'Death to fascism isn't in the catechism': legacies of socialism in Croatian popular music after the fall of Yugoslavia

Abstract

This paper discusses both textual and structural legacies of socialism in Croatian popular music since the collapse of socialism and Yugoslavia. Popular culture under Yugoslav socialism represented an uneasy compromise between socialist consciousness and capitalist consumerism: popular music experienced the same contradictions as other aspects of Yugoslav life such as shopping tourism, and negotiating the ideological field of socialist practice was a routine part of musicians’ professional lives. The most visible legacies of socialism in Croatian popular music are commentaries on everyday Yugoslav life and iconography which represent personal and public legacies of socialism after Yugoslavia. However, the negation of the socialist experience in certain anti-Communist musical texts is itself a legacy of socialism – not just because without socialism there would be nothing to negate, but also because a continued vestigial norm that entertainment should interpellate consumers within a state-backed collective identity has bridged the socialist and early post-socialist periods, continuing to define the limits of the acceptable discursive field for cultural production. The paper concludes by considering the prospects for a theory of popular culture under post-socialism as historical and geographical distance complicates the comparative.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record