great piece about a subject that needs more attention. while I agree that most commercial turbo-folk music does not sing about themes of ethnic nationalism, the genre does overindex on themes of violence towards women, glorification of crime, and nationalism. at least historically. the stuff being released today, not so much.
Absolutely. It's actually funny how the current turbo-folk industry has morphed into a surprise sort of ally to queer people. In the 1990s though, the toxic porno-kitsch-criminal aesthetic went to such extremes that even its benefactors in the Milosevic regime in its last years tried to rein in the excess, but it was too late for that
What you say about turbo folk has some truth to it, but it is also a narrative that has been constructed many decades ago.
I would argue that turbo folk is not at all unique to Serbia, it's simply a Serbian instance of a very widespread phenomenon of Southeastern European pop-folk, which came under many names and flavors, but shared many of the same characteristics:
Arabesk in Turkey,
Laiko in Greece,
Manele in Romania,
Turbo folk in Serbia,
Chalga in Bulgaria.
So it doesn't even need to have anything to do with transition or collapse of the system. Turkey and Greece, for example were never communist, nothing collapsed in these countries during the 1990s, and still Arabesk and Laiko proliferated.
The reason why turbo folk get so infamous is because it was associated with war and crime, and also because Yugoslavia had a strong sense of "high culture" so anything kitchy came quickly under scrutiny and was despised by elites. Communists in Yugoslavia cared a lot about arts and culture and Yugoslav rock scene was one of the strongest in Europe, and some say it was supported (tacitly or not) by the government.
Now, the crime related themes are not at all unique to turbo folk. You have such themes in many subgenres of hip hop and especially trap music.
Current wave of trap music also has nothing to do with AI, as it predates AI for many years or decades.
Trap music is US originating phenomenon of music that glorifies crime, drugs, and stuff like that, and now it's widely adopted in Serbia as well.
I would argue that lyrics of 1990s turbo folk songs are often quite tame in comparison with the lyrics of current trap songs.
Though I would agree with you, that as a whole, this movement and culture, at least in Serbia, was quite controversial with many negative aspects to it.
But I think it shouldn't be singled out, as it's not unique to that time period, nor to Serbia.
Pop-folk definitely has its variants in every Balkan country as well as Turkey, however they don't possess the "turbo" elements I try to unpack in this essay.
Serbia is the most extreme example, of course, but you see pieces of this "turbo" aspect in other post-communist states where a criminal new moneyed class emerged. Writers in Hungary, for example, spoke of how the culture became flooded with pornographic kitsch and scandal in the 1990s. I think of "turbo" more like the cultural component of sudden privatization and its shock therapy, society is struggling to "catch up" to mass media and rapid technological change.
>I would argue that lyrics of 1990s turbo folk songs are often quite tame in comparison with the lyrics of current trap songs.
I think this is right mostly, but the real issue is with turbo-folk is the lack of oxygen it gave to other genres and art forms. That's what made it so unhinged, even though the content of the lyrics themselves were playing off themes already present in pop-folk.
>But I think it shouldn't be singled out, as it's not unique to that time period, nor to Serbia.
I agree and I don't think I try to make this case! I just see the Serbian case as a schematic for how culture falls into extreme overproduction more generally.
Another thing that is not quite right is that you say it suppressed other genres. Even in that regard, I would say 1990s were better than current music scene in Serbia (and the world).
In 1990s old school rock bands still made new and important albums. Even some new bands emerged.
For example the band Van Gogh released their most important albums in 1990s. Partibrejkers (Partybreakers) were also active and influential. There were other bands like Deca Loših Muzičara, Oružjem Protivu Otmičara, Vampiri, Babe, Atheist Rap, Sunshine, etc…
K2 (Kovač Sisters) were also very popular, with songs inspired by “jungle”, drum and bass, and dubstep.
We even had Rap / Hip hop scene, with artists like Gru, Monteniggers, Marcello, etc…
Also, apart from Turbo-folk another flavor of “diesel” culture was “dance”. There have been many important dance groups such as Moby Dick, Tap 011, Funky G, Beat Street, Djogani fantastico, etc…
Here are some Serbian rock songs from 1990s, that were quite popular:
Rambo Amadeus solely coined the term 'Turbo folk'. He did not create the genre. Turbo folk was an 1990s development from novokomponovana narodna muzika.
Južni vetar continued with its sound well into the 1990s despite turbo folk. 1980s novokomponovana muzika and its more urban pop and rock sound by Belgrade producers such as Futa and Zlaja, who composed songs for the likes of Lepa Brena and Vesna Zmijanac and, come the early 1990s, Ceca and Dragana Mirković, was the springboard for turbo folk.
The original turbo folk during its mid-90s heyday was just a sub-genre (the most popular one), with a distinct sound, existing amongst other genres of 'folk muzika' (in its Yugoslav meaning), which in turn came under the umbrella of 'narodna muzika'. However, since then in ex-Yugoslavia 'turbo folk' is the colloquial term for what otherwise is still billed and marketed by the recording industry as 'folk muzika'.
Thanks for this conversation, I have to read more about novokomponovana muzika because I hadn't really delved into how it bridged rural-urban audiences, and how commercial turbo-folk exploited this process in many ways. The introduction of pop and rock sounds you mention I am less familiar with when it comes to specific producers, but there is a lot of Western import here too
Also, I thought Južni Vetar disbanded by 1991? I hear in their music style one that's more stripped down, but turbo-folk adjacent, especially since much of it's just electronic music (synth, bass, drums) and vocals. And I had to confirm this, but one studio owns their entire discography (Studio MMI) - and I say this because I've seen this studio tag also on turbo-folk performances with Ceca, etc in the 1990s. So, there must be some production overlap?
And yeah, turbo-folk has become general shorthand for any commercial folk-pop. All these subgenres also operate in an overlapping emotional-cultural nexus, so defining exactly what is turbo-folk can be split many different ways (limited to a certain wartime era, a particular aesthetic/sentimental character, music promoted on TV channels like Pink, a few producers, or some other criteria). But the prewar genealogy is something I'd like to read more about
Južni vetar (JV) is a music production company and record label that grew from the band, and still exists today. The name of Studio MMI comes from the initials of the founder and head of JV, Miodrag M. Ilic, otherwise known as Mile Bas. The label released Ceca’s 1993 album Šta je to u tvojim venama at a time when no other record label in Serbia wanted to have anything to do with her. This Ceca release was unique for JV because it was Futa and not Mile Bas who composed the songs, but it was a major coup in the end as on its second release run, an extra song was added to the album, Kukavica, which turned out to be Ceca and turbo folk’s greatest hit of all time.
JV’s sound was too oriental for Serbia in the 1990s war years, so even though the label persisted with its sound and signing up new singers who went on to build huge careers, at the time it was losing out to the other labels, particularly the government-owned PGP RTS, which were getting good sales with turbo folk.
While the instrumentation between JV’s oriental sound and turbo folk was very much the same, their styles were very different and deliberately so. One of the biggest stars of 1990s turbo folk, Dragana Mirkovic, started with JV but left them in 1991 and went to PGP RTS, where her whole package was completely changed (including nose).
The urban pop and rock elements are the core to turbo folk, firmly establishing it as the soundtrack for the working-class city youth born to parents who had moved to the cities in the mass urbanisation of Yugoslavia in the decades before.
Nearly all academic writing about turbo folk comes with a pre-set agenda and much prejudice that boils down to outright classism, so it often doesn’t provide a balanced or nuanced view about the music or of the culture it’s been perceived to cultivate.
Very interesting. Only thing I would add is that prejudice extends not only to academics, but just as importantly among the people themselves! Music for seljačine etc.
This movement does seem to have its roots in social displacement. If we don't start defining what makes us human, we are going to turbo ourselves right into a world of lies and corruption. Like our current US politics! AI is the great displacer now. Turbo folk strikes me as a genre masking the corruption in Serbia by trying to normalize it.
It's fascinating how when you go to Belgrade today there's a wave of Westernization coming from... bougie Muscovites. Their aesthetic is very much 2014 Brooklynite, whereas the Serbs are a bit further back in time still. The prevalence of buzz cuts is astounding.
great piece about a subject that needs more attention. while I agree that most commercial turbo-folk music does not sing about themes of ethnic nationalism, the genre does overindex on themes of violence towards women, glorification of crime, and nationalism. at least historically. the stuff being released today, not so much.
Absolutely. It's actually funny how the current turbo-folk industry has morphed into a surprise sort of ally to queer people. In the 1990s though, the toxic porno-kitsch-criminal aesthetic went to such extremes that even its benefactors in the Milosevic regime in its last years tried to rein in the excess, but it was too late for that
I play in a bball team in Austria which is 80% Yugo, and the lads have this shit blasting at all times haha.
Sounds about right hahaha
This is incredible.
We still haven’t gotten over Lepa Brena marrying a Serb, btw.
What you say about turbo folk has some truth to it, but it is also a narrative that has been constructed many decades ago.
I would argue that turbo folk is not at all unique to Serbia, it's simply a Serbian instance of a very widespread phenomenon of Southeastern European pop-folk, which came under many names and flavors, but shared many of the same characteristics:
Arabesk in Turkey,
Laiko in Greece,
Manele in Romania,
Turbo folk in Serbia,
Chalga in Bulgaria.
So it doesn't even need to have anything to do with transition or collapse of the system. Turkey and Greece, for example were never communist, nothing collapsed in these countries during the 1990s, and still Arabesk and Laiko proliferated.
The reason why turbo folk get so infamous is because it was associated with war and crime, and also because Yugoslavia had a strong sense of "high culture" so anything kitchy came quickly under scrutiny and was despised by elites. Communists in Yugoslavia cared a lot about arts and culture and Yugoslav rock scene was one of the strongest in Europe, and some say it was supported (tacitly or not) by the government.
Now, the crime related themes are not at all unique to turbo folk. You have such themes in many subgenres of hip hop and especially trap music.
Current wave of trap music also has nothing to do with AI, as it predates AI for many years or decades.
Trap music is US originating phenomenon of music that glorifies crime, drugs, and stuff like that, and now it's widely adopted in Serbia as well.
I would argue that lyrics of 1990s turbo folk songs are often quite tame in comparison with the lyrics of current trap songs.
Though I would agree with you, that as a whole, this movement and culture, at least in Serbia, was quite controversial with many negative aspects to it.
But I think it shouldn't be singled out, as it's not unique to that time period, nor to Serbia.
Pop-folk definitely has its variants in every Balkan country as well as Turkey, however they don't possess the "turbo" elements I try to unpack in this essay.
Serbia is the most extreme example, of course, but you see pieces of this "turbo" aspect in other post-communist states where a criminal new moneyed class emerged. Writers in Hungary, for example, spoke of how the culture became flooded with pornographic kitsch and scandal in the 1990s. I think of "turbo" more like the cultural component of sudden privatization and its shock therapy, society is struggling to "catch up" to mass media and rapid technological change.
>I would argue that lyrics of 1990s turbo folk songs are often quite tame in comparison with the lyrics of current trap songs.
I think this is right mostly, but the real issue is with turbo-folk is the lack of oxygen it gave to other genres and art forms. That's what made it so unhinged, even though the content of the lyrics themselves were playing off themes already present in pop-folk.
>But I think it shouldn't be singled out, as it's not unique to that time period, nor to Serbia.
I agree and I don't think I try to make this case! I just see the Serbian case as a schematic for how culture falls into extreme overproduction more generally.
Another thing that is not quite right is that you say it suppressed other genres. Even in that regard, I would say 1990s were better than current music scene in Serbia (and the world).
In 1990s old school rock bands still made new and important albums. Even some new bands emerged.
For example the band Van Gogh released their most important albums in 1990s. Partibrejkers (Partybreakers) were also active and influential. There were other bands like Deca Loših Muzičara, Oružjem Protivu Otmičara, Vampiri, Babe, Atheist Rap, Sunshine, etc…
K2 (Kovač Sisters) were also very popular, with songs inspired by “jungle”, drum and bass, and dubstep.
We even had Rap / Hip hop scene, with artists like Gru, Monteniggers, Marcello, etc…
Also, apart from Turbo-folk another flavor of “diesel” culture was “dance”. There have been many important dance groups such as Moby Dick, Tap 011, Funky G, Beat Street, Djogani fantastico, etc…
Here are some Serbian rock songs from 1990s, that were quite popular:
Van Gogh - Klatno (1996) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ_p7mRSaxM
Partibrejkers - Hoću da znam (1994) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48dkUeTG1lg
Vampiri - Be-be (1993) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48dkUeTG1lg
Generacija 5 - Najjači ostaju (1994) https://youtu.be/GtAIo7de3wU
Rambo Amadeus solely coined the term 'Turbo folk'. He did not create the genre. Turbo folk was an 1990s development from novokomponovana narodna muzika.
Yep. I would link the core sound mainly to Južni Vetar in the 1980s and that network of musicians
Južni vetar continued with its sound well into the 1990s despite turbo folk. 1980s novokomponovana muzika and its more urban pop and rock sound by Belgrade producers such as Futa and Zlaja, who composed songs for the likes of Lepa Brena and Vesna Zmijanac and, come the early 1990s, Ceca and Dragana Mirković, was the springboard for turbo folk.
The original turbo folk during its mid-90s heyday was just a sub-genre (the most popular one), with a distinct sound, existing amongst other genres of 'folk muzika' (in its Yugoslav meaning), which in turn came under the umbrella of 'narodna muzika'. However, since then in ex-Yugoslavia 'turbo folk' is the colloquial term for what otherwise is still billed and marketed by the recording industry as 'folk muzika'.
Thanks for this conversation, I have to read more about novokomponovana muzika because I hadn't really delved into how it bridged rural-urban audiences, and how commercial turbo-folk exploited this process in many ways. The introduction of pop and rock sounds you mention I am less familiar with when it comes to specific producers, but there is a lot of Western import here too
Also, I thought Južni Vetar disbanded by 1991? I hear in their music style one that's more stripped down, but turbo-folk adjacent, especially since much of it's just electronic music (synth, bass, drums) and vocals. And I had to confirm this, but one studio owns their entire discography (Studio MMI) - and I say this because I've seen this studio tag also on turbo-folk performances with Ceca, etc in the 1990s. So, there must be some production overlap?
And yeah, turbo-folk has become general shorthand for any commercial folk-pop. All these subgenres also operate in an overlapping emotional-cultural nexus, so defining exactly what is turbo-folk can be split many different ways (limited to a certain wartime era, a particular aesthetic/sentimental character, music promoted on TV channels like Pink, a few producers, or some other criteria). But the prewar genealogy is something I'd like to read more about
Južni vetar (JV) is a music production company and record label that grew from the band, and still exists today. The name of Studio MMI comes from the initials of the founder and head of JV, Miodrag M. Ilic, otherwise known as Mile Bas. The label released Ceca’s 1993 album Šta je to u tvojim venama at a time when no other record label in Serbia wanted to have anything to do with her. This Ceca release was unique for JV because it was Futa and not Mile Bas who composed the songs, but it was a major coup in the end as on its second release run, an extra song was added to the album, Kukavica, which turned out to be Ceca and turbo folk’s greatest hit of all time.
JV’s sound was too oriental for Serbia in the 1990s war years, so even though the label persisted with its sound and signing up new singers who went on to build huge careers, at the time it was losing out to the other labels, particularly the government-owned PGP RTS, which were getting good sales with turbo folk.
While the instrumentation between JV’s oriental sound and turbo folk was very much the same, their styles were very different and deliberately so. One of the biggest stars of 1990s turbo folk, Dragana Mirkovic, started with JV but left them in 1991 and went to PGP RTS, where her whole package was completely changed (including nose).
The urban pop and rock elements are the core to turbo folk, firmly establishing it as the soundtrack for the working-class city youth born to parents who had moved to the cities in the mass urbanisation of Yugoslavia in the decades before.
Nearly all academic writing about turbo folk comes with a pre-set agenda and much prejudice that boils down to outright classism, so it often doesn’t provide a balanced or nuanced view about the music or of the culture it’s been perceived to cultivate.
Very interesting. Only thing I would add is that prejudice extends not only to academics, but just as importantly among the people themselves! Music for seljačine etc.
This movement does seem to have its roots in social displacement. If we don't start defining what makes us human, we are going to turbo ourselves right into a world of lies and corruption. Like our current US politics! AI is the great displacer now. Turbo folk strikes me as a genre masking the corruption in Serbia by trying to normalize it.
And this is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8EQllZFqLg
"Most people reading this have probably never heard of turbo-folk." Not correct. Is very well known in the whole world, in the Balkans definitely.
It's fascinating how when you go to Belgrade today there's a wave of Westernization coming from... bougie Muscovites. Their aesthetic is very much 2014 Brooklynite, whereas the Serbs are a bit further back in time still. The prevalence of buzz cuts is astounding.
I like “Bice ljepsih dana” by Roki Vulovic and “Tata” by Baja Mali Knindza
So does the crazy Serbian movie Underground count as turbo-folk? Great soundtrack.
Love that movie, it's my top 5. But nah definitely not. The soundtrack is mostly Balkan brass
I’m only partially/distantly Slav (Molise Croatian) and yet this is sooooo fascinating.
I play in bball teams in Austria which are 80% + Yugo, and the lads have this shit blasting at all times haha.