Black musics in the (former) Yugoslav region
This project aims at retracing and analyzing the circulation, performance and representation of Black musics (African and African American musics) in the Yugoslav region, by locating it as entangled in the global history of music and in the imaginaries of race and otherness. Within this perspective, the main research question is how global categories of race and otherness in the musical field, and specifically through Black musics, were localized in relation to the social and cultural history of the region, where experiences of being othered through balkanist discourses merged with socialist internationalism and later with post-socialist societies.
This broad research question involves several integrated objectives, organized in two main clusters: the first one referring to the Yugoslav time (1960s - early 1990s), and the second one concerning the post-socialist context (1990s - present).
Within the first cluster, the main research objectives are three. Firstly, to determinate which kinds of Black musics circulated in Yugoslavia and through which channels. Secondly, to investigate the role and experiences of African students in Yugoslavia, their involvement in music, and their relations with the context of nonaligned Yugoslavia. Thirdly, to analyze the connections, discontinuities and negotiations between Yugoslav official anti-racist policies and personal perceptions of otherness by Yugoslav and Black individuals. By focusing on individuals’ experiences, which have long been neglected by the scholarship on Yugoslavia’s international relations, foreground Black persons’ experiences and views as they emerged through their diasporic and global musical practices.
The second cluster considers the dissemination and practice of Black musics in post-socialist Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia and articulates in three constitutive objectives. Firstly to investigate how world music trends, localized as Balkan music, have opened the way for the dissemination of African musics since the 1990s and how a connection between a Balkan accepted or refused self-perception connects with Africanness and Blackness. Secondly, to research the contemporary African music scenes in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana to analyze their repertoires, practices and aesthetics, and the involvement of domestic and African performers with their varied backgrounds, expectations, and agendas. Thirdly, to study the reggae and hip hop scenes in these cities and consider their actors’ views of these genres in relation to global racialization patterns and the specific connotations they manifest in this historically othered region. These objectives take into consideration the role of the capitalist economy that has hit post-socialist societies as well as the role of international migration flows from Africa and elsewhere that have reached Eastern Europe.
