Between Two Worlds: Concert-giving and Rioting in the Post-Yugoslav Area

Abstract

Starting in the late 1990s, some musicians from the territory of former Yugoslavia gradually embarked on the project of giving concerts in Belgrade, the capital of the former country. Others refused to perform in Serbia after the wars, which fuelled a negative attitude toward these musicians. In this paper I deal with the reception of those concerts, pointing to the ways they have become specific affective sites of memory. I focus on two major issues: the discourse produced in the concerts by the performers themselves and members of the audience and the discourse produced by various protest groups (which resulted in the organization of protests in Belgrade against performances by musicians who ‘hate Serbs’).