ABSTRACT
Rock music has lately become the object of increasingly frequent scholarly analysis. There are a number of general studies of a sociological nature, complemented recently by a small literature on rock music under communism. Rock music in Yugoslavia, and in the successor states of Yugoslavia, has reflected rock trends worldwide. Rock music came to the attention of the authorities, and, as rock journalist Dusan Vesic has revealed, Marshal Tito and Edvard Kardelj personally discussed this genre in order to decide what posture to adopt toward it. His gamble paid off, and the 1960s in particular saw a rash of panegyric rock ballads praising him and his program of self-management. Yugoslav rock musicians would sometimes say that the communist authorities never banned a rock song in their country. A 1985-1986 survey conducted by Zagreb's Institute for Social Research found that about half of Yugoslavia's young people reported "high interest" in rock music.
