title: Belgrade's Music Scenes: Local and Trans-local Interactions in the New Europe
Creators: name: Petkovic, Vladimir
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Belgrade
subject: Music scenes
subject: Indie pop
subject: Electronic dance
subject: Hip hop
subject: Politics
subject: Trans-localism
subject: Night-time economy
subject: Authenticity
subject: Nightlife

description: This thesis looks at three of Belgrade’s music scenes: indie pop, electronic dance and hip hop and their relationship with themes such as politics, trans-localism, the night-time economy, authenticity and gender, with special attention paid to Belgrade’s nightlife that has recently been proclaimed the best in the world by various media outlets (Vogue, BBC, The Guardian). The thesis illustrates how these themes like politics, trans-localism and the night-time economy shifted Serbia’s post-Socialist period and rejuvenated the music scenes in Belgrade The project aims to contextualise Belgrade’s music scenes in the transitional, post-conflict and neo-liberal period of Serbia’s social-political and cultural development in the 1990s and 2000s. The Belgrade music scene is used as a case study, as Belgrade is the city with the most developed music scenes in Serbia but can also be used as a benchmark for musical trends in the country and in the region. This is also due to the fact that most of musicians who want to make it in the industry eventually either end up living in Belgrade or have regular concerts in many of the popular Belgrade venues, thus becoming part of the Belgrade music scene. The research presented in this thesis was also inspired by the fact that in the past ten years Belgrade has been named as one the best places for nightlife in the world, with a Vogue article comparing it to Berlin (2017) and a Lonely Planet article proclaiming Belgrade to be the top party city in the world (2019). Moreover, a 2019 BBC article placed Belgrade among top five creative cities in the world (2019). Belgrade nightlife owes this media attention primarily to its vibrant music scenes. This connection between music and the city has been present in Belgrade since the first days of rock’n’roll in the 1950s and is something that today is attracting both the locals and the tourists in search of boosting their subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995), a term based on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of cultural capital, which discusses different phenomena such as hipness, fashionable haircuts and being in the know. The research itself focuses on three main music scenes that build on the legacy of Belgrade’s rock’n’roll years – indie pop, electronic dance and hip hop. The questions addressed in this project are: 1. What is the relationship between global and local? How much are the music scenes in Belgrade influenced by the styles Anglo-American scenes? 2. Taking into consideration the role of rock’n’roll music in socialist Yugoslavia and 1990’s Belgrade social protests in the period of Balkan wars, can such music still have influence or make changes in society? 3. With a growing number of media headlines about Belgrade’s nightlife, can we say that Belgrade’s nightlife has been commodified? The reason why these research questions guide this study is as follows: the first question is there to see how much of the Belgrade scene is unique or authentic in comparison to other such scenes around the world, thus broadening the scope of contributions to the global research of scenes. The second question is closely connected to the time when this scene was created, which is during the 1990s when anti-government social protests were the norm in Belgrade. This question is asked to see how much political change affected the creation of the scenes and how much music has influenced changes in society. It is suggested that this kind of scene would not be formed today, as contemporary Serbian society is not affected by a totalitarian regime and wars. This gives us a clue how different today’s scenes are from those created during the 1990s. The third question is important because it is looking into the aspect of Belgrade’s nightlife that has been the city’s trademark for the past ten years or so. The question is posed to see whether this characteristic of Belgrade’s music scene has changed over the years and become commodified, something that happened to Berlin’s nightlife, for example, and what kind of challenges Belgrade’s scenes faced because of that. The ethnographic approach used in the thesis is uncovering the everyday narratives of music scene participants and the tensions arising within and between different scenes as they struggle to adapt to the new cultural economy in Serbia (and particularly in Belgrade). In that sense, the three case studies make sense in terms of how they help to expose and scrutinise these tensions. The value of this ethnographic approach is seen in how the participants of the music scene reacted to war and social upheaval in the country during the 1990s. It is also seen later on, in times of peace, when nightlife and parts of the scene were commodified to an extent that they lost touch with the original scenes from the 1990s. It also shows how people within the scenes were dependent on each other, where social networks were sometimes more important than managers and major labels. Additionally, it demonstrates how a battle-born scene in the 1990s has gone through a specific period of adapting to the new reality of a transitional economy in Serbia, and in the process is showing elements of a very specific local milieu. It also illustrates how the post-war period prompted a boom in the night-time economy where many people with subcultural capital were discovering Belgrade and putting it on the world map of nightlife resorts. Overall, this is a significant study because it is the first time the history of Serbian popular music has been studied in depth in English and from an empirical perspective. The thesis provides a rare study of an Eastern European music scene making the transition from socialism to a post-socialist state. In doing so, the scene incorporates neo-liberal elements including gentrification and branding, commodification of the night-time economy. Thus, this thesis presents a singular case study of the New Europe(ean) lifestyle as expressed through musical taste and scene membership. Ultimately, this is a study of how music and culture in an Eastern European country have responded to such changes – and also how they coped with and adapted to a situation of war. The thesis itself consists of six chapters. Chapter 1 is entitled “Music, Place and Identity” and examines current literature on subcultures, place and identity; Chapter 2 provides an overview of the methodology applied in the field research informing this thesis; Chapter 3 is entitled ‘’The History of Popular Music in Serbia from 1956-1990” and explores the historical part of popular Rock’n’Roll in the period of Yugoslavia with developments in folk music. The last three chapters are data chapters and deal with the analysis of the three individual scenes selected for study in this thesis: Chapter 4 is entitled ‘’ How social protests and social networks forged a scene in Eastern Europe: The case of Belgrade’s Indie Pop scene’ and analyses the Indie Pop scene; Chapter 5 is entitled ‘’ From Local Scene to New Berlin: The Case of Belgrade’s Electronic Dance Music Scene’’ and analyses the EDM scene; and Chapter 6 is entitled ‘’When Street Culture Meets Milieu: The Case of Belgrade’s Hip Hop Scene’ and analyses the Hip Hop scene. Chapter 1, “Music, Place and Identity”, surveys the existing literature on popular music, place and identity and music scenes, as this literature is centrally relevant for my research of Belgrade’s music scenes. The chapter is divided into several topics/themes that are used to analyse the proposed scenes. It starts off with the history of research into subcultures, beginning with both the Chicago and Birmingham School of subcultural theories followed by research into post-subcultures, introducing concepts such as neo-tribes, milieu, and music worlds. A separate section is dedicated to work that has been done on music scenes. Other sections in the chapter discuss the literature on social networks and music worlds, milieu and local identity, authenticity, national identity, music as a factor for political change, and music venues. The chapter concludes with a section dedicated to how this literature is connected to the Belgrade music scenes featured in my study. Chapter 2 discusses the main research methods used both in the process of conducting fieldwork in Belgrade and in the process of data analysis. The chapter describes the use of qualitative methods, with a section outlining the use of semi-structured interviews in ethnographic research. It goes on to describe the method of sampling, starting with choosing gatekeepers and their use in helping me create a snowball sample. The next section discusses how rapport was established with the research participants, focusing on the friendship method used when conducting interviews. It also discusses the use of insider knowledge in research. The chapter ends with a description of the analysis and writing up stages of the thesis production. Chapter 3, “The History of Popular Music in Serbia” chapter covers the Rock’n’Roll period from 1956 to 1990 in Yugoslavia. It also provides a short introduction to Serbian folk music from the 1960s to Turbo-folk in the 1990s. Several sources used for this chapter are books about the Rock’n’Roll period in Yugoslavia and have been translated here for the first time into English. The chapter starts with a discussion of Yugoslavia as a communist country, which was at the same time open to western influences and music coming from the UK and the USA. It starts with a description of bands from the 1960s, including many cover bands, and then moves on to the 1970s when subgenres like progressive rock, psychedelic rock and hard rock had their representatives within Belgrade’s music scenes. A separate section is dedicated to New Wave, a scene that has had a lasting effect on Belgrade’s contemporary scenes, and which is still regarded as the golden age of music in Yugoslav history. The chapter mostly deals with Belgrade’s music scene, although what was happening at the time in Croatia and Slovenia is also briefly discussed. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the developments in folk music, starting with Newly Composed Folk Music (NCFM), which was dominant in the period from the 1960 to the 1980s, and ending with Turbo-folk, which was the main folk genre by the 1990s. The second part of the thesis presents three case studies of specific music scenes in Belgrade. Chapter 4 focuses on Belgrade’s Indie Pop Scene, particularly how social protests and social networks forged this scene in Eastern Europe. One of the main themes is the connection between the indie pop scene and social protests in Belgrade. With an overview of socially aware songs and the protests held in Belgrade during the 1990s and up until 2000, when democratic changes occurred. The chapter also discusses the role that Indie Pop musicians played within anti-government protests. The next section discusses whether the current indie and indie-inspired music of Belgrade has the ability to spark a change in society the way it did 20 years ago. The next section of the chapter discusses the New Serbian Scene that was formed in 2007. There is a section on media support of the music scenes in Belgrade, from the period when more traditional media were supporting the scenes like TV, radio and magazines, to the Internet-based media including music webzines. The next two sections talk about the role of social networks in the Indie Pop scene, the ex-Yugoslav region and the connection of the bands within the region. The last two sections of this chapter talk about the use of Serbian or English in the songs within questions of locality, and sustainability. It discusses how foreign English sounds in Indie Pop songs, or how local Serbian sounds in them. The chapter also discusses whether Indie Pop musicians can make a living out of music. Chapter 5 focuses on EDM, beginning with an account of the evolution of the electronic music scene in Belgrade. It specifically talks about the evolution of the synth-pop strand of the scene, its beginnings in the 1980s and why it does not have the same popularity in the 2000s. The second section of the chapter discusses the emergence of DJ scene in the 1990s. It focuses on the club Industrija, the most popular venue in the electronic music scene in the 1990s and discusses what dancing represented for Belgrade’s clubbers in the 1990s. The next section of the chapter discusses the changes in the scene during the 2000s, focusing on the technological developments that affected the scene and the role of the DJ in the new millennium. It also briefly discusses why only a few DJs create their own music in Belgrade. One section in this part of the chapter is dedicated to the global versus local discussion in Belgrade’s EDM scene, raising the question of authenticity in this scene. The next section is dedicated to ge der and LGBT issues in the scene, the underrepresentation of female DJs in the scene and the connection of LGBT people and electronic music, respectively. A substantial part of the chapter is dedicated to Belgrade’s nightlife, which has been making headlines in the foreign press, because it was discovered by many tourists and foreign journalists alike, and where it has been compared to Berlin and given the nickname ‘the New Berlin’. The chapter then elaborates on what similarities there are between Belgrade’s and Berlin’s nightlife, and what this in turn can tell us about the EDM scene in the Serbian capital. Chapter 6, the final case study chapter, focuses on Hip Hop and begins with an outline of the evolution of this music scene in Belgrade, presenting the three historical waves of Hip Hop artists in Belgrade. The second section of the chapter is dedicated more to the second wave of rappers that had many examples of conscious rap and how these rappers became the voice of young people in Belgrade. It also discusses the differences and similarities between this kind of Hip Hop and Punk music. The following section of the chapter is dedicated to more nationalistic rappers in the scene, such as Beogradski sindikat and Marlon Brutal, and where this nationalistic attitude comes from several years after the democratic changes in Serbia, which occurred in the year 2000. The section “Remember the 1990s” talks about the lasting effects of the Dizel subculture and Turbo-folk, popular in the 1990s, on the third wave of Hip Hop artists. It also elaborates on how this change of sound and aesthetics happened in the third wave of rappers, as compared to the previous generations of rappers and what it tells us about young people and Hip Hop fans in Belgrade today. The last section of the chapter talks about the theoretical framework of milieu for the Hip Hop scene, and the change of Hip Hop artists and fans from snobs to omnivores. This thesis presents an analysis of three music scenes from Belgrade that have rarely if ever been a topic of focus in academic research. Through the medium of this thesis, representatives of each of these scenes are given a chance to talk about the meaning-making their adherent scenes have provided. The thesis paves the way for a new understanding of Belgrade’s music scenes as scenes in transition with links to other similar scenes across Europe. Thus, this research is also relevant for a broadening of our understanding of the value of the trans-local scene concept in the context of the New Europe.