Overview of musical traditions in Yugoslavia
The music of Yugoslavia refers to music created during the existence of Yugoslavia, spanning the period between 1918 and 1992. The most significant music scene developed in the later period of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR Yugoslavia), and includes internationally acclaimed artists such as: the alternative music acts Laibach and Disciplina Kičme which appeared on MTV; classical music artists such as Ivo Pogorelić and Stefan Milenković; folk artists such as the Roma music performer Esma Redžepova; the musicians of the YU Rock Misija contribution to Bob Geldof's Band Aid; the Eurovision Song Contest performers such as the 1989 winners Riva and Tereza Kesovija, who represented Monaco at the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 and her own country in 1972, and plenty of others.
History
Different music genres rose, evolved, and declined at different times and in different places across and throughout the component republics of Yugoslavia. For example, Yugoslav punk and new wave rose in the late 1970s; disco, both foreign and "Yu-disco", was making inroads by the early 70s, with international stars such as Earth, Wind & Fire performing in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Ljubljana in 1975.[1]
The communist government confiscated Edison Bell Penkala and Elektroton, companies that had been active in the interwar period, and used them to create the state-sponsored, Zagreb-based record label Jugoton in 1947. It became the largest Eastern European label outside of the USSR and was instrumental in the development of pop music in SFR Yugoslavia. From its founding in 1947 to 1953, it was under the direct purview of the Yugoslav Communist Party and produced classical, revolutionary, and tradition folk music repertoires in the tradition of social realism.[2]
Disco
Yu-disco was heavily influenced by earlier genres, including jazz, funk, and rock; the Zagreb band, Clan, became combining disco with their earlier rock, while the Belgrade-based disco group Zdravo mixed funk with disco.[1]
Disco also influenced the local entertainment and music industry, known as the estrada, including artists such as Zdravko Čolić.[1]
Folk music
The post-war stance in Yugoslavia towards folklore, and with it folk music, was inspired by the Soviet ideals of a culture that was neither bourgeois nor peasant, but new. Many of the Yugoslav folk music that emerged in the beginning of the post-revolutionary period were seen as a reflection of the project of building an ideologically and physically new vision of Yugoslavia. In the 1970s, Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo became major production centres of newly composed folk music, before the folk "market" fell off in 1983.
Politics
During the Yugoslav Wars, music was at times used for militaristic and nationalistic purposes and as a form of violence; journalists documented instances where captives were forced to sing the nationalist songs of their captors.
