Serbia's exit and Guča Trumpet Festivals as micro-national spaces: between nation building and nation branding

Abstract

<p></p><p> <i>This chapter deals with issues of Serbian national identity articulation in post-Milošević Serbia by using two major and conceptually disparate Serbian music festivals as case studies. Drawing largely on Lefebvre’s (1974/2009) theory on space production, I entertain the idea of contemporary music festivals as micro-national spaces in order to conceptualize ongoing national identity narratives surrounding Serbia’s two festivals. The ultimate goal of the chapter is to challenge the dominant national identity discourse on ‘two Serbias’, resting on the underlying assumptions of the West/East split and all familiar dichotomies stemming from it. This is accomplished through the analysis of selected aspects of each festival’s marketing and programming strategies, respectively. The ultimate goal of such an analysis is to point towards the liminal status of Serbian society oscillating between obsolete nation-building projections and wannabe nation-branding initiatives. </i></p><p><i> </i><b></b><br /></p><p><b>Keywords: </b><i>national identity, music festivals, micro-national space, post-Milošević Serbia, the West/East split, Balkanism </i></p><p><br /></p>