No. 20 (2016): Music and Empire

This jubilee issue features the topic Music and Empire, edited by Dr Ivana Medić. This theme was inspired by the centennary of World War I and prepared in collaboration with the BASEES Study Group for Russian and East European Music (REEM). The outbreak of World War I catalysed the disintegration of European empires and the subsequent establishment of national states. The articles gathered in this rubric discuss the important issues such as the role of music in the formation of small state nationalism in the age of Empire; the disciplines of folklore and ethnography and their role in the creation of imperial ideologies; the musical representation and construction of national and imperial identities and manifestations of orientalising or exoticising tendencies; musical consequences of the continuation of empires and ‘empires’ in the twentieth century; the musical historiography of the empire and its role in establishing and maintaining national and imperial identities; and the effects of the decline and dissolution of empires and ‘empires’ on constructed musical identities, ideologies and official cultural policies in regard of music. The rubric Varia contains three articles that offer new insights into some of the most pressing issues of the Serbian church, art and folk music, and the last two papers are interdisciplinary.