"I
did not invent turbo folk. I simply named
it," in his 2005 song called "Turbo Folk" says Rambo
Amadeus, jazz-rock and avant-garde composer based in Belgrade, Serbia, who is
often considered as the father of the genre. When thinking about this
statement, we actually find ourselves in the middle of an intensive debate in
the Balkans. Was turbo folk phenomena consciously created, promoted and
exploited by the regime of Slobodan Milošević, i. e. by the cultural and economical
elites close to him, in order to establish an escapist soundtrack to cover the wars
and robberies of the 1990s? Or was it simply an expression of cultural taste
and desires of the masses that could finally have its moment of pathos, after
the state-controlled culture fell apart with Eastern European socialism in 1989?
Most probably
– it was both. As almost every other mass culture phenomena, turbo folk has its
regressive and exploitative side, but liberating and subversive one as well. We
can see how in Maja Miloš’ film CLIP (2012) Serbian kids embrace the dominant mainstream music
genre in the Balkans and its sang models of behavior (promiscuity, alcohol,
exhibitionism, violence, kitsch), while at the same time making it a liberating
experience for their bodies, a paradigm that enhances their sex and enjoyment,
their independence, and, after all, annihilates the misery of their poverty and
the dictate of “socially reasonable” conformism. That said, we can certainly debate
whether Maja Miloš is true to the real situation and honest in her worried approach,
or whether she is exploitative and unfair when she presents the working class
Serbian kids as peculiar population with uncontrollable hedonistic zeal: they
do everything that bourgeois class wants to do (filmmakers in Serbia usually
fall under this higher class), but has good moral and education that prevents
it from doing? Therefore, bourgeois filmmakers can envy these ‘other’, working-class
turbo folk kids, for having the opportunity to set themselves on fire.
This
complex set of questions is also at the center of the turbo folk ambivalence,
and it is perfectly visible in the careers of the turbo folk parents – Rambo
Amadeus and Marina Tucaković. A little bit of context: during the period when
Serbia was a part of the socialist Yugoslavia (1945-1991), all broadcasting
companies were publicly owned. Therefore, culture in general was developed with
an enlightened aim to educate the masses, which meant it was mostly a
compromise between high- and lowbrow culture, shaped by the editors and
editorial boards. Although SFR Yugoslavia had a sort of market socialism, at
the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s even more free market came:
private music production and broadcasting companies, discotheques and clubs, right-wing
populism and nationalism in the political sphere… “I was listening to the radio
then,” once said Rambo Amadeus in an interview, “and 90 percent of the stations
were playing some terrible folk music. The lyrics were stupid, the music
simplified. So I decided to experiment with this folk market boom and make some
folk songs that were even more stupid. I sold them to some of the emerging folk
performers and waited to see what would happen.” This experiment wasn’t
something Amadeus had never tried before: in the early and mid-1980s, he was
mocking the folk music by taking its worst lyrical banality and typical
melodies and adding to it gothic rock style, hard rock riffs, funky and disco rhythms,
etc.
At the same time, the most prominent Serbian pop rock lyricist Marina
Tucaković was also making folk parodies while living on the safe side of
avant-garde pop band she was a part of. Marina and Rambo were probably counting
on the idea that, in the still-socialist Yugoslav 1980s, they had an educated
urban audience that would understand those obvious examples of camp, of playful
postmodernist approach towards the kitschy substance of folk they actually despised.
But free
market has no understanding for subtle aesthetical questions, although it is
very good in irony. The 1990s came, the society in the Balkans became confusing,
and Marina Tucaković and Rambo Amadeus soon became known as the mother and
father of turbo-folk: they wrote some of the biggest hits of the genre and
collaborated with numerous folk stars who sold hundreds of thousands of their
silly folk songs that mixed completely foolish lyrics with oriental melodies, disco,
techno and funky. Evergreen music, traditional folk, pop and rock, all saw
their demise from once dominant, promoted and respected genres. So in order to
make money, other disappointed rockers followed Amadeus and Tucaković examples,
taking the turbo-folk extravagance to an unimaginable degree. It was life
during wartime and everything could be sold: heavy metal riffs in the middle of
an otherwise typical Balkan-style folk song about love; hip-hop and accordion; euro-dance
groove under the scenes of rural life; AC/DC introduction to “Thunderstruck”
slightly deformed to fit the recognizable melodic decorations of the traditional
Balkan singing… Music videos were filled with bright colors, eroticism of all
sorts, fires, horses and tigers, expensive cars and expressionist-style shots…
(Well, you’ve seen the videos of Rihanna, 50 Cent, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Britney
Spears, Shakira… Imagine a cheap, low-fi version of it, and you’ll get the
picture.) One of the prominent Belgrade costume designer said she would put a
typical homosexual iconography in a video just to see where is the line she would
be warned not to overstep – there wasn't any. These guys were buying everything
and had no criteria – as long as it is colorful.
To this
day, not much has changed in terms of style. But the two things did evolve: the
economic impact of turbo folk and the attitude of cultural elites towards it. Nowadays,
turbo folk is probably the best Serbian exported good, it is popular in all
ex-Yugoslav states, as well as in Bulgaria and Albania – who all, of course,
besides Serbian, have their own turbo folk stars. Performers earn a lot of
money by touring not only Balkan states, but singing at the discotheques for
the Balkan immigrants in Western Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. There is a
TV-channel that plays exclusively turbo folk videos (of course, it has ‘Balkan’
in its name). Turbo folk CDs and DVDs are sold on every gas-station from Slovenia
to Greece and Turkey. It connects Balkan nations extremely well, in spite of
the fact that most of them have a strong nationalist sentiment and officially
don't like each other. An although an article on the phenomena you’ll find on
Wikipedia is basically right when it describes the right-wing and left-wing
critique of the genre, it seems that many Balkan leftist today defend turbo
folk for the same reason conservatives attack it. There is an emerging leftist
theoretical scene that sees turbo folk as grass root style and emphasizes its
subversive sides: attack on patriarchal values, support for independent women, anarchic
hedonist desires, sexually liberal views (including LGBT themes and characters
in songs and videos)… On the other hand, it is still a type of the mass culture
par excellence and, therefore, very
often the proponent of the dominant patriarchal and capitalist ideology, only
sometimes covered in ‘liberal’ sheets.
Because
this ambivalence is at the core of turbo folk, the fact that main characters of
Maja Miloš' film are so deeply involved with it makes their complete social habitus raise ethical and political
questions that are not easy to answer. Are these kids the victims or are they a
part of the problem? Do they accept or challenge the dominant ideology, and in
what way? And if the bourgeois filmmakers also listen to turbo folk and embrace
some of its values, why do they put the moralistic blame on working class? Yet,
one thing is doubtless: these questions are relevant for the Balkans as they
are relevant to any other place where you are inclined to think of the impact dominant
values of the society and its mass culture have on adolescents.
Ivan Velisavljević
