ABSTRACT
The concept of song as embodying tradition is embedded in Serbian cultural identity, and this has served as a powerful cultural resource for Serbian nationalism In the 1990s the stimulation of nationalism by popular and traditional Serbian songs involved a process of ethnification a cult of the folkloric in which popular music contributed to the estrangement, alienation and distancing of the Other. In the Serbian case, one of the key vehicles in the creation of Serbian national identity and the project of a Greater Serbia is the interdependence of pesme, crkva i narod. The role of popular music in stimulating the articulation of national identity, during the period of the Balkan Wars and the First World War. When the First World War broke out, the Serbs had been initially successful in fighting against the vastly superior forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In addition, biblical themes abound in the Serbian literary canon that feeds traditional Serbian music.
