Turbo-folk - Influences

Influences

Production and marketing strategies in turbo-folk emulate and worship global main-stream trends in music, fashion and design. It is basically only the vocals using the characteristic rhythmic ululations techniques that distinguish it from Western pop music.

As mentioned, turbo folk is strongly rooted in commercial folk and neo-folk (novokomponovana muzika) which had already been massively popular throughout entire SFR Yugoslavia in the 1970s and 1980s, making it difficult to exactly pinpoint where one ends and the other begins.

Musically they sound very much alike; both are blends of Greek laïka music, Turkish "Arabesque" and Serbian brass bands on one side, as well as rock and roll and contemporary electronic dance music on the other. The major differences lay in visual and lyrical presentation. Turbo-folk is unabashed in its delivery of in-your-face sexuality with half-naked bodies, banal love stories, and suggestive lyrics, while traditional commercial folk at least tries to put up a more dignified front, though not always successfully. Since both subgenres pick from the same pool of musical talent, the most obvious differentiation goes along the lines of a given performer's age. Younger female singers usually play the sex card with provocative, revealing wardrobe on-stage and scandalous, jet-setting, bed-hopping lifestyles off stage. Older performers, whether by necessity or by choice, concentrate merely on vocal abilities and usually stay clear of risqué lyrics.

It should be noted that there are those who don't consider turbofolk to be a distinct genre or even a subgenre, but merely the next stage in commercial folk's evolution. They point to what they see as a clear generational trend over the last 30 years or so, and their argument goes as follows:

The 1970s commercial folk had the buttoned up Lepa Lukić and Silvana Armenulić as its biggest stars - singers who made names because of exceptional, or at the very least above average vocal talents. Then in the 1980s, the places at the top were taken over by Lepa Brena, Vesna Zmijanac and Suzana Perović whose huge popularity was thought to have more to do with their physical than vocal attributes; to some it appeared that their love lives were more important to their popularity than the quality of their music. The fact that the 1990s and 2000s brought Ceca and Jelena Karleuša to the top of the commercial heap was the next logical step according to this view. It was only natural, they argue, that considering the trend up to that point, the next step in commercial folk would be open disregard for the vocals & music and complete focus on the physical.