ABSTRACT
Zabavna muzika 2 performer Zdenka Kovačiček complained in the Yugoslav music magazine Sabor about novokomponovana narodna muzika (henceforth NCFM) 3 singer Silvana Armenulić’s outfit, stating that luxuriant dresses were not appropriate for yesterday’s peasant girls: ‘These are people who came from the gutter, from the kafana 4 to the stage lights – reflectors, publicity, luxurious cars – only to go re-enter the kafana’s smoke and fair tents’. 5 Kovačiček, considering herself a representative of a more elite culture, was bothered by Silvana’s modern dresses. Silvana, on the other hand, was offended by the social condemnation associated with her and NCFM: ‘In our society, as soon as someone says folk music, the peasantry is immediately attached to it in a pejorative sense. But I think that every song has its value, I listen to opera too’. 6 Folk singer Snežana Đurišić complained in the same magazine that she had faced serious problems when she started building a house, receiving a warning from the municipality stating that folk singers [narodnjaci] were not welcome in the elite residential Belgrade neighbourhood of Dedinje. 7
