Re-enacting the Trauma: Ritualising Turbo-Folk

Abstract

Turbo-folk, a popular music genre originating in 1990s’ Serbia, still enjoys an immense popularity among Viennese residents with origins in the former Yugoslavia. The pilot study outlined here attempted to determine why a 25-year-old repertoire of songs is of such central importance to many listeners in the Austrian capital. As the research showed, informants view the interaction with turbo-folk as an experience outside their everyday lives requiring a particular time and space in order to unfold. To channel and express the strong emotions elicited by turbo-folk, actors employ a variety of strategies, one of which is singing along to the music. This practice is interpreted here as a ritual aiming to process the collective trauma constituted by a double loss of home. This ritual results in the construction of a collective “Yugo” identity that at the same time enables and ensues the process in a circular manner.