Serbian Newly-Composed Folk Music of the 1960s-1980s in Post-Yugoslav Diaspora as a Dissonant Heritage

Newly composed folk music (NCFM, Serbian: novokomponovana narodna muzika), as a genre of popular folk music in Serbia and Yugoslavia since its beginnings in the late 1960s, is distinguished by its contrast with rural traditional folk music. Although it was regarded by the cultural elite as “corrupted” folk music and, in some cases, as kitsch, it was unequivocally accepted as a more progressive form of folk music among its target group - newly arrived migrants from the countryside who, during that period, moved to larger cities as well as abroad. Emigration continued in the 1990s, when emigrant population left the disintegrating Yugoslavia, but the NCFM continued to exist among the emigrants, including those of non-Serbian origin. To this day, it has survived in various post-Yugoslav emigrant communities, parallel to choreographed folklore (i.e. arrangements of traditional folk music for dance accompaniment) and contemporary forms of popular folk music (such as popfolk and trepfolk). In this article, two levels of the nostalgic existence of the NCFM are examined - associations with the homeland and with the past. In particular, the article examines whether the NCFM has become a cultural heritage of the diaspora, and whether the popular music (unintentionally?) become a Serbian/Yugoslav cross-border “soft power”? On the cases from field researches conducted in Türkiye and Hungary, we will approach the NCFM by applying the concept of dissonant heritage, questioning the apostasy of this popular genre from official cultural identity politics and considering it as a living practice that serves as an identification tool in dynamic diaspora communities.