Sounds of the Borderland is the first book-length study of how popular music became a medium for political communication and contested identification during and after Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia. It extends existing cultural studies literature on music, politics and the state, which has largely been grounded in Western European and North American political systems. It also responds to an emerging fascination with the culture and politics of contemporary south-east Europe, expanding scholarship on the post-Yugoslav conflicts by going on to encompass significant social and political changes into the present day.
The outbreak of war in 1991 saw almost every professional musician in Croatia take part in a wave of patriotic music-making and the powerful state television system strive to bring popular music under its control. As the political imperative shifted from securing national survival to consolidating a homogenous nation-state, the music industry responded with several strategies for creating a national popular music, producing messages about the nation and, in the ongoing debates over the origins of the folk music that inspired many songs, a way to define the nation by expressing what Croatia was not. The war on ethnic ambiguity which cut through individuals' social and creative lives played out across the airwaves, sales racks and gossip columns of a small country that imagined itself a historical and cultural borderland.
These explicit and implicit narratives of nationhood connect many political phases: the months of fiercest fighting, the stabilised front, the uneasy post-war years when the symbolic frontline region of eastern Slavonia had still not returned to Croatian sovereignty, the euphoria and instability after the end of the Tudjman regime in 2000, and Croatia's fraught journey towards the European Union. Baker's book provides valuable insight into the role of music in a wartime and post-conflict society and will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in south-east Europe or the transformation of entertainment during and after conflict.
Contents: Introduction; Part I Croatia under Tudjman, 1991–2000: Music at arms: the presidential narrative of the war; Music for the nation: creating a 'Croatian' popular music. Part II Croatia after Tudjman, 2000–08: Music in protest: nationalism detached from the state; Music on the market: pop-folk and cultural boundaries; Music at first hand: observing 3 musical events. Part III Croatia in a Regional Context: Music without borders? After the disintegration of Yugoslavia; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.
About the Author: Catherine Baker is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in Modern Languages at the University of Southampton, UK.
Reviews: 'An exhaustive, vividly documented account of the political utility of popular music in Croatia during and after the Homeland War... Rich in documentary details and interpretive conclusions.' Slavic Review
This title is also available as an ebook, ISBN 978-1-4094-0711-9
Dr Catherine Baker's homepage on the University of Southampton website.
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Full contents list
Introduction
Index