“Stop the War in the Name of Children”: Children and Nation Building Through Croatian Patriotic Music (1991-1992)
While histories of ethnic conflicts and nationalism focus mainly on adult actors, this study seeks to shed light on the importance of children and their centrality to post-socialist nation-building through popular culture. Looking at what in Croatia is known as the War of Independence (or Homelan...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre for Southeast European Studies
2019-02-01
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| Series: | Contemporary Southeastern Europe |
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| Online Access: | https://unipub.uni-graz.at/cse/periodical/titleinfo/4841055 |
| Summary: | While histories of ethnic conflicts and nationalism focus mainly on adult
actors, this study seeks to shed light on the importance of children and their
centrality to post-socialist nation-building through popular culture. Looking
at what in Croatia is known as the War of Independence (or Homeland
War), the project focuses on a particular, so far almost completely
unexplored, aspect of Croatian nation-building: the role of children in the
production, dissemination, and impact of Croatian patriotic music. During
the war in Croatia, musicians of all genres joined the effort of “defending
the homeland through music,” and their songs and videos were incessantly
broadcasted on national television and radio stations. Existing studies
analysing Croatian patriotic music in this period consider it mostly from the
perspective of a cultural and regional identity marker, while the interest to
explore music as a political tool has become a nascent field only in the past
two decades. Although a few works have attempted to explore depictions of
male and female gender within this discourse, no studies have so far
researched the role of children as an impact factor via this type of art.
Through a media analysis of music production materials, this article shows
that numerous patriotic songs and videos included children, whether as
singers or background participants, who became actively involved in
promoting the Croatian cause at home and abroad, and were therefore one
of the essential agents of creating a distinctively Croatian national identity. |
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| ISSN: | 2310-3612 2310-3612 |