Disciplining Traditional Music: The Leskovački Sabor and Cultural Authority in Socialist Yugoslavia

Résumé

This paper examines the formation and early development of the Sabor narodnog stvaralaštva Socijalističke Republike Srbije, widely known as the Leskovački sabor, within the broader cultural and political framework of socialist Yugoslavia. Focusing on the first eight years of the festival’s existence (1972–1979), the study analyzes how the manifestation functioned as a representational model for staging, disciplining, and redefining traditional music under socialist cultural policies. Drawing on archival materials, committee reports, and contemporary scholarly reflections, the paper explores the tension between the proclaimed preservation of “authentic” folk expression and the processes of modernization, standardization, and ideological instrumentalization. By interrogating concepts such as authenticity, authority, and cultural ownership, the study reveals how the Leskovački sabor simultaneously enabled visibility for working-class performers and contributed to the transformation – and at times fragmentation – of traditional musical expression in Socialist Yugoslavia, while it reveals how authorities reformulated musical performance, which brought it to its reductive, intervened, and disciplined forms of representation. At the same time, sabor, in its traditional sense, served as a model for the younger generation, who learned musical performance from older participants at festivals across Yugoslavia.