Turbo-Folk | |
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Stylistic origins | Serbian folk (Balkan folk),Newly composed folk music, Arabesk music, Greek folk, Balkan Brass Band, Dance-pop, Eurodance, Pop, Fusion music |
Cultural origins | 1980s Yugoslavia |
Typical instruments | Guitar, Bass Guitar, Synthesizer, Keyboards, Drum Machine/Percussion, Sampler, Sequencer, Clarinet, Trumpet, Accordion, Šargija, Fiddle, as well as other folk instruments |
Turbo-folk (Serbian: турбо фолк turbo folk) is a musical genre that originated in Serbia. Having mainstream popularity in Serbia, and although closely associated with Serbian performers, the genre is widely popular in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Montenegro. Its style is a mixture of Serbian folk music with modern Pop music elements, with similar styles in Greece (Skyladiko), Bulgaria (Chalga), Romania (Manele) and Albania (Tallava).
Rambo Amadeus coined the term turbo folk during the late 1980s as a description of his own eclectic sound, combining various styles and influences. At the time, the term was nothing more than a soundbite, intentionally humorous in combining two contradictory concepts: "turbo", a way of forcefully injecting fuel-air mixture into the engine, and "folk", a symbol of tradition and rural conservatism.
The so-called novokomponovana muzika ('newly composed music') can be seen as a result of the urbanization of folk music. In its early times, it had a professional approach to performance, used accordion and clarinet, and typically included love songs or other simple lyrics (though there have long been royalist and anti-Communist lyrical themes persisting underground). Many of the genre's best performers also play forms imported from even further abroad. These include Šaban Šaulić, Toma Zdravković, and Silvana Armenulić. At a later stage, the popular performers such as Lepa Brena, Vesna Zmijanac and Dragana Mirković used more influences from pop music, oriental music, and other genres, which led to the emergence of turbo folk.