It’s Sounding Light and Yugoslav: Contributions by Recording Researchers to the Understanding of Genesis of Zabavna Music

In this paper we focus on the 1950s popular music in Yugoslavia, which was, same as the country and its cultural politics at the time, finding its own ground. On the one hand, we hear a significant presence of the orchestral dance music (whether instrumental or with lead vocals), such as tango, foxtrot, rumba, waltz etc., similar to the interwar period. On the other hand, we hear the emergence of authors and stylistic preferences typical for zabavna muzika, Yugoslav popular music style whose formation has been dated to the late 1950s and early 1960s in the contemporary literature. Focusing our attention on the only two existing record companies at the time, Jugoton from Zagreb and Jugodisk from Belgrade, we analyse the music’s transitional character. Our main argument is that the insight into the record production of the 1950s is crucial for exploration of key ingredients and context for the formation of domestic Yugoslav popular music. The remaining recordings are witnesses of repertoire, but also performers, arrangement and performance styles. Furthermore, we argue that the exploration of this segment of Yugoslav popular music is almost impossible without taking into account discographic production coming from both Croatia and Serbia. We also recognize potential for the developement of regional popular music studies in complementary approaches to the topic from the two former Yugoslav republics. This research was in one part supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Grant. nr. 7750287 Applied Musicology and Ethnomusicology in Serbia: Making a Difference in Contemporary Society – APPMES (Institute of Musicology SASA, Belgrade) and in part by the Croatian Science Foundation through the project The Recording Industry in Croatia between 1927 and the end of the 1950s (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb)