Sunday, May 04, 2008

Sign of the Times

Turbofolk is back in the news again.

And would it have been asking too much for the CSM to actually look up the indictment against Raznatovic?

4 comments:

Kirk Johnson said...

Is it really true that Turbofolk only dates from the 90s? I thought it went back a LITTLE further than that (not much, but a little).

Bulgarians have "Chalga" which is essentially the same kind of music; according to my Bulgarian friends the gypsies and villagers picked it up from listening to Yugoslav radio stations.

I could be wrong.

Anonymous said...

Hi guys, I think turbofolk was there even before I was born. I don't think it dates from '90s.

Shaina said...

The person to ask these questions is probably Eric Gordy-of East Ethnia, I know he has done a lot of writing on turbofolk & turbofolk politics.

From my understanding - the turning point was in the late 1980s when Rambo Amadeus sarcastically first used the term "turbofolk" and it was adopted but without the irony RA originally used.

Kirk Johnson said...

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a Balkan thing dating back a bit longer.

In Bulgaria, it was sometimes called "pop-folk." There's a somewhat rundown nightclub right on the harbor in Ahtopol advertising "Pop-Folk"; or, at least there still was when I was last there in 2002.