Yugoslav Disco. Digging into an “excluded” musical culture of late socialism

Abstract

One of the editors of this issue of TheMA attended a press conference in Vienna back in 2023. During small talk with a journalist from Belgrade, the editor told her that he was working on a project about disco culture in the former Yugoslavia. The Serbian journalist was surprised about the subject and the editor was equally surprised to realize that she didn’t know anything about this topic or any of the music acts mentioned, even though her age revealed that she was probably in her teenage years at the peak of disco culture in Yugoslavia. Instead, she was familiar with all the groups and protagonists of the Yugoslav new wave scene. Indeed, that shouldn’t have been so surprising! This issue of TheMa is the result of a study day that took place in May 2022 at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.