Introduction
Turbo-folk draws its roots from (and is arguably continuous with) newly composed folk music (henceforth NCFM), which emerged in the 1960s Yugoslavia, a time of rapid urbanization and modernization for the socialist state. Part of the growing subculture of transitional migrants from rural areas to urban centers, NCFM from its inceptions carried pejorative connotations of eastern (Ottoman) origins and rural backwardness, reflecting broader prejudices connected to the Balkan stereotype (Rasmussen 241-242). The frequently troubling hybridity of NCFM is evidenced in the mixing of traditional acoustic and modern electric instruments, as well as Oriental and Occidental musical influences, such as the combination of trilled vocals and ornamented melodies with western pop idioms (e.g. German schlager and Italian canzona). While frequently disparaged by the communist cultural establishment and even subjected to a “tax on kitsch” (as a commercial product of low cultural value),[3] NCFM only grew in popularity, shifting from the gritty and smoke-filled margins of kafana[4] culture to packed stadiums by the time socialist Yugoslavia started unravel at the seams, in the late 1980s. As Ljerka Vidić Rasmussen has argued, NCFM should therefore be seen more broadly as “an expression of the Yugoslav post-1945 experiment as a nation; that is, this nation’s experience of positioning itself within European culture while affirming its own identity (and ‘energy’) as a Balkan subculture” (255).
The neologism “turbo-folk,” originally coined by the aforementioned Rambo Amadeus to describe his own parodic musical pastiches, suggests an intensification of contradictions already present in NCFM. While the suffix “folk” retains connotations of rural origins and populist authenticity, the prefix “turbo” imbues the genre with additional associations of technological modernity, speed, and power. In a more concrete sense, the “turbo” element is evident in the rapid technical and formal innovations in the Balkan pop music industry, as well as turbo-folk’s increased presence in the mass media from the 1990s onwards. Music videos, modeled on similar western forms, have become much more prominent part of the musical presentation, employing highly stylized sets, cinematic storytelling, and self-referential, disjunctive or highly baroque visual modes that—in a postmodern fashion—destabilize the more fixed textual and musical referents. Explicit, threatening, and deviant sexuality, in particular, remains a dominant feature of both texts and music videos, where both female and male bodies are framed, fragmented, and displayed as fetish objects for viewer’s consumption. Finally, the dominant lyrical motifs of love, patriotism, and kafana culture specific to NCFM have been transformed to more contemporary themes of clubbing culture, conspicuous consumption, as well as criminal activity and sexual transgression.
Figuratively speaking, turbo-folk has come to represent the dramatic political changes in the region, including the violent dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia and the region’s transition from state socialism to ethically unfettered capitalism. “Turbo-folk,” in this sense, stands as a central metaphor for a transformation of the Yugoslav body politic into a kitschy, violent ultra-nationalist spectacle during the Milošević era. For instance, the televised marriage between the turbo-folk singer Ceca and the notorious war criminal Željko Ražnatović Arkan in 1995, branded as “a Serbian fairytale,” is widely seen as cementing the symbolic connection between turbo-folk industry and the post-communist criminal elite in Serbia.
The genre, however, has survived the Milošević era of the 1990s largely intact, becoming a permanent feature of the wider Balkan post-communist media scape. The social historian Rory Archer, for example, situates the continuing animosity against turbo-folk within the Orientalizing discourse “due to its geographical origins and its implications of violence, eroticism, barbarity and otherness […] attributed to the Balkan stereotype” (192). Emphasizing the Ottoman influences in turbo-folk, its popularity beyond Serbia, and its conscious embrace of cultural liminality, he views the genre as a possible transnational bridge in the region that has been fragmented along ethnic and national lines and imbued with almost exclusively negative meanings. “For detractors,” Archer continues, “such styles appeared to pose a danger to autochthonous national culture as well as the possibility of a ‘European’ and cosmopolitan future” (192). Those looking for gun-toting paramilitaries and murderous nationalist sentiments in contemporary turbo-folk will therefore be sorely disappointed. Moreover, the gradual normalization of turbo-folk and its gradual de-coupling from militaristic ethno-nationalism of the 1990s has also made it possible to analyze other aspects of the evolving genre: in particular, its emergent aesthetic sensibilities, such as camp and “techno-gender,” as well as its appeal to female, queer and international audiences (see Jelača).
The student essays on this website reflect these new approaches to turbo-folk. Accordingly, they attempt to question dominant assumptions about the genre while still maintaining a critical outlook. Embracing an interdisciplinary framework, the essays are organized around four dominant categories: turbo-folk celebrities, gender and sexuality, national and cultural identity, and global influences.
The first section addresses the most prominent turbo-folk stars of the last few decades. These include the first NCFM superstar, Lepa Brena, who rose to fame in the early 1980s and still symbolizes the former socialist homeland for many of her fans; Ceca, the notorious (albeit misunderstood) turbo-folk diva of the 1990s; and JK (Jelena Karleuša), whose outré style and outspoken media presence has made her a visible ally of the LGBTQ+ community in Serbia and beyond.
The second section engages issues of gender and sexuality, which have recently come to the forefront of both public and scholarly debates around turbo-folk. Essays in this category analyze the gendered aspects of turbo-folk performances. While some trace the evolving stance of feminist critics towards this pop cultural form, others critically assess recent celebrations of the genre for its incorporation of queer themes and aesthetics.
The essays in the third section address turbo-folk's contentious cultural location between east and west, seen in the genre’s tendency to play with the vestiges of Ottoman colonial culture. Contextualizing turbo-folk within a wider history of the region, the essays unpack the many contradictions and anxieties around constructions of national identity through popular music in the contemporary Balkans. Here, turbo-folk controversies become especially heated, since many (if not all) of the former Yugoslav states are still searching for a stable national identity in the aftermath of recent wars, breakdown of socialist internationalism, and a longer historical legacy of colonization.
The final section traces the global influences on Balkan pop music in the last decade. The essays in this section explore the creation of new subgenres within turbo-folk, as well as the influx of international musical styles, such as reggaeton and trap, into Balkan popular music more broadly. In recent years, the possibilities of musical hybridization have significantly expanded due to the rise of globally available audio and video streaming services, such as YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify. As these essay show, Balkan pop music is no exception to this wider trend.
This project approaches turbo-folk not as a static and stable popular music genre but as a dynamic and changing cultural field. Due to its continued popularity, its provocative aesthetics, and its undeniable ties to the Balkan cultural space, turbo-folk can be seen as a prominent site where various social meanings—related to trans/national belonging, class, gender and sexual identity—are constantly being produced, contested, and negotiated among producers, performers, and consumers of popular music. Scholarship on turbo-folk is part of that process of meaning production, even as it tries to critically step outside of it. In this sense, we hope that these essays reach beyond the kitschy surface of turbo-folk stereotype to better capture Balkan popular culture in its ever-newly-composed formations.
Works Cited
Archer, Rory. “Assessing Turbofolk Controversies: Popular Music between the Nation and the Balkans.” Southeastern Europe, vol. 36, no. 2, 2012, pp. 178–207., doi:10.1163/187633312x642103.
Dijana Jelača. “Feminine Libidinal Entrepreneurship.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2015, pp. 36-52, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2015.988391
Rasmussen, Ljerka Vidić. “From Source to Commodity: Newly-Composed Folk Music of Yugoslavia.” Popular Music, vol. 14, no. 02, 1995, p. 241., doi:10.1017/s0261143000007467.
[2] Similar (and in some cases identical) styles of music exist in other Balkan countries, such as Skyladiko in Greece, Chalga in Bulgaria, Menale in Romania and Tallava in Alabania.
[3] The tax on kitsch was introduced after the new Yugoslav Constitution in 1974 as a way to regulate cultural products, such as books, musical recordings, and magazines that were considered of low cultural quality or not consonant with communist values.
[4] Kafana (from the Turkish kahvehane) is a Balkan style café serving alcoholic beverages and coffee, and traditionally featuring live music.