"Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music" edited by Danijela Š. Beard (2020)

 

I have read quite a few books on the subject of popular music in my homeland (as it was back than) but so far they were always focused on pop & rock music - there is this huge discrepancy between what urban centres promoted and what actually is accepted and loved across the whole region. With all my love and respect for works of Petar Luković and Siniša Škarica, theirs was just a part of the story. Even as a child, when I was growing up, I was aware that its only in big cities that audiences actually care for classical music or chanson or anything really urban - step outside of the cities and the whole countryside is all about folk music and its countless variations. We used to look down and snicker at those but the tide has turned and apparently kids today are accepting it in all the seriousness. 

According to this book, the actual sales of gramophone records in 1980s were genuinely reflecting what was the taste of the nation - folk music was almost 60% of total sales, followed by 29% pop and only 13 % of pop music. This is something I always suspected. If you read the magazines, it was all about pop stars and rock music but in reality, this was happening only in the big cities - the rest of the country was all about folk musicians who existed in their own universe and had 0 support from the critics and journalists. And this is why this book is so fascinating and illuminating, because it points not only at popular music - which was already covered elsewhere - but also seriously discusses various branches outside of urban genres - like folk, starogradska, music of Macedonia, the phenomenon of Lepa Brena and even festivals of patriotic songs that were promoted by the regime. 

Because its a collection of 19 different essays (and various authors) at first it appeared a bit dry but soon I was won over by the sheer scope of the subject and how respectful these authors were: without exception, they approached their genres with greatest attention and explained why this matters and when did it happen and how it lead to something else. Every single name here was a link in the chain that created much bigger story and if at times it seems a bit too politicised, its only because I was not aware of it back than - I was a teenager who did not care for the political background of this music - this was a very welcome read and will probably return to it at some point. The whole series seem very interesting as this publisher has a lot of similar titles with introduction to music of various countries.