Paper short abstract:

We explore whether/how/when collective singing of Yugoslav partisan songs is able to produce a sensorial rupture in the political atmosphere structured affectively by apathy and political exhaustion.

Paper long abstract:

The agentive potentials of music and sound are usually seen as capable of producing changes in the atmosphere, social climate or certain social relations but their long lasting "effects" in producing "real" social or political change are seen as deeply dubious. Recent ethnomusicological writings aim to offer new insights into the role music and sound play through affective technology in the current realities (see Gershon 2013; Gray 2013; McCann 2013; Krell 2013; Tatro 2014; Hofman 2015a, 2015b, 2016; Gill 2017) and critically discuss the general uneasiness with music and sound's efficiency in bringing a concrete political change. Building on such approaches, we focus on the affective potentials of collective sound making in order to explore whether/how/when affectively produced encounters make room for new forms of social relations beyond the musically-bounded context. We analyze the practices of collective singing of Yugoslav partisan songs (songs of antifascist resistance during WWII) that are experienced as affectively rich and mobilizing and seen as able to produce a sensorial rupture in the political atmosphere structured affectively by apathy and political exhaustion. We discuss the ways both the songs themselves and the collective nature of choral performance enable the politics limited to "here and now" to be extended into other aspects of political everydayness primarily in practicing alternative ways of living, being and doing in the post-socialist neoliberal Southeastern Europe.