Part 1/2

So, you mentioned Yugoslavia in your question and for the purpose of discussing this it needs to be emphasized that Yugoslavia was always different than the other children in the socialist world, especially in respect to the ability to consume Western consumer products and to imitate/appropriate Western consumer products. Because of this socialist Yugoslavia is commonly called "consumer socialism" because of its intent to include the best of both worlds – socialist economic organization with the twist of workers' self management and Western consumption.

The starting point of all of this was the political split between socialist Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito and the USSR under Stalin. The short version of all of this is that Stalin felt threatened by the Tito regime because Yugoslavia could claim with legitimacy that it was the only country in Eastern Europe in WWII that had effectively liberated itself from German occupation with only minimal help from the Red Army and the Soviet Union. While in the years from 1945 to 1948 Tito had been an ardent Stalinist trying to emulate the model of the USSR, it soon became clear that the Yugoslav Communist Party was much independent in their decision making from Moscow than, say, the party in Poland, Bulgaria or Romania which were de facto Soviet satellite states. When the Soviets started denouncing Tito and his regime, demanding that he be replaced because of alleged "Trotskyite tendencies", Yugoslavia turned away from the Soviet Union and started having a more friendly relationship with the West. The US and other Western countries were quite happy about this for they saw a chance to split the socialist bloc and by using the Marshall Plan funds draw Yugoslavia away from the Soviet Union.

This all worked out and had far reaching consequences both ideologically as well as in terms of pop culture in Yugoslavia compared to all other socialist countries in Eastern Europe. Ideologically, it meant Yugoslavia pursued a different form of socialism that was reliant on what they called "workers' self management". Universities, factories, schools and so forth would all be in the hands of the workers directly with them electing representatives to run them. The idea was to democratize the soclialized means of production and to be less bureaucratic and with greater individual freedom for the individual worker. While this in practice didn't mean that the party gave up power in favor of an actual democratization, it still meant that the Yugoslav people enjoyed a greater degree of personal freedom in their everyday lives than the inhabitants of other socialists states at the time did – including access to Western consumer products and pop culture.

Initially the Yugoslav government followed a Stalinist pattern of "socialist realism" and USSR-style "agitprop" in their cultural policies. But in 1952, at the VI. party congress of the KPJ they abandoned that policy as a failure and the result of trying to imitate the unworkable Soviet model in Yugoslavia. As the historian Holm Sundhaussen summarized the reasoning of the party leadership:

The New (socialist) Man can't be wished magically into existence – especially not with repressive methods. The aim is therefore supposed to be the creation of the "free socialist humans". Instead of agitprop the party decided to replace it with the "work of convincing the people" of their cause. The party decided that the state was not supposed to be involved into everything and instituted the policy of the 4 Ds: decentralizacija, deetatizijacia, debirokratzijacia i demokratizacija" (de-centralization, smaller government, de-bureacratization and democratization).

This was immediately noticeable in virtually all areas of life, but also especially in culture. The 1960s are commonly held as the most productive time of Yugoslav film production and helped create and immensely rich canon of movies that didn't shy away from difficult or controversial topics and that only saw curtailment after the the backlash against movements for liberalization in the wake of the student protests of 1968 and the Croatian spring of 1972.

The same was evident in terms of what music was listened to and created. The first years of the post-war period had seen music that was strongly inspired by traditional folk music and was supposed to create patriotic feelings among the populous referencing the "brotherhood and unity" ideology of the Partisans that saw all peoples of Yugoslavia untied in the common struggle against the occupier and for socialism. Partisan songs like Po šumama i gorama (Through mountains and woods) and Uz Maršala Tita were popular among the population and the Western tourists who flocked to Yugoslavia from the late 50s forward alike, mostly because they were often sung publicly and by many people as well as combined with folk dancing.

But this already changed in the mid-50s when the first Yugoslav Jazz bands came into existence. Since 1953 e.g. Radio / Television Belgrade had a Jazz Orchestra that played both international Jazz compositions that could be imported freely to Yugoslavia as well as their own compositions, some of them can be heard here.

But ever more popular that Jazz was Rock music in Yugoslavia that started spreading in the 1960s and advanced to urban mass culture in Yugoslavia. And not just in terms of imitating Western music, which circulated freely in the country but it became massively productive in their own right. So much so that the British music magazine New Musical Express called the Akademija Rock Club in Belgrad "one of the finest clubs in Europe" in 1981. While other socialist regimes tried to repress the Rock scene, in Yugoslavia, it could freely develop and thrive. In Zala Volcic's book Scenes From the Last Yugoslav Generation an actor from Ljubljana is quoted saying: "Rock Music was the only way of holding Yugoslav people together and not tearing them apart."

As previously mentioned, Western pop music circulated freely in country. In the 1960s the most popular Western bands included The Animals, The Byrds, The Monkees The Kinks, The Who and Manfred Mann, while thanks to a large number of music festivals in the country existing since the late 1960s, tastes changed in the 1970s because of many famous Western bands visiting and playing in Yugoslavia, including such acts as Deep Purple.

But even more popular than Western acts were Yugoslavian acts that were active in all the same genres. The 70s saw the rise of Yugoslav hard rock, progressive rock, glam rock, and stadium rock. The longest existing Yugoslav/Serbian band that still plays gigs emerged from 1970s stadium rock and is called YU Grupa while in 1974 the band, widely considered in historical scholarship as the "most popular and best Yugoslav Rock band" Bijelo Dugme (White Button) formed in Sarajevo in 1974. Citing Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin as their major influences, Bijelo Dugme sold over 30.000 copies of their first single Top on release. And they wouldn't stop there. After they played at 1974 BOOM Festival in Ljubljana in front of 15.000 people, their next big release Da sam pekar (If I was a baker) would sell 100.000 copies after release making it their first gold record. Their 1975 album Šta bi dao da si na mom mjestu would go on to become the first Yugoslav platinum and double diamond album selling almost 300.000 copies.

The 1970s in Yugoslavia also saw the emergence of Disco with Zdravko Čolić being one of its prime artists who refused to move to Germany in service of his career and stayed in Yugoslavia instead. But even more importantly, the late 1970s saw the Yugoslav hard rock and punk rock scenes developing and exploding producing some of the most notable Eastern European rock acts of the century. Formed in 1978, Riblja Čorba (Fish Soup) produced some of Yugoslavia's greatest hits and didn't shy away from political controversy. On their album Mrtva Priroda they included lyrics such as "Za ideale ginu budale" ("Fools get killed for ideals") and "Kreteni dižu bune i ginu" ("Jerks start uprisings and get killed"), which didn't sit well with the Union of Associations of Fighters in the War of Liberation. They demanded the song to be censured and protested the band's concerts. It even went as far as the band having to sing a liability waiver that they would take full responsibility for what happened, should they play their song in concerts. While they recalled some concerts that had to be cut short because of the hostility by the fire fighters hired as security, the 1982 tour of the band had still sold a respectable 20.000 tickets overall in their 50 or so stops. The band would also have some problems in the further course of the 1980s because of their political lyrics but the problem wasn't official state censorship but rather the self-censorship of radio stations who simply refused to play their more political songs. Originally planning to release their farewell album in 1991 with the outbreak of the Yugoslav war, several members of the band still performing under the name transformed into supporters of Serb nationalism and Milošević in the 1990s and performed at rallies of Milošević's political party...