Southeastern Europe 36 (2012) 178–207 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/187633312X642103 brill.nl/seeu Assessing Turbofolk Controversies: Popular Music between the Nation and the Balkans Rory Archer Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz Abstract his article explores controversies provoked by the Serbian pop-folk musical style “turbofolk” which emerged in the 1990s. Turbofolk has been accused of being a lever of the Milošević regime – an inherently nationalist cultural phenomenon which developed due to the speciic socio-political conditions of Serbia in the 1990s. In addition to criticism of turbofolk on the basis of nationalism and war-mongering, it is commonly claimed to be “trash,” “banal,” “por- nographic,” “(semi-)rural,” “oriental” and “Balkan.” In order to better understand the socio- political dimensions of this phenomenon, I consider other Yugoslav musical styles which predate turbofolk and make reference to pop-folk musical controversies in other Balkan states to help inform upon the issues at stake with regard to turbofolk. I argue that rather than being under- stood as a singular phenomena speciic to Serbia under Milošević, turbofolk can be understood as a Serbian manifestation of a Balkan-wide post-socialist trend. Balkan pop-folk styles can be understood as occupying a liminal space – an Ottoman cultural legacy – located between (and often in conlict with) the imagined political poles of liberal pro-European and conservative nationalist orientations. Understanding turbofolk as a value category imbued with symbolic meaning rather than a clear cut musical genre, I link discussions of it to the wider discourse of Balkanism. Turbofolk and other pop-folk styles are commonly imagined and articulated in terms of violence, eroticism, barbarity and otherness the Balkan stereotype promises. hese pop-folk styles form a frame of reference often used as a discursive means of marginalisation or exclusion. An eastern “other” is represented locally by pop-folk performers due to oriental stylistics in their music and/or ethnic minority origins. For detractors, pop-folk styles pose a danger to the autochthonous national culture as well as the possibility of a “European” and cosmopolitan future. Correspondingly I demonstrate that such Balkan stereotypes are invoked and subverted by many turbofolk performers who positively mark alleged Balkan characteristics and negotiate and invert the meaning of “Balkan” in lyrical texts. Keywords turbofolk, Serbia, music, nationalism, Balkanism, auto-Orientalism Popular music is the language of translation and communication, of the vernacular and the lingua franca, of the nostalgia echoing from the Ottoman past and the hope- fulness resonant for a European future. Phillip V. Bohlman (Buchanan 2008: xvi)