Any book that undertakes the task of dealing with turbo-folk – one of the most controversial forms of popular culture in the Balkans – faces the challenge of bringing new perspectives to music that has been the subject of heated debate for almost three decades. Turbo-folk was coined in the late 1980s to describe a hybrid of regional folk music and Eurodance, subsequently adopted as a ‘conceptual signifier’ for wider cultural practices. Its notoriety peaked during the Yugoslav civil wars in the 1990s, when it was appropriated by Slobodan Milošević's far-right regime in Serbia, and was consequently dubbed a ‘soundtrack to genocide’ (p. 1). Since 2000, however, turbo-folk has morphed into an ‘ostensibly harmless' Balkan pop (p. 80), or at least this is what Čvoro argues: ‘although turbo-folk is closely connected to the Serbian nationalism of the Milošević regime, its popularity transcends nationalist animosities … and effectively acts as a cultural form of reconciliation’ (p. 2). This idea underpins the principal aims of Čvoro's book: to rethink negative readings of turbo-folk as a mass-produced media spectacle that fosters mindless consumerism, sexism and criminality (p. 2), and to argue that turbo-folk acts as a form of Balkan cultural resistance to globalisation and neoliberalism, which Čvoro terms ‘new Balkanness'.
The book comprises six main chapters, divided into two parts. The first part traces the ideological evolution of turbo-folk music and surrounding debates, while the second part analyses how turbo-folk is used as a ‘readymade’ in art, sculpture, architecture and film. Against the central narrative of Balkan empowerment, the book invokes other important themes: the legacy of Yugoslav socialism and its working class, debates on taste and value, cultural elitism, the rural-urban split, issues of gender, sexual empowerment, war, criminality, hedonism, excess and escapism. Even though Čvoro omits some key sources, and at times slips into reductive catalogue-like summaries of some excellent scholarship in the field, the book on the whole offers a useful synthesis of existing literature and debates.Footnote 1
Yet the merit of Čvoro's survey is undermined by conspicuously poor editing and proof-reading, which make it difficult to recommend this book as a reliable source for Serbian/Croatian references. The footnotes and text are littered with over 70 typos, missing diacritics and other errors. These range from misspellings of authors' names and incomplete footnotes to factual mistakes. For example, the singer on p. 12 should be Šaban Šaulić instead of Nino; footnote 53 (p. 44) has five mistakes, including typos, a missing co-author and confusion between title and publisher; and on p. 78 Čvoro recalls listening to a song in 1992 (‘Kad bi bio ranjen’ If you were wounded) which was not released until 1996.
Čvoro's arguments also reveal many missing links and contradictions. He overlooks important explanatory steps that make it particularly difficult for non-Yugoslav specialists, for example, when he uses concepts such as ‘self-management’ (pp. 5–6) and ‘kitsch tax’ (pp. 15, 24), before they are properly explained (pp. 31–5 and pp. 43–7, respectively). In the chapter on ‘Turbo-folk as the Vanishing Mediator of Nationalism’, the reader finally learns on the last page that the mediator does not actually vanish but is better understood as Jodi Dean's ‘displaced mediator’ (p. 80). In the conclusion he introduces the idea of ‘turbo-folk as parody’, yet the reader is left to work out how this concept relates to the book as a whole (pp. 180–4). In short, there are many ambiguities and much has to be taken on trust. Furthermore, Čvoro's idolatry of Žižek frequently obfuscates the narrative and is counter to Čvoro's own warning that the ‘slavish embrace of his [Žižek's] insights runs the risk of generating a field of ready-made theory that simply reproduces, rather than engages with, Žižek’ (p. 6). Consequently I wonder whether a dialogue with other theorists, such as Huyssen and Laclau, would have yielded more productive enquiry into questions of memory and populism?
These issues aside, Čvoro offers some sophisticated ideas, especially in the chapters on art and film. While it is not always clear how the second part of the book relates to the conceptual parameters of turbo-folk, Čvoro nonetheless generates stimulating discussions, especially on the use of turbo-folk star Dragana Mirković in Milica Tomić's art installation This is Contemporary Art, and in his investigation of the turbo-folk anthem ‘Ne može nam niko ništa’ (No one can touch us) in Srđan Dragojević's films.
Moreover, his analysis of Ceca and her effect offers some of the most convincing readings on this singer to date. Ceca, ‘the undisputed queen of turbo-folk’ (p. 65, although she rejects the turbo-folk moniker), rose to fame in the early 1990s through a carefully forged matrix of politics, sexuality and Serbian Orthodox iconography. She married the Serbian warlord Arkan, sang to his troops on the front line, and boasts a public portfolio of criminal connections. Despite all of this, Ceca is today one of the most popular stars in the Balkans (p. 58). That said, she is yet to give a concert in either Croatia or the non-Serbian part of Bosnia. The downside to Čvoro's analysis of Ceca is that he makes little distinction between different listening practices (from ubiquitous listening in pubs to different modes of listening in concerts and private settings), and for the most part treats the ‘audience’ as a homogenous group that unanimously represents his views.Footnote 2 As others have noted, Ceca invokes multiple representations – a symbol of female empowerment, an unjust victim, a strong Serbian patriot – yet Čvoro essentially glosses over the nationalist residues that haunt both Ceca and turbo-folk.Footnote 3
Likewise he downplays the implications of instances that rupture his totalising narrative, such as the statue of Bruce Lee that was removed from Mostar due to ethnic tensions, and the attack on the Kontekst Gallery in Belgrade for staging works by Kosovar artists. In other words, behind Ceca's beguiling affect lies a spectre that haunts both Čvoro's book and the legacy of turbo-folk – the Yugoslav wars. And in the week that marks the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica, with palpable ethnic tensions and incidents circling the media, to embrace Čvoro's utopian narrative of colourful thugs, harmless nationalism, and Ceca and turbo-folk as symbols of trans-national reconciliation, would be nothing short of false consciousness.
In conclusion, Čvoro advocates provocative and challenging arguments about the trans-Balkan popularity of turbo-folk and has made a valuable contribution to studies of Balkan popular culture, albeit with blind spots and palimpsets, and at the cost of important ethical questions implicit in the legacy of the 1990s.
