One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away: Anthropological Analysis of the Music Fountain on Slavija Square

Abstract

The paper tries to determine what exactly means when the city and the state (indirectly) authorities call some object “the new symbol of Belgrade.” This scientific problem is considered on the case of a musical fountain on Slavija Square. What kind of symbol is that and on what basis it is attributed to this status? What should a musical fountain represent, as the “new” symbol of the capital? On these and other questions, I will try to answer with anthropological analysis to mise-en-scène and symbolic of the fountain. Under the mise-enscène I mean everything that lies around the fountain, which can be implicitly or explicitly brought it to a spatial connection. The symbolic plane of the fountain includes, inter alia, its musical content, which will also be considered in the text.