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Music and Memory: Yugoslav Rock in Social Media

Martin Pogaar

Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Research Centre of the Slovenian

Academy of Sciences and Arts
martin.pogacar@zrc-sazu.si

Abstract
This article argues that after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Yugoslav rock music lost
little cultural value and is still a prominent trigger of vernacular memories of the
socialist Yugoslav past, as well as a vehicle of socio-political commentary in post-Yugoslav contexts. In this view, music is understood as a galvaniser of affective relationships
to that past and to post-Yugoslav presents. In the first part of the article, the author
discusses the theoretical and practical implications of digitally mediated music as
immersive affective environments, working within the framework of media archaeology and a digital archives approach. It is argued that Yugoslav rock has retained its
potency and appeal, where today, in a post-Yugoslavia context, it presents an outlet for
the recomposition of musical preferences through nostalgia and opposition to the
post-1991 socio-political developments. In the second part of the article, focusing on
Facebook and YouTube, the author investigates how Yugoslav rock has been reframed
in social media and how fragments of the countrys past are reframed in digital media
environments. A qualitative multimodal discourse analysis is employed here to investigate a selection of fan pages of rock musicians and bands.

Keywords
Yugoslav rock memory post-Yugoslavia affect

Introduction
Music can be seen as one of the most intimate technologies of the crossencryption of human experiences into individual and collective entanglements of everyday life. It is an affective transformative force (see Thompson
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and Biddle 2013: 7; see also Cvetkovich, 2003; Grusin 2010)1 that, through
playing, dancing, or listening to it, transgresses the apparent divisions
between the individual and collective, the intimate and the public, the body
and the mind. Thus, it also plays a role in social cohesion: a listening individual is not only immersed into the musical landscape but also following
Victor Burgins idea of simultaneous collective reception (1996: 158) into
an imagined listening collectivity. In digital media environments (DME),
the immersiveness is somewhat different as compared to offline spaces.
Music in DME is distinctly marked by its unprecedented spreadability
(see Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013), a direct consequence of the coding
of music into digital files and the mediums technological infrastructure.
Instantaneous publication, decontextualisation, sharing, and spreading,
and also the redefinition of temporal and spatial borders, add to a repositioning of the relationship between past and present. This opens up a number of issues related to the complexities ingrained in the workings of music
and memory.
This paper looks into the digital afterlife of Yugoslav rock music, new wave
in particular,2 and aims to trace how it is re-presenced3 in post-Yugoslav digitally mediated realities. I argue that Yugoslav rock and primarily Yugoslav
new wave has lost little cultural value and subversive charge, and that in postYugoslav settings it has retained much of its potency and appeal (though to
some extent it was also commoditised). If during the 1980s Yugoslav rock was
the prime outlet for system critique, during the 1990s it became the prime outlet for post-socialist new-state system critique (see Muri 2011; Pavlov and
unjka 1990; Spaskovska 2011; Stankovi 2001; Velikonja 2013). In this respect,
today new wave presents an outlet for the recomposition of musical preferences, as well as a vehicle of nostalgia as opposition to the post-1991 sociopolitical orientations of post-Yugoslav societies.

1 For more on the conceptualisation of emotions and affect in relation to music, see Thompson
and Biddle 2013.
2 Clear distinctions between Yugoslav popular music genres, in this case rock, punk, and new
wave, are not too important from the present-day perspective, at least not to the extent that
they were during the 1980s. Rather, temporal distancing of the period importantly contributes to blurring and transcending the lines of division.
3 I adapt the term re-presencing from Sobchak 2011 and use it to denote the phenomenon of
bringing the past (media, content, ideology, memories) into the present.

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Accordingly, the second part of the paper analyses several Facebook fan and
musician pages dedicated to the Yugoslav new wave band Ekatarina Velika,4
and looks specifically at a curious case on YouTube, namely, at a channel
owned by Branimir tuli, the frontman of the Yugoslav rock band Azra.5
Focusing on these outlets, it will be shown how the affective potential of these
new wave bands music has been reframed in social media, and how fragments
of the countrys past are remediated and reframed in radically different contexts and media environments. To analyse the sources, a multimodal discourse
analysis (OHalloran 2011) of audiovisuals, descriptions, posts, and comments
will be applied. To be better able to situate the discussion on the uses of music
and memory in the post-Yugoslav context, the paper will be framed within the
debate on media archaeology (see Parikka 2012) and digital vernacular archives
(see Ernst 2013). This approach unveils the affective user agency involved and
elucidates the individual and collective agency in digital memory practices
that often entail excavating and curating digital content (see Snickars 2009,
see also Pogaar 2014).

Social Networking Sites as Conduits of Affect

In socialist Yugoslavia (19451991) popular music played an important role as a

socio-ideological mobiliser (see Stankovi 2001; Vuleti 2008; Hofman and
Pogaar 2014). After the dissolution of the country, Yugoslav popular music
remained an important part of the cultural legacy and continued to act as a
vehicle for the re-presencing of the past in an increasingly mediated present.6
In all its diversity, popular music can be seen as a cultural product not only for
articulating and externalising memories, but also for performing identity
in post-Yugoslav nationalised spaces. In terms of music, the dissolution
of Yugoslavia brought about a fragmentation and nationalisation of the common music market. Consequently, sonic landscapes particularly in public
spaces, radio, and television underwent significant ideological and linguistic
4 For general information about the band, see Ekatarina Velika, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ekatarina_Velika> [accessed 17 December 2014].
5 For general information about the band, see Azra, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azra>
[accessed 17 December 2014].
6 With this I primarily refer to the uses of popular music in individual, vernacular, memorial
and archival interventions in social media; see Pogaar 2012.

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purification.7 The effects on individual and intimate levels were imminent:

cultural preferences, and with them significant parts of personal histories and
memories (including musical preferences and the intimacy related to such
banalities as favourite genres, performers, or songs), increasingly became
politically burdened.8
In this context, the rise of digital media has provided a communication
environment and tools for preserving music that had been cast off the radar
institutional, national, or ideological. Musical preferences, genres, and artists
were often interpreted in terms of national belonging or political affiliations.
But simultaneously, Yugoslav rock became implicated in the blooming
Yugonostalgia: its anti-systemic, rebellious, and political legacy was translated
into opposition to nationalising discourses, which was strangely rehabilitating
in that the positive values promoted in post-socialist political and media discourses were often negatively related to the former Yugoslavia (see Velikonja
2002). Practicing subversive musical tastes thus became an act of resistance to
nationalist political discourses.9
Digital media facilitated the emergence of practices of excavating and curating the inappropriate histories, biographies, and also audiovisuals from
Yugoslav times, which contributed to the perpetuation of music among old
and new fans. User relationship with mediated content as media objects,10
much like with physical ones, is often driven by the unsaid, the deleted, the
assumed. Here I would like to draw on Sara Ahmeds argument:
We are moved by things. And in being moved, we make things. An object
can be affective by virtue of its own location (the object might be here,
which is where I experience this or that affect) and the timing of its
7

10

Just to illustrate, during the war in Slovenia in 1991, the radio and television aired exclusivelySlovenian music, while years later the popular Radio Dur refused to play southern
music.
Musical tastes have been subject to politicisation already before, on the levels of genres
and subcultures (jazz in the 1940s/50s or punk in the 1980s), but this time it was radically
all-encompassing.
In Slovenia, for instance, one of the central tenets of the Yugonostalgia movement from
the early 1990s onwards was Balkan music, which in many respects served as a technology of resistance against the Slovenian nationalising culture-political discourse; see
Velikonja 2002.
Digital content and digitally spreadable music can be understood as a media object:
music is ripped from vinyl and artwork is scanned and posted (which includes sound,
image, and text).

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appearance (the object might be now, which is when I experience this or

that affect). To experience an object as being affective or sensational is
to be directed not only toward an object, but to whatever is around
that object, which includes what is behind the object, the conditions of
its arrival.
ahmed 2010: 33

It is the multifarious whatever around the object that in the case of ex-Yugoslav rock music in DME posits the music as an (audio, visual, and textual)
object, around which both archaeology and archiving unravel and, importantly, the whatever also feeds affect. In its elusiveness, the whatever is sticky
enough to be indiscriminately adopted by users who may or may not have
personal experience with living in Yugoslavia.11 Significantly assisted by social
media, users of different ages engage with their own or their parents or
familys pasts through listening to music, hence they indirectly engage with
the legacy of the historical period, becoming familiar with its bands and
musicians.
Content in dme, on websites, blogs, and social media, provide a kernel
around which ad hoc collectivities form, based on memory on-the-fly (Hoskins
2009: 94). Although such collectivities may be quick to dis-assemble, the
records of online activities appear somewhat more resilient.12 Social media as
platforms for sharing music facilitate the spreadability of content (e.g. a music
video) and reposition it as a space-time trigger of affective collectivity: watching a video and listening to music while reading comments, likes, or dislikes
presents the user with the opportunity to participate in an ad hoc collectivity.
Participation in such collectivities, also because of their transience, mobilises
users to engage with content often in an erratic and irrational manner when
liking certain content or when commenting on it. As superfluous and not
11

12

Although personal information in dme is often unavailable, it is nevertheless quite obvious from circumstantial evidence that a number of users that are engaged in re-presencing
Yugoslav music are fairly young but still affected by the sounds and rhythms of Yugoslav
popular music: Since they grew up after the wars, destruction and selective amnesia,
these young people integrated some moments of the imaginary past into their emotional
continuity with the past that was not theirs and that was prohibited (Jansen 2005: 253).
But they are still far from permanent; this is to indicate the fleetingness of the lives of collectivities, whereas traces of their activity may outlast them. On the other hand, it has
never been so easy to phase out information from living memory (see Lepore 2015; see
also Meyer-Schonberg 2009).

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particularly informative as liking may be, the numbers of likes in Facebook

posts, of the thumb-ups and thumb-downs in YouTube video ratings, the number of views, and other video statistics may give us at least a rough idea of the
spreadability of content. Moreover, when a user encounters content that has
had thousands or millions of unique visitors, the affective force dragging her
into an ad hoc collectivity might be attributed to the content of the video
along with the awareness that an enormous body of other users are taking
part. More informative, however, can be the comments (or video responses in
some cases), particularly in revealing the emotional investment involved in
commenting on digital media objects.
Intriguing here is that both Facebook and YouTube feature as repositories of
content/media objects, which makes them into media archaeological sites and
micro-archives of Yugoslav popular music. Micro-archiving tends to be messy
and anarchic, but it is precisely because of this that intimate and erratic behaviour further adds to affective effects of media objects. Thus, in the case of uses
of Yugoslav music, we get a strong link between affectivity in social media that
unravels in the entanglement of mobile audiovisual objects, and the user and
her historical background.

Yu-Rock Legends Never Die (On Facebook)

To elucidate further the archaeological/archival and affective relationship in

social media as the main driving forces that drive the reframing of Yugoslav
rock in post-Yugoslav settings, I will look at several Facebook profiles created in
memory of former Yugoslav (rock) bands and performers. I will trace the affectivity in user tactics of re-presencing music and the Yugoslav past, and will
contextualise the topics that emerge and their relationship to the present. The
selection of pages includes Ex-Yu rock, Ekatarina Velika ekv, and Margita
Magi Stefanovic.
The Ex-Yu rock Facebook page was set up in November 2009 and uses as
a motto the lines from Ekatarina Velikas Budi sam na ulici [Be alone in the
street]: We need a world, open for views, open for running [Treba nam svet
otvoren za poglede, otvoren za tranje] (Ex-Yu rock). The admin changed
the lyrics to expand the original Treba mi svet [I need a world] into We
need a world []. This seems to be contributing to forming the we of the
users and sets the tone of the page, which in only two months gained a rather
impressive following of 9,000 people (by early 2015 it has reached nearly
150,000 Facebook users). The tone, despite the name of the page and the

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implied focus, is rather open: the admin posts a wide selection of music
spanning pop, rock, hard rock, new wave, and punk. The page predominantly
hosts music videos, i.e. embedded YouTube videos, but also posts photographs and notes. These can be seen as media archaeological and archival
activities on the part of the administrator, while from the visitors perspective the pages activity can be seen and investigated as a continuous archival
display.
Given the amount of time apparently invested by the admin, it is reasonable
to assume that he applies certain criteria when selecting what to post. The criteria, he says, are often intimate, emotional, and related to longing and his onetime favourite music: One of my favourite bands [Yu Grupa] will perform at
Cinema Club Sloga, Sarajevo, 21 June [Jedna od mojih omiljenih grupa nastupie
u Sarajevu, 21. juna, u Cinemas Clubu Sloga.:) /A/.] (Ex-Yu rock 1 June 2013).
In the early days of the ex-Yu rock page the admin also ran an internet radio
station playing music requested by the pages followers. As music videos are
posted, the admin simultaneously creates a micro-archive of music and gives
space for building an ad hoc collectivity. Yet this archive is not an archive by
design: its archival quality emerges from the admins motivation to dig for and
post music that, once posted, remains there for future reference.13
This archive is by no means all encompassing or authoritative, and it does
not claim to be. Only a fragment of Yugoslav music production (subject to arbitrary selection based on the admins personal taste and the users music
requests) is, or can be, re-presenced. The page nevertheless gives the opportunity to both admin and users to engage with the posted content, and through
the content, also with their past and their memories. It has to be emphasised
that admins and users are not just active consumers of content, but are also its
co-creators. This means that they actively practice media archaeology, often
driven by their memories and fuelled by the results of their searches and other
users responses to the unpremeditated archives. As difficult as it is to estimate
the impact of a particular page on its visitors, the total number of followers
(which is continually growing) and the number of likes in the posts hint at the
presence of digital music.
The value of such micro-archives from the user perspective, however, is debatable. If the admin can have some sort of control over the content and the development of the page, it is very difficult for users who only sporadically follow the
posts on their Timelines to keep track of the developments. The users who
13

The expiry date, clearly, remains unknown, not least because social media tend to change
or fall out of fashion.

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actively engage in commenting can be expected to follow the developments

more closely. But for the majority who follow the page via Timeline updates,
this is most likely the closest kind of engagement. The persistence of content,
including videos and comments, thus collected and curated is therefore at a
multi-layered unease: the fact that the admin does his job strictly voluntarily
ensures no longer-term preservation; the links to music (on third-party platforms) can be lost, as is the case with many older videos that are no longer
available due to copyright infringement or user misconduct (see next section);
and importantly, the business motive and Facebook platform design are not
particularly kind to transparent navigability of archived content. True, the mission of this and similar pages is not to provide an everlasting archive of Yugoslav
pop-rock music, but rather a here-and-now space of encounter. Nevertheless,
their role as an archive is clearly present. What is more, the interactivity of
Facebook turns the unintentional musical archive into an archive of feeling
(Cvetkovich 2010), an archive of personal engagement with the music and, by
music-proxy, the Yugoslav past.
This, moreover, is an important aspect of micro-archives in general: to provide not only a repository, but also a place where content can live its digital afterlife. In this respect the Ekatarina Velika ekv page (one of many dedicated to
the band) and the collectivity it fosters proves an interesting case of bottom-up
commemoration and a continual re-presencing of the band, the members, their
story, lyrics, quotes, and music. The page was set up in early 2012 and has since
gained nearly 40,000 followers (early 2015). Its central mission is collecting and
posting photos of band members, newspaper articles (historical and recent)
about the band and its members, links to videos and recorded interviews, and
more, in a manner similar to the Ex-Yu Rock page. Due to the bands prominent
role in the history of Yugoslav rock music, as well as its members political
engagement and their tragic fates, the retrospective references to their music,
personalities, and activities appear to be catalytic of affective user entanglement
with the band and its music, and with the Yugoslav past and present as well.
The curatorial approach entails affective engagement that is much more
pronounced as compared to the Ex-Yu rock page, and is constructed (to the
eye of the user) through the application of a set of tactics: the very focus on the
band provides an extremely emotional environment, the use of photos gives
the entire page a face (or a virtual body), and it actually re-presences the
members (who have all passed away) through this photographic lens. In addition to the posted newspaper articles (pdf or transcript), interviews, and usergenerated notes about the band, the (tone of the) textual posts significantly
contribute to building the above-mentioned archive of feeling. The post of 23
July 2012, for instance, provides a good illustration:
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It features a photo of a tombstone on the grave of the bands lead singer, Milan
Mladenovi, and a transcript of the epitaph:
[He died in Margitas lap, having just put on a jacket and his guitar, ready
to go to the gig at the Sava centre. He then weighed 35 kilos] / [Youre not
alone, youre not alone, I keep your shadow going on, I cover your face,
I repeat your words, Relax, get your bearings, be as you once were, be as
I know you were, bright, strong and confident].
Mladenovi died in 1994, and the continued interest in the singer and the band
reveals not only the relatively widespread prominence of ekv and ex-Yu rock
in general, but also emphasises the recurrent presence of the past enabled
through the massive mediatisation of the everyday.
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The comments under the post reveal some features of commemoration in

the digital age. Comments are in fact an outlet for affect that emerges through
the entanglement of users and content. Comments here include remarks such
as rip you legend!!, Rest in peace [] well meet again [] I know we will, and
Milan, King, or more poetic statements such as quotations from the bands
songs, or otherwise notes such as: Death only eradicates unreal greatness, it
elevates and strengthens truthful ones. Ivo Andric and A musician who
marked my youth [] thank you for this [] let him rest in peace. In response
to the admins comment featuring a link to the song Anestezija, one user
responds: Damn you, Admin, youve just made me cry. These affective reactions set the tone of the on-the-fly community that gathers to enjoy the music,
and as it does so commemorates the singer.
In the affective realm of ekv music and memory, another page moves away
from the band as a whole to commemorate the late Margita Stefanovi, ekvs
keyboard player. Among several pages dedicated to her, by far the most elaborate and maintained is the Margita Magi Stefanovic page, online since March
2011, with some 9,000 followers (early 2015). Much like other band pages it is
a micro-archive that contains photos of the musician, embedded YouTube
videos, likes, and comments. The most intriguing feature, however, is related
to the aspect of digital post-mortem and the uneasy fact that the profile acts
as a living person while the visitor knows that the person is dead, which is
where the affective resonances of the digital afterlife of ekv music on
Facebook stem from.
Judging by the number of comments, it is clear that most followers have
not been able to see the band in concert. Accordingly, they cannot partake
in remembering its life in a historical moment that reverberates in the
sound and poetics of ekv. Still, this does not prevent users from appreciating the band or forming a relationship to that past, which is often reinterpreted to infuse the present daily political, pop-cultural, and mediated
historical conflation.
Contributing and taking part in an ad hoc collectivity implies that the fragments of historical context distilled in the bands poetics and their singing
about the Yugoslav world of the 1980s are translated into the present, which
occurs through the entanglement of affective treatment of mediated conflation of the past and the elusive present. The music from the past, incomprehensible to future listeners in its historical entirety, nevertheless lives on. This
demonstrates the power of music to transcend spatio-temporal borders and
also the malleability of music, sound, and lyrics that allows for it to be adapted
to a completely different historical, social, and cultural situation:

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If the Ekatarina Velika ekv page predominantly focuses on the lead singer
Mladenovi as the main progenitor and motor of the band both lyrically and
musically, Stefanovis profile(s) on the other hand open(s) up a different story,
a story of the first Yugoslav rock heroine. It further adds to the affectivity of her
afterlife, building on her biographical details and including quotations from
her biography O.Seanja (Feelings/Memories) and a number of photos.
Accompanied by likes and comments, Stefanovis digital afterlife is indeed a
life of tragic beauty, drug addiction, and devotion to art.
The life of the band and its members tragic fates retold in Facebook pages,
spreadily available for consumption and incorporation into individual narratives, continue to contribute to positioning the band as a trans-generational,
trans-ideological, and indeed an all-Yugoslav band. Despite being firmly rooted

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in a very concrete history of 1980s Yugoslav socialism, the bands commemoration on Facebook indicates that the digitisation of music (experience) decidedly contributes to fusing musical experiences with conflated excerpts of
actual history and the personal stories of the band members and users.
The mediated conflation of the past and present is particularly telling for
the present day appreciation of 1980s Yugoslav rock. As mentioned above, the
bands and their protagonists actively and openly criticised the system and
society. Before their emergence, Yugoslav rock (not to mention other genres)
was mainly constrained to the Yugoslav milieu. However, the emergence of
punk and new wave in the late 1970s (partly in response to the economic crisis
of the late 1970s and the rise of nationalisms in Yugoslavia) positioned these
genres as musical, artistic, and intellectual outlets for addressing the complexities of the time. In many cases, the bands public appearances and actions galvanised intellectuals to begin addressing certain issues more consistently (see
Malekar and Mastnak 1985; see also Pogaar 2008).
With the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, new wave and punk, including ekv
and Azra, lost their imminent object of criticism and the socio-political frame
within which they functioned. However, they largely remained true to their
ideals and continued the anti stance in the new systems. It is this coherenceof
posture that continually enables the reframing of their music in a postYugoslav context, both as a philosophy and as an affective immersive sonic
environment.

Johnny, Dont Come Back!

Unlike all of the ekv members who only live in the digital realm, another
musician who started his career in the late 1970s, Branimir tuli Johnny,
frontman of the band Azra (one of the key bands of the Yugoslav 1980s new
wave scene), is still very much alive. His presence, however, seems to be more
digital than physical, given that he leads a fairly secluded life in the
Netherlands. After more than twenty years of self-exile, he has recently
actively taken control over his music on YouTube (and hence over a part of
Yugoslav musical heritage) and now curates Azra music archives (and also
produces new music) by means of imposing copyright claims over Azras
musical legacy on YouTube. Prior to tulis intervention, an unregulated mass
of Azra music on YouTube seemed safe from copyright claims. After YouTube
removed upload video length restrictions in 2010, the uploading of videoed
concerts and mix tapes increased enormously. At the same time, the protection of copyright on the part of YouTube scaled up as well, as the company
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started implementing various models of content monetisation.14 Nevertheless,

individual users still upload (music) videos, with the notable exception of the
music of copyright-fervent artists, with Azra, i.e. Branimir tuli among them.
The genealogy of tulis repossession of his copyrighted material can only
roughly be reconstructed: until about 2010 the bands music was indiscriminately uploaded by users who posted original official video clips (videorecorded off tv) or user-generated videos (where the music is dubbed over a
selection of a band members photos or over a selection of private photos
selected and edited by a user). This started to change, however, when one
Petrovi Petar set up a channel on YouTube and started gathering all of Azras
music, exclusively for Azra YouTube channel via Branimir tuli [ekskluzivno
samo za Azra Yotube kanal via Branimir tuli] (Branimir tuli 2012). Since
about 2012, the Petrovi Petar channel hosts more or less entire Azra musical
archives. Simultaneously, Azra music uploaded by other users started to disappear. Today, there is practically no unauthorised Azra music on YouTube,
apart from an odd user-made video. For instance, in October 2011, Thomoijk
uploaded a video to the song Ako zna bilo to (Thomoijk 2013) dubbed over
a selection of his photos. The very personal and expressive video had received
some attention, most notably in early 2013, when the number of views swiftly
rose to about 50,000. Some users also commented on it, in a particularly emotional manner:
In this comment, null11amorph clearly invests significant emotion into
music and the practice of listening, with little or no reference to the video. In
fact, the comment shows that this particular song features in the users life as
an important marker of intimacy: Why must I cry so much when the solo takes
away? (null11amorph 2013). This comment shows that listening to music, even
alone in front of a screen, is a very visceral and intimate experience that binds
users into a virtual collectivity. The technological connectivity of devices and
users and the spreadability of content, music, and affect can readily be shared
with others among users who watch the video and listen to the song, irrespective of time or place of access. What complicates the life of such a collectivity
(and also related research) is that this particular video and the comments

14

For a recent debate on artists versus corporation, see Dredge 2015; Resnikoff 2015.

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below disappeared between the time of doing research and revising this article: the video was suddenly No longer available due to a copyright claim by /c/
azramusic. Sorry about that.15
This was ironically anticipated in several now extinct comments to the
video: [tula will shut your channel :) if he finds out] (TutorialiWindows
2013) / [Hell take your video down and delete your account] (Miki Jevremovi
2013).
As it turns out, tuli has effectively managed to get YouTube to remove all
content that uses his music, including all the comments. Thus all trace of a
collectivity has disappeared as well. One particularly interesting case in this
respect was a user-made video in which tulis cover of Leonard Cohens
cover The Partisan was used in creating a digital memorial to a users (xPartizani0zauvijekX) grandfather who had fought in World War ii against Nazi
occupation. The video mobilised users to share stories of their own grandfathers who were members of the Yugoslav wwii resistance. Furthermore, the
song enticed users into an ad hoc collectivity and was thus rendered into a
place where the entire Yugoslav period was positively remembered and contested. With the subsequent removal of the video on tulis behalf, a cyberplace of memory was consequently gone, and along with it went the
micro-archive of intimate thoughts and feelings related to the memories of
users grandparents, the former Yugoslavia, partisan resistance, and Yugoslav
popular music.
In the aftermath of tulis copyright action, a very centralised YouTube
presence of Azra music emerged. Although some cyberplaces of memory
were gone, users were quick to adapt and new collectivities formed around the
videos. In this case, the affective whatever sticking to music, entangled with
users intimate pasts, memories, and presents was reinvented in a new setting. Regardless of the eradication of much vernacular activity, the affective
whatever of music was thus readily re-inscribed into the everyday of
post-Yugoslavs:
15

See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QAYzwmXGpQ>.

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The two comments above are imbued with a passion for tulis music:
MACIKICA100: JOHNNY COME BACKWe all miss you. Id love to be older,
but Im not (1990) [] You make me happy, make me cry, you ruin me and
bring me back, creates and destroys [] COME BACK, PLEASE REGARDS!!!.
macikica 100 2011

They explicate how tulis musical archive can in fact serve not only as a static
archive but also as a dynamic archive that allows for individual investment of
memories and expectations. In addition to being an archive of music, tulis
YouTube channel is also an archive of users responses, a record of externalisations of their thoughts and feelings about the music. Most importantly, it provides a space where videos and comments feature as kernels of affect
(regardless of how short their life may be).
In relation to this, I would like to introduce the concept of defragmented
affect, which follows the seeming fragmentation of affect in dme, and rests on
Thompson and Biddles argument that
music mobilises bodies through affective transmission. Sound is used to
create a particular ambience or atmosphere, via the induction, modulation and circulation of moods, feelings and intensities, which are felt but,
at the same time, belong to nobody in particular.
thompson and biddle 2013: 5

This quote refers to an offline situation, but it likewise applies to networked or

mediated bodily interactions: an atmosphere of moods and intensities that are
mediated at different times and in different spaces is clearly not limited to physical co-presence. Defragmented affect in DME arises from interactions between
individuals and devices, where music (or other visceral digital objects/content,
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but let us focus here on music) acts as a catalyst of emotion/memory externalisation. The networked bodily reactions (clicking, cutis anserine, enragement,
etc.) presuppose user engagement with content and, dis-simultaneously, with
other users entangled with the same content. In this respect, defragmented
affect is closely linked to an ad hoc collectivity.
The defragmentation of affect importantly operates counter-parallel to the
fragmentation of individual/bodily presence in dme. The fragmentation
presupposes that the physical collectivity is absent and that the fragmented
state is incurred by the mediating power of communications technology and
social media: in dme, affect appears to be fragmented because of the lack i.e.
fragmentation of bodily/physical interaction that normally generates affective fields.16 But communication in dme, and particularly in social media, still
affords interpersonal interaction through spreadability and viscerality a
prosthetic physicality that materialises primarily in the bodily responses.
Networked interaction between content and users, enhanced by music and
based upon the presupposition of dis-simultaneous collective reception,
therefore digitally mediates affect and as it does so also defragments it.
If we return to tuli, there is another affective aspect that should be
addressed. Apart from curating his music, tuli also engages with Yugoslav
musical heritage (folk and pop songs). However, in the period where all things
Yugoslav are to a great extent deemed problematic, this lends to a pro-Yugoslav
and definitely anti-nationalist speculation. In his pop/folk interventions, tuli
manages to reach out to a post-Yugoslav national subject, his former Yugoslav
compatriot. Through his YouTube channel he thus publishes covers of numerous folk songs that resonate with national feelings, but they attain a distinctly
supra-national hue in his curating strategy. Once uploaded to his channel the
songs form an archive of folk (Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian) and
pop songs (including covers of the most popular Yugoslav singer/songwriter
Arsen Dedi, or the singer Ivo Robi). Much like tulis rock interventions,
these songs likewise tease out affective responses that stem from the mediated
conflation of history, i.e. of the pre- and post-1991 periods. Moreover, this also
suggests that in relation to pre-1991 music, the borders between genres for
todays listeners are becoming increasingly porous. Although the Yugoslav past
is not necessarily the central feature of users responses, the sticky whatever
emanating from cursory remarks and assessments in users comments, in his
old and new material, reveals the importance and relevance of the Yugoslav
past in the present-day consumption of tulis music:
16

The debate on the detrimental effects of digital sociability, clearly, is out of scope, yet it is
bound to dominate the debate about the role of digital media in the physical, social, and
psychological development of individuals and collectivities.

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The above comment is an example of an affective response to the present historical moment. As such, it is an assessment of the past and present:
What to say to you Dzoni Do not come back [] Whatever you may be
doing there [] here the soul is slowly dying away, people here have less
and less soul, heres awful poison for the soul of man, believe me We
keep on fighting, and youre helping us with your voice and work, may
you live long and enthral us with your genius The whole Balkan loves
you, you know!!
miljandamjan 2012

Miljandamjan thus denounces the present and implicitly relates it to the past,
and he does so through (referencing) tulis music, which is re-purposed as
the motivating factor and galvaniser of discontent. Such statements, sentiments, and affects can be related to the processes of transition that effectively
deny the post-Yugoslavs the capacity to take care of their own fates (see Buden
2012). Accordingly, one approach to taking care of ones own fate entails
participating in the lives of digital archives, reclaiming the past through its
present-day mediatisations, and reclaiming the memories related to and
formed while listening to the music.
Conclusion
In the article I have traced the elusive digital afterlife of Yu-rock and I argued
that Yugoslav rock and new wave have lost little cultural and political charge.
Re-presenced and re-framed, this music is today an outlet for reclaiming the
past, either through promoting resistance to the present condition or through
prompting mundane musings about times past. More to the point, the sociocultural role of new wave and particularly ekvs and Azras digital presences
features as a prominent trigger of vernacular memories and as an important
part of voicing and articulating present-day concerns related to the socio-political situation in post-Yugoslavia. Much of the socialist-era rock has retained its
rebellious appeal, but after 1991 it has also regained its political charge, which
has been redefined in new circumstances. Re-presencing the music gives room
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for the articulation of post-socialist discontent, which gains affective force also
through historical conflation. In this view I approached music and memory
through the theoretical perspective of media archaeology and micro-archiving,
which were used to pinpoint affective investments of non-institutional and
unpremeditated individual and collective entanglements. I thus looked into
the digital (after)lives of the once extremely popular Yugoslav rock acts in
order to show that they are very much present in numerous individual lives as
a marker of the (conflated) past.
Individual user engagement with music in social media, however, rarely
amounts to detailed debates about music and its role in ideological systems,
and it rarely leads to informed discussions about political topics or about the
ways of life in post-Yugoslav spaces. Still, the political remains an important
underlying feature in much music related activity, and interweaves the practice of uploading music, the cursory remarks, and the occasionally more
explicit and detailed references in the comments. Such a wide span of user
interventions, and particularly the palpable absence of reflective argumentation, substantiates the claim that Yugoslav new wave in social media creates an
affective immersive environment wherein the Yugoslav socialist past and the
post-Yugoslav present are continually re-presenced. The use of music as a mnemonic technology is specifically part of post-1991 cultural referential frameworks, which are frequently marked by the clash between cleaning the
unbecoming socialist past on the one hand, and the quest to re-afford users
biographical memories with a sense of coherence and normalcy on the other
hand (see Jansen 2005). Therefore, the digitisation and vernacular uses of
music importantly contribute to the preservation of the Yugoslav musical
legacy through social media and perpetuate the recurring interest in postYugoslavs lived and unlived (musical) pasts. Furthermore, the spreadability of
music facilitates the re-creation of shattered cultural spaces through the cocreation of memories.
Nevertheless, the potential of micro-archiving is shadowed by the transience of content in DME. Despite dme being a potentially infinite repository
of digital information, longer-term preservation and remembering is at best
uncertain. This is largely a consequence of the fact that social media are privately owned and bound to copyright laws. Crucially, they are not (musical)
archives; this function arises from their everyday use and the specific postYugoslav socio-political circumstances. Longer-term preservation of bottomup vernacular interventions and content, as crucial as they may be,17 is thus
17

All the more so in the time when public funding is excessively cut in domains where the
required financial input exceeds profit.

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hardly secure not only because content may be taken out of public circulation due to copyright infringement, but also because service providers may
decide to discontinue a service, radically limit its access (paywalls), change its
conditions of use, etc.18
Today, many users co-create their affective resonances in corporate spaces
that are under no obligation to sustain their service beyond immediate profitability (see Miller 2011: 197). Hence, it is fair to express concern that ad hoc collectivities will be increasingly subdued to perpetual and radical transformation
and cross-platform migration. The threat of an imminent end as well as the
permanent transience of content and interpersonal relations seems to be the
intrinsic make-up of ad hoc collectivities.
Still, music as a technology that rocks the collectivity in commonly shared
rhythms, serving as a distiller of memory and affect, has managed to survive
many technological transitions, from wax cylinders and vinyl records (78rpm,
16rpm, 45rpm, 33rpm) to the magnetic tape, the compact disc, and most
recently to digital files. Collectivities driven by defragmented affect, as I have
illustrated above, present a rich assembly of micro-archives of personal visions
of the past. In these archives, history (of popular culture and wider) is always
already conflated and intertwined with users individual histories, which hardly
makes micro-archives a reliable historical source, but nevertheless renders
them a source for deciphering affective investment. The facets of the bygone
everyday, whether lived, unlived, or imagined, are thus interwoven into the digitally mediated present through participation in an ad hoc collectivity. In their
mission to rediscover certain music and its affective load of the past, such collectivities are in many ways radically different from pre-digital ones. However,
they are still so analogous when it comes to individual affective investments
that, once defragmented, they bring people together across time and space.
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