Ismayil Fataliyev
This piece of writing will try to show that people living in the space of ex-Yugoslavia, the federation that disappeared three decades ago, intentionally or not have managed to keep transcendent humanitarian links, kinness, belonging to the common socio-mental domain. And the turbo-folk is one of the tools that has made it happen. The essay is not about popular representatives of this music genre such as Ceca, Severina, Seka Aleksic, and others, their lives and career although some facts from their biographies will help to reveal the popularity of turbo-folk throughout the region and beyond. The other important reason for naming female turbo-folk singers is to point out the role turbo-folk music, according to the author, plays in shaping the feminist and gender agenda in predominantly masculine regions of the Balkans.
This essay is a set of personal impressions, opinions, and interpretations of the turbo-folk phenomenon by a Balkan outsider, a kind of third-party viewer. Even though having used references to scholars and researchers on this topic, the author is not claiming it to be the final truth. Nor does he attempt to deny opposing views. The fact that the author comes from a culturally different area can lead to certain omissions.
Plenty of academic writings and books about the phenomenon of the turbo-folk have been published. Turbofolk as the initial Serbian successor of the pop-folk along with similar branches that appeared in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania after the collapse of socialism in the Balkans has always been considered a low-class music. First, the political elites of Yugoslavia in the 70th, then of independent Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania were opposing the rise in popularity of the respective branches. However, it did not prevent them, namely Serbian authorities in the Milosevic era, from using it in their political agenda during the Balkan wars in the 1990s and easily got rid of them in the second half of the 90s.
The popularity of turbo folk and the previous emergence of pop-folk music in Yugoslavia was a natural process. Contrary to other socialist camp countries, Yugoslavia proved an exception with wider opportunities for cultural exchange with the West and not omnipresent censorship. That made elements of globalized culture spread in the country. The political elites favored this process and contributed to rooting it in the Balkans. Simply put pop-folk in late and post-Tito`s times and the subsequent spread of its post-communist, modern version, the turbo-folk, first in Serbia and then in Croatia, BiH, and Slovenia was a certain reaction and resistance to de-Balkanization of culture supported by authorities.
From a sociological point of view, the emergence of pop-folk and the development of its branches is indicative of the incompleteness of urbanization, and modernization in the Balkans as well as social inequalities. When it comes to the first, it was, by and large, the urban elites that associated pop-folk and its modern branches with rural migrants, guest workers, the urban working class, and new rich people. When it comes to the second, the majority of current popular singers of turbo-folk are of rural descent. So to say, it provided them with an opportunity to succeed. Music played a role in a social life that the state was not capable or eager to provide.
While political elites described this music as backward and primitive, it was exactly these features to were used by its performers to the full extent to underline the specificity of the Balkan region and its people. But instead of primitivism, down-to-earth emotions, feelings, and desires have been successfully exploited. Considered low-culture, the turbo-folk addressed topics that are of common interest to all Balkan residents. First, there were topics of emigration, nostalgia, and homesickness in the 90s as tens of thousands fled to Western and Central Europe and joined other tens of thousands who had left the country in socialist times to win bread and all of them cherished this music as a kind of haven.
With relative stabilization after the destructive wars to gain ground in the Balkans, turbo-folk switches to modern topics of consumerism, sex, fashion, and nightlife. However, it would not be right to associate its success with the instinctive daily needs and lust of people. Although compared to Socialist Yugoslavia where NCFM (Nowo Kompowana Folk Muzika i.e. newly composed folk music genre), the basic tissue of today`s turbo-folk and other branches of pop-folk, focused on closeness and intimacy of topics in Balkans that dramatically opposed unknown anonymous Eupore and America, the contemporary rather watered-down repertoire of its singers loosely but manage to keep the feeling of transnational commonness alive.
Although Rambo Amadeus, a Balkan jazz musician and the author of the term turbo-folk, accepts that this music was initially referred to as a parody of folk, the abovementioned derision of rural primitivism, nationalism, and value judgment as a low-culture, kitsch music, it underlined imagined Balkan temperament, mentality, spontaneity, passion, and emotion that vividly contrasted with the lifeless West.
Once turbo-folk got rid of “nationalism” in its content, especially after the 2000s, and focused on Balkan identity instead, its follower numbers increased particularly among young people. Accompanied by the personal life experience of its performers, the turbo-folk transcended the nation-state and paved the way for transnational solidarity making the listener a part of a larger imagined community.
Culturally, turbo-folk across the borders of ex-Yugoslavia is perceived differently. However, it is an incontestable fact that this music is popular and constant. For example, in Croatia, turbo-folk is synonymous with the so-called cultural other i.e. something that is not already an outsider but not “ours” yet as well. It won't become “ours” but it is a part of our life. In popular opinion, it is a Serbia-born phenomenon even though the country has its turbo-folk stars and bands. The content and attitude also differ from the Serbian one. While the latter addresses distress and anxiety that are common in the population of the entire region, in Croatia performers tend to mock Serbia-associated content, specificity of performance of this music genre, even to make fun of it. They call it outsider due to political reasons because the mainstream political narrative and public perception that owes to the devastating Balkan wars imply that a Croat is Croat because he is not a Serb. Therefore, what is sad for a Serb is a matter of fun for a Croat and vice versa.
However, public opinion barometres on turbo-folk show that just elsewhere in the Balkans this music is an inevitable part of everyday life and in Croatia. As the presenter of the popular Croatian TV show concluded following results of a series of TV debates of pro and anti-turbo-folk camps in the 2000s, this music genre functions as a form of social release and cultural antidote to the transition towards neoliberalism and the effects of globalization.” The war between Serbs and Croats and political memory is by far the biggest reason why Croats won't accept turbo-folk as it is. However, simultaneously they can't ignore it either since honey is sweet but the bees sting.
In Slovenia, turbo-folk is the symbol of the exotic Balkan. It is popular among the youth that take this music now as cool. And it is not an accident. In the early 2000s, research and analysis on music consumption among Slovene youth showed that turbo-folk as a genre was in third place in terms of popularity, just after pop music (11%) and rock music (18%), and much ahead of alternative music that is listened to by only 2% of 16–25 year-olds. The previous reference shows that it still keeps increasing its popularity. Why so? Do many Slovenes prefer not to refer to themselves as Balkan people, according to the mainstream narrative, calling once neighboring nations from ex-Yugoslavia ``southerners”? It seems that popular tastes, and preferences can not only be calculated due to political conjuncture and mainstream political agenda that associate the country with German cultural terrain thanks to belonging to the Habsburg empire during the last four centuries. After another century of being an integral part of various states of Southern Slavs, the nation's identity is seemingly at the intersection of being semi-German and semi-Balkan. While mainstream politics and media are eager for the German or Central European component to prevail and even dominate, the natural internal Balkanness does not let it happen. And undoubtedly turbo-folk music plays a certain role in this as numbers of its listeners increase especially among the youth. Moreover, more frequent direct communication with “southerners” that ordinary Slovenes have while on summer vacation at the Adriatic coast and further inward, contribute to it too. I think Slovens` “cool” for turbo-folk is a lot different from the “cool” of a European from the rest of the continent. It is not occasional, temporary, or artificial.
In BiH, it is a combination of two attitudes towards the turbo folk music which is obvious given the decentralized nature of the BiH: Croats prefer to mock it, Bosniaks take it for cool, Serbs - follow the pattern in Serbia, the Cica`s pattern of which I will talk a bit later in the context of the role this genre has played in first demoting and later promoting the gender agenda in the region. In BiH, turbo-folk was popular in war times. It gained popularity even afterward although it received no support from international funds that promoted culture in the post-war Balkan region mainly due to the bad reputation of the turbo-folk being a nationalistic tool in war times and the negative memory it generated. Since the 2000s and on, performers of turbo-folk in BiH largely go beyond local or nationalist politics trying to follow market and pop music estrada rules first. Turbo-folk performer Seka Aleksić's professional and personal experience is evident in this regard. Although being banned or restricted on TV, the generation of these turbo-folk performers not only vanished but prospered. In my opinion, this is another indication of the non-artificial popular nature and support for this genre.
In the Balkans, many post-socialist regions have suffered from the sudden vacuum that appeared after the collapse of the socially oriented Yugoslavia. One of the biggest achievements during the socialist Yugoslavia times was the promotion of women's roles and rights both in personal and professional life in the mainly paternalistic and patriarchal societies of the entities Yugoslavia consisted of. Together with the federation's collapse, this social politics started to lag. Disastrous wars in the region contributed to aggravating the situation of women. While socialist Yugoslavia safeguarded women's rights as well as created promotion opportunities as never before in the region, the post-socialist period revealed the old and opened new wounds: atomization of families, inequality in employment, human trafficking in women, prostitution, and domestic violence.
On one hand, according to feminist organizations functioning in the region since the 90s, turbo folk music has been the genre that hugely exploited women. It constructed the image of a pliant subordinate Balkan woman that is aimed at nothing but exciting men. Sanja Sarnavka from the B.a.B.e organization complains that due to this music genre, women are reduced to their bodies and their appearances. Partly, it is true as it echoes the genre`s heritage of the 90s. Together with women dressed in erotic vetements, accordion playing, and oriental sounds, turbo-folk referred to kafana tradition, a traditional men`s assembly point for leisure and relaxation. While it was on, gender-related issues such as domestic violence against women, a widespread problem in Southeast Europe, have been a private matter. Leave aside a subject of legislation or public policy. Widespread open sexism in Southeast Europe at the workplace, in the media, in advertisements, and politics was complemented with a machismo, heroic concept in the Balkans.
As mentioned above, during the disastrous wars in the Balkans, turbo-folk was instrumental in supporting the mainstream nationalistic narrative of the Milosevic government. It was he who gave the green light to many performers of the genre to promote his agenda. One performer stands apart from others. This is Svetlana Raznatowicz, better known as Ceca, a Serbian turbo-folk performer.
Her personal and professional paths go hand in hand with the role turbo-folk has played in forming the gender and feminist agenda of the region. Having gained her popularity in the Milosevic era, she has been taken since then as a nationalistic camp performer. It was these times when turbo-folk was also instrumental in further weakening women`s positions and describing them as an object of sexual pleasure, servant, not an independent subject i.e. the very narrative of the feminist organizations on turbo-folk`s role.
Interestingly, the performer denies any allegations of nationalism saying she sang about her love for Serbia. It is worth mentioning that the single anti-war song she had then never went on air in Serbia and beyond. However, her marriage with a famous nationalist, a war beneficent who was allegedly a war criminal, was widely broadcast in Serbia which undoubtedly gained her reputation as a nationalistic performer. His death and her return to her music career changed the media perception of her in the Balkans. Considered the Balkan Madonna (a well-known US pop diva), she is extremely popular among the youth in the ex-entities of Yugoslavia.
Once the genre got rid of nationalism chains, its content gained down-to-earth topics comprehensive for ordinary people. While many other performers of turbo-folk (and popular music in general) want to show ‘attitude’ through their content with powerful and emotive voices, Ceca tends to lean toward sensations that are commonly found among the population.
Academically speaking, her music enacts emotions that are present in the public: frustration with the current economic situation, still ongoing violence and the impossibility of getting to know its true reasons, dissolution of the family as a social unit, pressures of an emotional relationship, and the failure of newly-born Balkan states to face their most recent mutual history objectively. On a regular person`s understanding, she addresses and positions her diverse audiences and their anxieties, dreams, and hopes. The analysis of the poll conducted in 2010 among teenagers in Slovenia and Croatia to reveal reasons for Ceca`s popularity, showed that youngsters there do not only associate Ceca with “the celebration of the exotic and spectacular but also the power of a woman who is similar to “us,” full of pain, suffering, and despair.” Amazingly, her young Croat followers who lost family members and close friends in the Balkan wars were instinctively turning a blind eye to her wartime reputation and ties with radical Serbian nationalists.
Ceca turned into a powerful role model, especially because she is a celebrity “from below” of rural descendants. Despite this fact, her success promises similar success for the youth. Her example shows that the rise of individual talent and new forms of social mobility are not fictitious. The analysis`s authors conclude that no matter how they listen to her music, Ceca represents cultural leadership and psychological reinforcement. And the fact that she is a Balkan woman with rural roots magnifies this effect. Interestingly, the gender roles of turbo-folk female performers destabilize the limits of Serb-Orthodox nationalism as well. Simply put, it deprives the masculine Serbian church of a monopoly on nationalism.
In 2009 there was another study by Predrag Cvitanovic of over 100 (former) Yugoslav songs that refer to “Balkan”. He divides the musical use of “Balkan as metaphor” into four categories: Balkan as an area of war and conflict; Balkan as a source of joy, passion, and fatalism; gendered Balkan (primitive male/beautiful and resistant female); and Balkan as Europe’s other. In the case of turbo-folk, most musical references to the Balkans fall under the category of “joy, passion, and fatalism.”
In these songs, we can see another indication of the emancipating role of turbo-folk in the Balkans. This is a gradual de-monopolization of the katana, a traditional women-free, male cafe/leisure spot and assembly point. The turbo-folk singers transferred their performances into it and made listeners and watchers get used to the fact that the century-long monopolistic rights of men in public places have long gone.
Conclusion
Turbo-folk music is in the DNA of people living in the terrain of what used to be Yugoslavia. It is just like one of many elements that indicate belonging to the Balkans i.e. things that are not fashionable and advantageous to expose but impossible to forget due to reluctance and and so to get rid of. Although it is expressed differently, one can't deny that it also helps to keep the sense of Balkanness sustainable.
Simply put, if a hypothetical Croat, Serb, Slovene, or Bosniak hears the rhythm of turbo-folk somewhere else beyond the Balkans, they will unintentionally flock around the source of the music. And when it comes to gender issues in the region, contemporary turbo-folk is rather constructive, not destructive music. Its destructive element was the nationalistic agenda in its performances that disappeared with the Balkan wars of the 90s.
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