NORMAL PEOPLE’S NATIONALISM. ETHNICIZATION OF MUSIC TRADITION ON FESTIVAL IN GUCA

Abstract

Since the 1980’s ethnology and social and cultural anthropology have witnessed an increasing number of studies and debates on nationalism in the light of popular culture. In the light of theory formulated by Hobsbawm, Gellner, Hayes and Comaroff, nationalism in effect are not big symbols and official politics, but rather popular entertainment, media and normal practices of ordinary people in everyday life. Traditional primordial concepts of nationalism are deeply regressive. In this paper, I discuss a few contradictions in the relationship between tradition, nationalism and music. An excellent example illustrating specific nature of these contradictions is Dragačevski Sabor Trubaca (Guca Trumpet Festival) in Guca, Serbia and particular music genre – brass music. In my opinion there are three distinctive discourses/narrations about history and meaning this festival and specific kind of music: dominating Serbian discourse, "weak" Gypsy discourse, and researcher’s discourse. This study is effect an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2010 by an author and large group of students from Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology UAM Poznań, Poland.