(Post)Yugoslavian music press in transition : an anthropological perspective

Abstract

The development of the Internet and digital technologies has influenced the ever-greater migrations of printed content to the digital sphere (blogs, online media, Internet portals, social networks), which has also brought with itself changes in readers’ habits and in the concept and format of texts as wells. Music press is no exception in that respect. In the context of South European states, these processes coincide with the period of political, social, cultural and economic transition, which has resulted in the development of numerous regional and local specific forms of popular culture. The existence of the SFRY as a shared state enabled the creation of an authentic cultural space which continued to develop even after its disintegration. This paper endeavors to shed light on one segment of that local authenticity through an analysis of music press. The aim the authors of this paper aspire to achieve is the presentation of the development path of the printed media in the first place in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then in Serbia, as well as the reconstructions of the modality of the transformation of this media in the transition period from an anthropological perspective. The wish is to identify the perception and significance of music as a local cultural phenomenon through the qualitative analysis of the archival material and the available Internet material as well, then to trace the cultural changes that have been going on over time as a result of global and local social and cultural turmoil, too. We do not refer to press only as the medium which has an informative role, but rather as the medium that reflects the local community’s attitudes, simultaneously also constructing narratives on popular culture that are incorporated in our everyday life.