Music of Serbia
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The Music of Serbia presents a mixture of traditional music, which is part of the wider Balkan tradition, with its own distinctive sound, and various Western, Turkish and Hungarian influences.
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[edit] History
The documented musical history of the people later known as Serbians can be traced back to the medieval era. At the time, the region now known as Serbia was dominated by the Byzantine Empire, followed by being controlled by the Turks. Church music was performed throughout Serbia by choirs or individual singers, led by a conductor. The songs performed at the time were derived from the Osmoglasnik, a collection of religion songs dedicated to Jesus' resurrection. These songs were repeated over the course of eight weeks in a cyclical fashion. Composers from this era include Stefan Srbin, Isaija Srbin, and Nikola Srbin.
Aside from church music, the medieval era in Serbia included folk music, about which very little is known, and court music. During the Nemanjic dynasty, musicians played an important role in the royal court, and were known as sviralnici, glumci and praskavnici. Other rulers known for the musical patronage included Stefan Dusan, Stefan Lazarevic, and Đurađ Brankovic.
Medieval musical instruments included horns, trumpets, lutes, psalteries, drums and cymbals. Traditional folk instruments include various kinds of bagpipes, flutes, diple,tamburitza and gusle, among others. With the beginning of Turkish rule in the 15th century, new instruments like the zurle, kaval and tapan were introduced to Serbia but these days less frequently used.
[edit] Classical music
Stevan Mokranjac was an important Serbian composer and musicologist, considered one of the most important founders of modern Serbian music [1]. Born in 1856, Mokranjac taught music, collected Serbian folk songs and did the first scholarly research on Serbian music. He was also the director of the first Serbian School of Music and one of the founders of the Union of Singing Societies. His most famous works are the Song Wreaths.
Just prior to Mokranjac's era, a musician named Josip Slezinger came to Serbia and founded the Prince's Band, composing music for the band based on folk songs. Around the same time came the first choiral societies, which mostly sung in German or Italian. Later, the first Serbian language works for choirs were written by Kornelije Stankovic (1831 - 1865). Other famous Classical Serbian composers include Stevan Hristić, Isidor Bajić, Stanislav Binički, and Josif Marinković.
[edit] Traditional music
Pure folk music includes a two-beat dance called kolo, which is a circle dance with almost no movement above the waist, accompanied by instrumental music made most often with an accordion, but also with other instruments: frula (traditional kind of a recorder), tamburica, or harmonique. Modern accordionists include Mirko Kodić and Ljubiša Pavković.
Sung epic poetry has been an integral part of Balkan music for centuries, but is now found mostly in Montenegro; see Serbian epic poetry. These long poems are typically accompanied on a one-string fiddle called the gusle, and concern themselves with subjects such as Kraljević Marko or the Battle of Kosovo Polje. More modern subjects include various celebrities and current events.
Brass bands are extremely popular, especially in southern and central Serbia. This tradition is now dominated by Gypsy musicians who achieve sometimes great popularity; Fejat Sejdić, Bakija Bakić and Boban Marković are the biggest names in modern brass band bandleaders.
The Vlach minority in northeastern Serbia is related to Romanians. Popular music is most closely related to the people of Wallachia in Romania, while traditional music shows a wide range of influences.
[edit] Folk
In the modern era, Serbia has been dominated by a succession of Yugoslav states until recently becoming independent as a part of Serbia and Montenegro. There was Yugoslav popular music which was well-known in Serbia, and abroad, and later, in the chaos of the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, turbo-folk became popular and associated with nationalist violence. Serbian rock also became popular in the 20th century.
Ethnic Serbian emigrants have brought their musical traditions to countries like Canada and the United States. The Cleveland, Ohio area of the US has a large Serbian population, and a Serbian rock scene. Other manifestations of emigrant Serbian music include the Kolo ensemble from Canada, the Rastko ensemble from New York City and the Grachanitsa ensemble from Boston, Massachusetts.
Novokomponovana can be seen as a result of the urbanization of folk music. In its early times, it had a professional approach to performance, uses accordion and clarinet and typically includes love songs or other simple lyrics (though there have long been royalist, anti-Communist and democratic lyrical themes persisting underground). Many of the genre's best performers also play Bosnian sevdalinka music or other forms imported from even further abroad. These include Šaban Šaulić, Toma Zdravković, Predrag Gojković Cune, Miroslav Ilić and Lepa Lukić. At a later stage, the popular performers such as Vesna Zmijanac, Lepa Brena, Dragana Mirković were using more influences from pop music, oriental music, and other genres, which ultimatively led to explosion of turbo-folk.
The era of turbo-folk took place during the war and crisis of 1990s. Turbo-folk used Serbian folk and novokomponovana as the basis, and adding influences from rock and roll, soul, house and garage. Turbo-folk is aggressive and swift, and includes popular performers like Ceca and Jelena Karleuša.Some musicians used their music to protest against Milošević during the 1990s, such as the Rimtutituki project, while others were seen as having used music and cultural expression to incite extremist nationalist fervor.
[edit] Popular music
There are many rock bands that exist since 1970s and 1980s. The first formidable Yugoslav rock bands were Smak, Time, YU-Grupa and Korni-Grupa. The "Golden age" of Yugoslav rock music occurred during 1980s when Belgrade's New Wave music bands, such as Idoli, Šarlo Akrobata and Električni orgazam, Disciplina Kičme, Ekatarina Velika and Partibrejkers, drew new frontiers in musical expression. Their music is listened to mainly by the young urban population. Today, the most famous mainstream performers include Riblja čorba, Bajaga i Instruktori and Van Gogh, while Rambo Amadeus and Darkwood Dub are the most prominent musicians of the "alternative" scene.
Pop music has been catching up with the popularity of folk in recent years. Newer artists that perform this kind of music include: Vlado Georgiev, Negative, Nataša Bekvalac, Tanja Savic, Ana Stanić, Night Shift, and Željko Joksimović who was runner-up in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 , along with old stars Đorđe Balašević and Zdravko Čolić.
There are also numerous hip-hop bands and artists, mostly from Belgrade but other cities as well: GRU, 187, C-Ya, Beogradski Sindikat.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Burton, Kim. "Balkan Beats". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 273-276. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
[edit] External links
- Music of Serbia at the Open Directory Project (suggest site)
- Project Rastko category (some text in English, RealAudio church choirs)
- dssound.com - You can listen lot of songs (site in Serbian)
- Nostalgija.com - a heap of MP3s (site in Serbian)
- Pticice - a free MP3 album of native Serbian music
- Darkwood Dub
- Kiss Radio
- Serbian folk music and dance video repository
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