CULTURE OF REMEMBRANCE AND YUGOSLAV ROCK AND ROLL

Text topic: Studies

Text author: Никола Божиловић

The paper is dedicated to the culture of remembrance of the Yugoslav rock and roll in Serbia here and now. According to the author, rock and roll represents an important link in the chain of cultural tradition of the Serbian society in the aesthetic and sociological sense. Both rock-n-roll and popular culture in general (including jazz and pop music) have been unjustifiably neglected regardless of the fact that they stand side by side with the folk and rural culture as traditional forms of creation. The current political and cultural elite does not comprehend that the Serbian urban tradition can act as the most important link between Serbia and the globalizing and modernizing world. The culture of remembrance and identities is reserved by this elite primarily for the traditional folklore forms of our cultural heritage, with the reason for this (likely) lying in the understanding that the notion of tradition covers only the elements of rural lifestyle. The author of this paper reflects critically on the cultural policy which is incompatible with the contemporary and modern cultural developments in the world. What is also not understood in Serbia is that identities are not fixed and given once and for all, but that they represent a matter of choice, construction and strategy. The paper is divided into three chapters: “Amarcord in the context of culture” (where culture is defined as a sociological phenomenon), “Yugoslav rock and roll community” (which considers the scope and contribution of Yu rock) and “Politically programmed oblivion”. The oblivion in this case is not incidental and episodic but a conscious and (it seems) a long-term orientation of the political establishment. Rock and roll, and above all that which bears the Yugoslav prefix, does not suit its ideological, absolutistic and populist matrix. In Serbia, little attention (primarily, by the media) is paid to the fact that rock musicians of this society have contributed immensely to the establishment of Yugoslav rock and roll scene, which therefore must not be forgotten. Rock and roll in this region was not a passing fashionable craze but a way of life which formed opinions, beliefs, behaviors, communication and the entire activity of the young generations at that point in time. Cultural traces of that way of life are still present and they deserve to be remembered and used as important for future life and connecting with the rest of the world. These facts are neglected due to the all-encompassing retraditionalization that has taken hold of the present Serbian society whose culture is positioned within the mythical reshaping of reality. This prevents Serbia from becoming a part of the modern world, and the revival of the remembrance of rock and roll would help Serbia to a great extent in the attempt to reach the enviable status that it once enjoyed on the global scale. In short, the culture of remembrance is hidden behind the non-culture of forgetting, with the reasons for this being not only aesthetic in nature but political and ideological as well. Rock and roll is undesirable to the current political establishment for at least two reasons: first, because it is Yugoslav (with a socialist connotation), and second, because it does not originate in Serbia but is “imported” from the West. When one adds the subversiveness, individualistic leanings and the critical intonations of rock and roll, then it is clear that nurturing the culture of its remembrance would be contrary to the values upon which the model of the current Serbian society is based.