Serbian Underground Festival: Music Scene “In a Small”

Abstract

Serbian Underground Festival is a manifestation devoted to "extreme" music genres (metal, hardcore, punk and their subgenres), which is being held in Belgrade in the last few years. In this paper, I will try to show how this festival can be observed and analyzed as the music scene "in a small", considering that its program, apart from the musical/performing aspect, involves ingathering of all the elements of the scene - organizers, journalists, photographers, artists, publishers, writers, audience – at the same place. To do this, I will more closely define terms such as "music scene", "extreme music genres", and underground, that is, "underworld", relying primarily on the findings of Keith Kahn Harris. The analysis of the Serbian Underground Festival as a scene is based on theoretical assumptions of intensity, conceptual limitations and influences of the festivals performed by Timothy Dowd, Kathleen Liddle and Jenna Nelson. Understanding this festival as the one possible model of this mechanism, the goal of my paper is the contribution to a better understanding of the functioning modus on domestic underground scene and its place in a contemporary context.