Sounds of Balkan Vienna
Of the global music genres that have attracted interest from researchers, migrant hip-hop is probably the best known. In Vienna and in other large cities in central Europe, many hip-hop artists have highlighted their roots in former Yugoslavia. These artists include the rapper Jugo Ürdens, who engages playfully with Balkan stereotypes. Ürdens’s stage name is itself a play on, or Yugoslav hijacking (détournement) of, Udo Jürgens, the name of a well-known Austrian catchy vocal pop Schlager composer and singer. It may also parody aspects of the current Austrian urban music scene where the act of another songwriter – hijacking the same reference – Voodoo Jürgens, refers to a distinct Viennese underclass including its dialect and cultural mores. Moreover, Jugo Ürdens capitalizes on the ironic and urban hip appropriation of Slavic street cultures that I have described elsewhere (Daniel 2021). These “eastploitation” elements reflect a transnational dialogue in not only the Balkans but also post-Soviet spaces. One of Ürdens’s collaborators is a Polish rapper who is known simply as “Slav.” This East-to-East collaboration is a fairly new feature of the transnational music production of post-Yugoslav hip-hop acts in Vienna. Earlier collectives like Bečka Sekta (“the Viennese sect”) involved transnational collaborations that stayed strictly within the post-Yugoslav space, including the host countries of former Yugoslav migrants. At the same time, Jugo Ürdens does not sound significantly different from other contemporary hip-hop acts influenced by globalized culture. His lyrics are in German, and it is only his mimicry and mockery of the style of working-class youth cultures of eastern and southeastern Europe that link him to the Balkan Vienna soundscape.
However, the Balkan Viennese sound experience extends far beyond hip-hop. It includes electronic dance parties that claim allegiance with the Balkan spirit and people, and extends to world fusion with Balkan elements and new wave music. Importantly, the classical music for which Vienna is famous also resonates with audiences from former Yugoslavia. Even so, the official website for the Vienna 2020 Capital of Music events, which were restricted by pandemic measures, was offered only in French, Italian, and Spanish versions along with the standard German and English texts. No South Slavic, Turkish, Romanian, Greek or Albanian language version was provided to address Balkan Vienna’s interest in classical sounds. Implicitly, then, the organizers suggested that audiences from former Yugoslavia should content themselves with the German, English or other versions, or perhaps even with their “own” music.
Having evoked some of the Viennese musical sounds that relate to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, I want to return to the two sound objects of this study: Momentum and Planet. These differ in a number of key respects. With an eye on age and class, we may, for example, contrast the songs that are carefully curated by the middle-aged upper-middle class connoisseurs behind Momentum with the rougher sounds of Planet’s live shows. Those shows are sometimes part of wedding and anniversary parties organized and attended by lower middle- and working-class people from across generations. These attendees undoubtedly include economically successful Balkan entrepreneurs from the range of niches filled by the migrant workforce whose cultural references they largely share.
In both cases, the sounds rarely reach the youngest members of the target audience, who are only fans in exceptional cases. The materials I examined provided no hint of the participation of these young people outside their role in weddings and anniversaries and other family events, which are transgenerational as a matter of course. While Momentum may seek to win over young aficionados of vintage Yugoslav sounds, its success in doing so is questionable, and even the station’s younger music producers like Bosnian rapper Edo Maajka are, like their fans, steadily approaching middle age. Both these objects, thus, demonstrate a certain generational nostalgia. For Momentum, this centers on the technical quality of recordings and the vocal skills and mastery of musical instruments. As such, the object at once celebrates and mourns “good” music. Planet, in contrast, generates bittersweet memories of community celebrations every day through its round-the-clock radio and TV broadcasts. While this programming promises to raise audience morale, its repetitive nature threatens to eventually become exhausting and irritating.
There are also key differences between the missions of the two objects. To a certain degree, Momentum may be seen as a cultural heritage initiative with the important goal of preserving the collective memory of Yugoslav popular music. On the other hand, Planet broadcasts post-Yugoslav pop-folk and contemporary Roma music that shares some traits with pop-folk. Planet’s approach has self-exoticizing elements that can be felt in the relentless focus on the hedonistic and hyper-festive energy of upbeat Balkan parties. The station aims to convey the general mood of these celebrations and keep their spirit alive. The different contexts of the two broadcasts are also illuminating. Momentum has a fairly low-key and limited time slot on a medium it shares with similar programming from the Hungarian, African, and Latino communities in Vienna. Planet’s continuous transmission and transnational reach make it an important Balkan Viennese contribution to the European mediascape.
|
Profile |
Momentum |
Planet |
|
Sound |
hi-fi |
lo-fi |
|
Music genre |
golden oldies |
pop-folk |
|
Nostalgic content |
“good quality” music |
festive mood |
|
Mission |
to preserve memories |
to keep spirits high |
|
Context |
limited time slot |
non-stop transnational reach |
Table 1. A comparison of this study’s sound objects according to selected criteria
Turning back to the intersections between age, class, and sound, these two Balkan Viennese sound objects cannot be explained by any single theory of ethnic subcultures. Momentum is perhaps best described as a micro-community of music connoisseurs; the concept that best fits this object may be that of “fandom” (Gray, Sandvos, Harrington 2007). Momentum’s interest in antique sounds also invites comparisons with other social networks that emphasize preservation practices as part of their own distinct rites. In a similar vein, Planet can be understood as the product of a narodnjaci subculture that temporarily became mainstream and, while now confined to older and middle-class listeners, continues to operate from the space of mainstream culture. Such a notion of subcultures, together with its distinction towards the mainstream, is, however, increasingly becoming outdated both as a theory and a lived reality. Moreover, as noted above, prototypes of subculture usually involve communities of young people. A better illustration of an ethnic subculture in this context might be the Bečka Sekta hip-hop collective whose members’ names (e.g. Vojvodinac referring to the region of Vojvodina in northern Serbia) connote the Balkan space. As we have seen, Jugo Ürdens also occupies a kind of liminal position between subcultural and mainstream cultural space. As an artist working in a larger transnational space, he experiments with some stereotypical Balkan symbols (e.g. the Yugo car) while also deploying other cultural markers like the Adidas logo that reference larger cultural and geographical contexts.
As for the purported homogenizing and unifying effect of popular music on listeners’ taste, the case of Momentum suggests a trend in the opposite direction. The station’s painstaking and multiscalar quest for perfect sounds is, of course, enabled by the class status of its producers and listeners. This reflects not only in their exploration of forgotten albums preserved on vinyl from the heydays of socialist Yugoslavia but also in their careful evaluation of artists esteemed for their mastery of musical instruments and finally also in their pedantic attention to the technical side of transmission of these sounds to online as well as to physical space. To those detached from this scene, this may seem like nothing more than aesthetic snobbery that fetishizes some parts of mass culture. In contrast, Planet, with its relatively homogeneous music programming, presents a much more rough and monolithic sound object strongly opposing the age and class-based connoisseur niche and becoming probably the best example of mass “mechanically reproduced” culture (Benjamin 2010).
