Radio Belgrade in the process of creating symbolic boundaries: The example of the folk music program between the Two World Wars (1929-1940)

Abstract

This article deals with the process of creation of symbolic boundaries in the context of designing the folk music programs at Radio Belgrade since its foundation until the beginning of World War Two. A detailed insight into the musical contents aired on Radio Belgrade, the texts on folk music published in the radio weekly magazine (Radio Belgrade), and the preserved memoirs, with an emphasis on their broader socio-cultural and socio-political significance, has enabled me to single out the factors and mechanisms that played a key role in defining the boundaries of folk music. I will analyse the work of different editorial teams before World War Two; at the same time, I will consider the tastes and cultural preferences of the subscribers and listeners of the Radio Belgrade programs. By means of crossing out specific aesthetic, political and economical positions of radio editors and experts who designed the folk music program with the expectations of listeners and, to an extent, performers of folk music, I will attempt to explain how the process of symbolical demarcation of folk music as a separate entity, different from art and popular music, took place; but also, how the folk music broadcast on the radio related to the Serbian folk musical practices.