Балканската музика – утопия и реалност
The Balkan Music - Utopia and Reality

Summary/Abstract: The paper is the first attempt of the author to relate two topics: the inter-Balkan relations and the “Balkan music”. In the first part the author expresses her shock of the daily demonstrations – mainly in the media – of a typical for the region ambivalence: hostility to the neighbors and desire for cooperation with the same neighbors. Being musicologist the author deals mainly with the second topic. She describes several examples of active cooperation between musicians from different Balkan countries. This cooperation is interpreted as an expression of utopic and real at the same time intention of the people from the Balkans to build up a “common house” opposed to the frequent geopolitical and interethnic collisions in the region. Considering the notion “Balkanism” introduced by Maria Todorova as a pejorative metaphor of the Balkans as zone of animosity, backwardness, insecurity the author opposes contra- notion: the neologism “musical Balkanism” presenting intercultural and interethnic musical practices existed for centuries in the big cities of the former Ottoman Empire and continuing up to now as interinstitutional and interpersonal forms of cultural cooperation. In the paper some products of this cooperation are selected which are realized in different spheres of the music and musical life: concert practices, festivals, genres of ethno-fusion, opera and chamber music performance.

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