minority music, questions of musical folklorism, musicology and film studies, the status of radio art in musicology, musicology and metal music studies, post-feminism and feminism, education, developments of methodologies relevant to the research of musical borrowing, computational musicology, musicology and virtual reality, place of musicology in personal computing revolution and others. We hope this exchange of thoughts, concerns and answers to the urgent matters will prompt scholars to ask new questions and also equip them to answer the future challenges they will face.

Music History Today ISSN 1450-9814 The Future of Music History [Будућност историје музике], Journal of THE INSTITUTE OF MUSICOLOGY SASA, 2019

The Fifth Hellenic Week of Contemporary Music (Athens, 1976) has been mainly considered in the context of a major political event: the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. However, it may also be seen as a landmark for the transition to a postmodern era in Greece. The musical works presented during the Week, as well as their reception by the musical community are indicative of this transition. This paper aims at exploring those two perspectives and places the emphasis on the second, through an analytical comment on Le Tricot Rouge by Giorgos Kouroupos and the critiques in the press.

Ethnomusicology Review [non-peer-reviewed article], 2016

Music and Democracy, 2021

This paper explores subaltern cultural counterpublics in Serbia in the last three decades, through different forms of performative and participatory music activism: from radio activism, public noise, and performances in public spaces during the 1990s, to self-organized choirs in the 2000s and 2010s. By referring to the concept of citizenship, it emphasizes the importance of the relationship between politicality and performance in the public sphere. Analyzed case studies have shown how subaltern counterpublics brought together aesthetical, ethical, and intellectual positions, challenging principles imposed by the state and the church. Through music activism, cultural counterpublics addressed different social anomies: nationalism, xenophobia, social exclusion, hatred, civil rights, and social justice, becoming a focal point of civil resistance, a discursive arena that provokes and subverts mainstream politics. An interdisciplinary research framework has been achieved through linking music and cultural studies with political sciences and performance studies, then applied to the data gathered from the empirical ethnographic research covering several case studies.

2017

Although, with the turn in the discipline since the 1980s, musicologists no longer assume their role to be that of arbiters of "good music", the instruction of Boethius-"Look to the highest of the heights of heaven"has continued to motivate musicological inquiry. By contrast, music which is popular but perceived as "bad" has generated surprisingly little interest. This dissertation looks at Polish post-socialist music through the lenses of musical phenomena that came to prominence after socialism collapsed but which are perceived as controversial, undesired, shameful, and even dangerous. They run the gamut from the perceived nadir of popular music to some works of the most renowned contemporary classical composers that are associated with the suffix-polo, an expression that comes from disco polo, the first genre that came to prominence after socialism collapsed and is commonly associated with poor taste and a business-inspired aesthetic compromise. Combining methods used in ethnomusicology and musicology, my study is guided by the questions: How does music become "bad" and why? What does it tell us about ongoing cultural discourses and social cleavages in Polish society after the fall of socialism? The dissertation is structured around three case studies: (i) disco polo, (ii) Polish hip hop and hiphopolo, and (iii) application of the term sacropolo to music with religious content, with an emphasis on rubikopolo. They are followed by analysis of patterns and schemes of silencing (as defined by Thiesmeyer 2003) experienced by these musical phenomena in confrontation with the dominant discourse in contemporary Poland, exposing the double and disguised nature of such iii silencing. The study is preceded by analysis of the cultural policy of the socialist state, which has profound implications for the functioning of music in Poland after its fall and provides a platform for addressing ideas about vision and mission of Polish culture, concepts regarding music and cultural hierarchies, assumptions regarding folk and popular music, and the myth of Poland. The music discussed in this dissertation was linked to a specific socioeconomic context. With its change, the prominence and relevance of music altered. Moreover, all of these controversial musical phenomena challenged the organizational and conceptual framework of music making in post-socialist Poland (which stems from the previous system and has been influenced by some nineteenth century ideas) and clashed with official discourses. Although reasons behind their silencing were multiple and varied from case to case, they all interfere with the official narration about the post-socialist transformation, which pictured the current transition to capitalism and merging with Western Europe as the best and only option. They bring a different perspective to Poland's relationship to the West, both actual and desired, and emphasize a set of values alternative to the one promoted by the dominant discourse. On the other hand, music which experienced silencing in post-socialist Poland fits into categories enumerated by Lizardo and Skiles (2015) as safe for symbolic exclusion by the musically "tolerant". Therefore the same mechanism that sanctions the rejection of music associated with what cosmopolitanism is not and with communities and cultures that are perceived to promote intolerance in the discursive configuration which celebrates openness to cultural diversity, may be at play here.

This essay is published in the Cultural Musicology iZine (http://culturalmusicology.org/discussion/), and responds to the recent debates on the disciplinary identity at the Department of Musicology, University of Amsterdam.

Acta Musicologica, 2018

Strong ideological positions have historically generated many of the most inuential discourses in musicology, shaping the distinctions between local, individual approaches to understanding music and the more universal, collective practices of music scholarship. The rise of modern musicology during the nineteenth century and its globalization in the twentieth and twenty-rst centuries have depended no less on the spread of grand theory than on the ability to redeploy musicological method through ideologies that served the few rather than the many. Among the ideologies that most closely accompanied musicology's expansion were those that laid the most passionate claims for ownership and the valuation of self over other: nation and race, particularly in their most extreme ideological expressions, nationalism and racism. At various historical moments, dierent attributes accrued to nation and race, often making it dicult to view the musics of national and cultural entities positively or negatively. Nation and race are not only objects of musicological thought, but to a certain extent also its product. In fascist and racist regimes, some musicologists were-and are-willing to embrace research themes consonant with the political agendas of current rulers. However, even in democratic contexts, musicology, as with scientic discourse in general, contributes to the shaping of cultural, political, and racial identities, and is therefore part of the phenomenon it seeks to describe. Histories of Western art music undertaken over the course of the twentieth century took the form of national music histories, and-more often consciously than not-contributed to the construction of their own national cultural identities. Toward the end of the twentieth century, increasing globalization and networking in every area of life led to dissolution of the tenet of national cultures as concepts of hybridity and mobility grew increasingly important for music scholarship. New research foci on cultural transfer, cultural exchanges, and tangled histories were the methodological consequence of this turn. At the same time, critical reection on the role of academic discourse in the deployment of colonial and post-colonial power changed the attitude and the methods of Western ethnomusicologists when approaching their research elds. New concepts about subjectivity and the social processes shaping subject positions opened new perspectives in musicological research on gender, ethnicity, and race. As a result, entire elds, such as subaltern and disability studies, emerged. Notwithstanding the long history of studying nation and race as contexts for musical meaning, a more dramatic ideological turn has taken place in recent years,

Musicological Annual, 2018

2017

Although, with the turn in the discipline since the 1980s, musicologists no longer assume their role to be that of arbiters of "good music", the instruction of Boethius-"Look to the highest of the heights of heaven"has continued to motivate musicological inquiry. By contrast, music which is popular but perceived as "bad" has generated surprisingly little interest. This dissertation looks at Polish post-socialist music through the lenses of musical phenomena that came to prominence after socialism collapsed but which are perceived as controversial, undesired, shameful, and even dangerous. They run the gamut from the perceived nadir of popular music to some works of the most renowned contemporary classical composers that are associated with the suffix-polo, an expression that comes from disco polo, the first genre that came to prominence after socialism collapsed and is commonly associated with poor taste and a business-inspired aesthetic compromise. Combining methods used in ethnomusicology and musicology, my study is guided by the questions: How does music become "bad" and why? What does it tell us about ongoing cultural discourses and social cleavages in Polish society after the fall of socialism? The dissertation is structured around three case studies: (i) disco polo, (ii) Polish hip hop and hiphopolo, and (iii) application of the term sacropolo to music with religious content, with an emphasis on rubikopolo. They are followed by analysis of patterns and schemes of silencing (as defined by Thiesmeyer 2003) experienced by these musical phenomena in confrontation with the dominant discourse in contemporary Poland, exposing the double and disguised nature of such iii silencing. The study is preceded by analysis of the cultural policy of the socialist state, which has profound implications for the functioning of music in Poland after its fall and provides a platform for addressing ideas about vision and mission of Polish culture, concepts regarding music and cultural hierarchies, assumptions regarding folk and popular music, and the myth of Poland. The music discussed in this dissertation was linked to a specific socioeconomic context. With its change, the prominence and relevance of music altered. Moreover, all of these controversial musical phenomena challenged the organizational and conceptual framework of music making in post-socialist Poland (which stems from the previous system and has been influenced by some nineteenth century ideas) and clashed with official discourses. Although reasons behind their silencing were multiple and varied from case to case, they all interfere with the official narration about the post-socialist transformation, which pictured the current transition to capitalism and merging with Western Europe as the best and only option. They bring a different perspective to Poland's relationship to the West, both actual and desired, and emphasize a set of values alternative to the one promoted by the dominant discourse. On the other hand, music which experienced silencing in post-socialist Poland fits into categories enumerated by Lizardo and Skiles (2015) as safe for symbolic exclusion by the musically "tolerant". Therefore the same mechanism that sanctions the rejection of music associated with what cosmopolitanism is not and with communities and cultures that are perceived to promote intolerance in the discursive configuration which celebrates openness to cultural diversity, may be at play here.

Etnoantropološki Problemi, 2019

With the idea of popularizing the study of music in the local anthropological community, the national academic conference Anthropology of music was held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, on March 23, 2018. At the conference, 24 papers were presented. In the second and fourth issues of the journal Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology for the year 2018 thirteen papers were published from the above-mentioned conference. In this thematic issue we publish third and last part of articles concerning music: Ana Banić Grubišić and Nina Kulenović – Turbotronik – on the Border between the Local Music Scene and a Genre in the Making; Nina Kulenović and Ana Banić Grubišić – "Turbo-folk rocks!": new readings of turbo-folk; Marija Ajduk – Representing the Yugoslav New Wave in the Documentary Film "The New Wave in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a Social Movement"; Ana Dajić and Sonja Radivojević – Radio "On the Cloud": New Author Approaches in C...