{"id":1259699,"date":"2025-04-02T02:53:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T02:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1259699"},"modified":"2025-04-02T02:53:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T02:53:25","slug":"serbian-music-for-april-by-jakub-knera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/serbian-music-for-april-by-jakub-knera\/","title":{"rendered":"Serbian Music for April by Jakub Knera"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Serbia is in the spotlight right now. In November 2024, the collapse of a newly renovated railway station roof in Novi Sad, which resulted in 15 deaths, ignited widespread protests across the country. This tragic event was attributed to government corruption and negligence, leading to public outrage. Initially led by university students, the demonstrations rapidly expanded to include various societal groups, all demanding accountability, transparency, and deep reforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe atmosphere in Serbia is extremely tense. A stark division has emerged \u2013 between those who support this new, awakening force and those who cling to the old, decaying system,\u201d says violinist and vocalist Tijana Stankovi\u0107. Despite the resignation of Prime Minister Milo\u0161 Vu\u010devi\u0107, the protests have persisted, reflecting deep-seated dissatisfaction with President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s administration and a call for comprehensive political change. Stankovi\u0107 says the protests are not about replacing one political party with another but about demanding systemic alterations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On 15 March, Belgrade witnessed its largest public gathering in recent memory \u2013 up to 325,000 people by some estimates. The crowd stood still and silent for 15 minutes in memory of the victims of the collapse, one minute for each life lost. Around the 11th, however, a sonic weapon was used on the crowd, causing panic, chaos, and a stampede. Stankovi\u0107 sees this as a metaphor for what\u2019s going on: \u201cThis juxtaposition of two sounds is terrifying \u2013 on one side, the sound of freedom and justice, on the other side, a weaponised sound \u2013 one that can stop pacemakers, provoke panic, destabilize bodies and minds. One voice reaching toward freedom and justice. The other, to maintain control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the many groundbreaking aspects of the student uprising, one of the most significant for culture is the reclamation and occupation of the Student Cultural Center, which the SPS political party took over in the mid-2000s (the same party that led Serbia into war under Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 in the \u201990s). A powerful reappearance of cultural and music events in the institution emerged just a few weeks after the students\u2019 occupation of SKC, where they also revived a legendary student radio station.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to start taking seriously how the politics of fear are becoming more and more related to the use (or misuse) of sound. Without any mystification, I see it as a struggle of light against darkness,\u201d adds Manja Risti\u0107, a sound artist and researcher. She mentions a work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan on the \u2018Politics Of Listening<\/a>\u2019, a study on how fearscapes are designed. \u201cWhat I do is trauma-informed,\u201d says Risti\u0107. \u201cThere are references in my work [to] the relations of sound, mind, and body, the psychological effects of sound and musical structures, the synaesthesia of different senses with sound, and the neural pathways affected by sound concerning memory\u201d. Her albums involve placing the sounds directly taken from landscapes that suffered severe trauma or devastation in a new self-regulatory context.<\/p>\n

Risti\u0107 says that for decades Serbia witnessed complete neglect by governmental institutions \u2013 a lack of funds, a lack of cultural spaces, a lack of structural support, and severe neglect of the educational sector. \u201cFor years, the music scene was mirroring the overall cultural politics of the country: reactionary, xenophobic, nationalist, and chauvinist flag-waving fossils [in] positions of power were poisoning the public sphere, blocking any attempt for independent and non-mainstream art or music to emerge from the underground,\u201d says Bane Jovan\u010devi\u0107, co-founder of Polja, a non-profit festival organised by a community of artists and cultural activists around the Belgrade collective Dis-patch. He argues out that only politically suitable and artistically mediocre individuals were receiving funds for their work. Aside from a handful of festivals openly backed by the ruling party, nearly all others are deprived of any institutional support.<\/p>\n

A lot has changed with the emergence of a new generation within the last couple of years with festivals like Summit Of The Non-Aligned and Hali Gali, which are beacons of uncompromised raw punk energy that spread far beyond any genre borders: they platform everything from hardcore to freak folk, weird synth wave to turbotronik esoteric music, despite the fact that organising events has become even more precarious during the protests that have been ongoing since November 2024. Jovan\u010devi\u0107 also mentions essential venues such as Drugstore, Karmakoma, Dim, \u017diva, and Kvaka 22, as well as other festivals such as the country\u2019s longest-standing avant garde music festival Ring Ring, Malomfesztiv\u00e1l, and a new event, Jerma, which had a fantastic premiere last year in the fascinating surroundings of Jerma Canion, officially designated as a nature reserve.<\/p>\n

In 2021, when Bane Jovan\u010devi\u0107\u2019s family\u2019s hilltop farm in the village of \u0160utci, central Serbia, became vacant, he decided to start a festival, Polja, that he\u2019d been planning for many years, naming after the vast fields surrounding the property (\u201cpolja\u201d means fields in Serbian). \u201cAround 2015, I worked for the ill-fated Resonate festival in Belgrade, which imploded a few years later,\u201d he recalls. \u201cFor years, Relja Bobi\u0107, co-founder of the Dis-Patch festival, and I tried to secure funding for a new festival that would combine all the experiences we had in running and curating festivals and club events.\u201d Around that time, he also began exploring traditional music from the Balkans, Europe and the Global South (he also blends folk traditions with experimental electro-acoustic music under his artistic alias, K\u04e3r).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor over 35 years, rural Serbia has been deprived of cultural content. The last traces of Yugoslavia\u2019s socialist plan, designed to bring a cultural centre to nearly every village, dissolved with the country itself, leaving a void that has been hard to fill due to poverty and lack of systemic support from the state or municipalities,\u201d says Jovan\u010devi\u0107. Polja\u2019s lineup focuses on local traditional acts, aiming to build a trusting relationship with the community and to put their cultural needs first, albeit with each new edition inviting more experimental artists from countries whose cultures and music are more distant from Serbian tradition.<\/p>\n

When talking about music in Serbia, one of the norms is to label all traditional music as \u201cBalkan\u201d. \u201cI once read that the term \u2018Balkan\u2019 as a genre label is the new \u2018Latino\u2019 \u2013 an umbrella term, a multi-genre category that unites many different musical expressions,\u201d says Tijana Stankovi\u0107. \u201cBalkan is a genre, a brand; it speaks to some people, but if someone takes my CD only because it\u2019s from the Balkans, [they\u2019d] better not expect furious trumpets and \u2018Kalashnikov\u2019,\u201d she says..<\/p>\n

Stankovi\u0107 has been involved in music for over 20 years, spending the last six as a music editor at Radio Belgrade 2. \u201cWhat interests me \u2013 what I sing, play, listen to, and work with as a music editor \u2013 is music that is the product of collective creation, whether folk music or free improvisation. We influence each other, share vocabulary, and inspire even when improvising. I like some \u2018orality\u2019 and sharing in this scene,\u201d says Stankovi\u0107.<\/p>\n

While studying ethnomusicology, and now through her work at the radio, she had the opportunity to undertake fieldwork \u2013 to record both for the Radio Belgrade Sound Archive and an archive of her own. \u201cListening to these extraordinary people, I\u2019m constantly learning about music \u2013 how each syllable colored by sound has its unique place and meaning,\u201d she says. \u201cThat melody is created not only from itself or any fixed system of scales, ornamentation or style but carries emotional meaning \u2013 meaning tied to geography, memory, a way of life, rituals, age, gender, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another important figure is Svetlana Spaji\u0107, who works both in the field of traditional music with her own Svetlana Spaji\u0107 Group, among others, but also with bands like Gordan, Lenhart Tapes, and Zeitkratzer, with whom she recorded Serbian War Songs<\/em>. \u201cTraditional Serbian songs of my ancestors are mesmerising for me. The ethics and the messages of my ancestors\u2019 songs are something that I cannot decipher anymore. You always feel the truth. That\u2019s why I believe many youngsters, not only from here but from abroad, are interested in it. It\u2019s like something magical for them,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes these songs easier to integrate into contemporary musical contexts is often the abstract nature of traditional songs,\u201d Stankovi\u0107 says of the groups above. She has just recorded an album with Marina D\u017eukljev, Spaji\u0107, and Polish guitarist and composer Raphael Rogi\u0144ski, which is planned to be released this spring by Polish label Instant Classic. \u201cTradition is something to be respected, but it is also adapted, according to its characteristics, to contemporary musical contexts \u2013 as a kind of transdimensional communication,\u201d adds Stankovi\u0107.<\/p>\n

For Spaji\u0107, cooperation with Lenhart Tapes is the most typical, traditional way of communal gathering and working together. \u201cWhatever people do, any activity, there is this manifestation, and you can feel whether it\u2019s true. For example, for me, the ultimate traditional singer in the world is Diamanda Gal\u00e1s.\u201d For her, \u2018traditional\u2019 is the spirit of truth and humanity that goes from generation to generation. After all, the oldest chain of tradition is humanity itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn traditional culture, when it\u2019s in oral heritage, you cannot distinguish when my voice is there and when, let\u2019s say, the familiar voice of many [sources],\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s why, to some extent, the copyright system is absurd. It is always related to everything we learned from the older ones. And that\u2019s the human legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tijana Stankovi\u0107 has been tied to the violin since her early years of education. Technical limitations determine the relationship between instrument and her voice because of the lines drawn between classical and traditional, which Stankovi\u0107 consistently breaks. Even if she takes folk melodies as a starting point, she departs from the source, improvising, preparing her instrument before playing, and bowing in a way very far from the original. The artist plays very wildly and harshly, sometimes ritually, depending on a song\u2019s source. The second of two long pieces that open the record, \u2018Za P\u010dele\u2019 is called a \u2018Song For The Bees\u2019, where \u2018Kralji\u010dka\u2019, that comes immediately before, is a \u2018Song For The Queen\u2019, where she explores a longstanding fascination with drones, and emphasises the powerful \u2018izvika\u2019 singing style of southwestern Serbia. These are not light and catchy songs but complex and multi-layered stories, sometimes lasting up to 10 minutes. Recorded entirely live, the material shows her spontaneity, flexibility, and her ability to draw on elements that by turns sound frivolous and delicate, wild and impetuous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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According to the band themselves, \u201cthis record is about a spiritual journey on a bicycle.\u201d. The collective can be placed next to stoner rock bands like Kyuss and Sleep on the one hand, and on the other to microtonal bands like Hungary\u2019s Decolonize Your Mind Society or the American Sunwatchers, who are inspired by both the rock tradition of the West and the sound of the East. Despite being rooted in the spacious progressive idiom, they sound like they were playing \u2018world music\u2019, not in the sense of the genre label but as a post-modernist collages of international aesthetics. Guitar riffs are intertwined with brass parts or choral vocals by singers like Svetlana Spaji\u0107. The guitar is the starting point for a ride through inspirations drawn from North Africa and the Middle East, at the same time coherently processed through the character of the band members themselves, allowing endless heavy riffs sometimes take the lead, at others Eastern-inspired solos.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 32-minute piano set is a continuous stream of consciousness, an overview of various compositional and performance techniques, a bold and lush improvisation, and, at the same time, a compact and successively developing performance. D\u017eukljev turns the instrument into a fantastic sound box, surprising with its possibilities and the intensity with which she plays. She weaves delicate phrases, vigilantly striking the keys, while also playing densely and intensely, preparing the instrument, exploring its percussive properties, and sometimes almost passionately mistreating it. All this is done to get the most out of the piano, as well as to focus on the lower registers as well as high, poetic tones. However, the most crucial thing in this continuum is the perceptible concept: the unusual timbre of the instrument, the intensity of playing, and the diversity of moods, which do not bore or shock with mere randomness or verbosity but captivate with instrumental artistry, played with sensitivity and striking a balance between delicacy and madness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Vuka\u0161in \u0110eli\u0107\u2019s musical explorations began with the electric guitar, but over the past decade he has gradually broadened his horizons beyond ambient and drone. He uses the guitar only in part on his latest album, making room for synthesisers, beats, and sounds from various electronic devices and mobile phones. It is not static or dark music, it is very rhythmic, maneuvering between different rhythms and warm sounds. \u0110eli\u0107\u2019s percussive layers sometimes touch on the regions explored by Eli Keszler, but he is the closer to the spirit of Sun Araw or Dustin Wong. He experiments with looped forms and sound reduction, but his layering is in the form of melodies that are cheekily drawn out and gradually shaped. \u0110eli\u0107 creates instrumental variations in the same simple way, short electronic compositions that, with a lightness akin to indietronica artists, form motifs that are equal parts catchy and casual.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Jan Neme\u010dek has been active on the Serbian electronic music scene for two decades. He is very much into ambient, spatial sounds and heavy bass structures. He uses analogue and modular synthesisers, from which he creates layered compositions. Sometimes, his methodology is close to metal music \u2013 he looked at new age sounds through this perspective on last year\u2019s Dissolved<\/em> \u2013 and elsewhere you can hear the afterimages of dungeon synth. The sultry bass, lyrical melodies and sound bands build a dreamlike, slightly melancholic atmosphere, which he describes, quite accurately as \u201cVangelis goes to Silent Hill\u201d. The synthesiser structures have a horror-folk flavor, a genuinely cinematic edge, and a terrifying atmosphere, convincingly built at the intersection of overwhelming sound waves and delicate piano parts, as in \u2018An Infinite Grace\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Gabi Fischer, Milan Milojkovi\u0107, and Ivan \u010ckonjevi\u0107 have already recorded 33 episodes of their never-ending music project, in which they improvise freely on the piano, electronic instruments, and electric guitar every month in the city of Novi Sad. Each track is a freely developing suite, where the musicians focus on the colour of their instruments as they emerge from the silence. The music does not take a simple linear form that escalates, but rather undergoes gradual transformations, with successive instrumentalists coming to the fore while maintaining a constant dynamic, thanks to which the piece retains a free, relatively consistent mood. It reminds me of The Necks. Although the phrasing and musical language are entirely different here, I see similarities in the way the sounds are drawn out, in the way they engage in dialogue with each other, in the way they find each other in constellations, not necessarily through ecstatic playing, but by sounds being reduced to achieve a common minimalist direction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The recordings of Manja Ristic, who releases several albums each year, could be characterised as restless, albeit abstract, crafted from many different elements. Each forms a linear, gradually developing narrative, where sound sources disappear into a multi-layered structure. It gradually draws you into her musical reaction to the modern world in an indirect, metaphorical, beautiful but also overwhelming way. Purpurna Vresi\u0161ta<\/em> documents the atmosphere of abandoned industrial sites along the Tagus River in Barreiro, Portugal, the delicate underwater ecosystems of the Great Lake on the island of Mljet in Croatia, and the biologically diverse but endangered rainforests of Thailand. Organic and synthetic sounds \u2013 electronics, violin, EMS Synthi 100 \u2013 intertwine, building a narrative about environmental trauma, the transformation of today\u2019s world, and the effects of industrialisation. Spatial drone waves in the background contrast with sharp murmurs, micro-interventions, singing and instrumental parts in the foreground, creating an impressionistic, poignant work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Svetlana Mara\u0161 is a composer, sound artist, and musician known for her innovative approach to live performances. She constructs her sets as exploratory frameworks, emphasizing improvisation and sculptural manipulation of sound rather than repetition. Using samples and the custom Touch OSC interface, she treats her setup like an acoustic instrument, shaping the sound in response to the space and audience. The set she performed multiple times between 2019 and 2020 was the pinnacle of her microsampling work, leading to this live recording from one show in Zurich. \u201cThe almost infinite improvisational potential in my performances results from improving technology, using it unpredictably and musically,\u201d she says. Her compositions are reminiscent of sound sculptures, three-dimensional electronics and granular synthesis, exploring intuitive responses which draw attention to live creation, emphasising spontaneity. She also shows the possibility of building drama primarily by employing the interface as an instrument open to errors and accidents, rather than studio-refined electronics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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HolyPalms Duo is a duo of Marko Stricevic, a Belgrade multi-instrumentalist (known from bands such as Dzezbollah and Katastar trio) and Pavel Eremeev, also a member of the rock duo Usssy. Karmacoma<\/em> is a live recording which captures their live energy and spontaneous wall of sound \u2013 made with only two instruments. Their improvised live performances (microtonal guitar and strange looping percussion) are inspired by sufi music as well as modern experimental noise acts like Oneida and Lightning Bolt. The tracks grow, but not outwards \u2013 instead they\u2019re characterised by a vertical structure, where guitar and percussion escalate in cascades, keeping up both tension and space, as well as the metallic elements of an industrial, dense, and dark sound.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For years, Canary Records has been reminding the world of releases by American labels from the early 20th century, aimed at the country\u2019s immigrant population (around 15 per cent), including many residents of Central and Eastern Europe. A significant source of material during the first five years or so was recordings made overseas in various homelands by sister companies. In 1913, Columbia released two singles by Jovan Radivojev for the Serbian market, whose official discography consists of only five songs released over two singles. The artist accompanies himself on the ganja bagpipes and sings dreamily, producing minimalist yet captivating, mantra-like work with a unique character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source thequietus.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 O artigo anterior foi obtido e traduzido do site internacional da celebrity.land \u2019 Source Link <\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Serbia is in the spotlight right now. In November 2024, the collapse of a newly renovated railway station roof in Novi Sad, which resulted in 15 deaths, ignited widespread protests across the country. This tragic event was attributed to government corruption and negligence, leading to public outrage. Initially led by university students, the demonstrations rapidly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1259700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1259700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}