Urban Folk Music Legacy from Former Yugoslavia in Contemporary Istanbul

This article presents initial observations from the fieldwork in Istanbul in 2022, where short-term research of immigrant communities from former Yugoslavia was conducted within the project of bilateral cooperation, Exploring the Tracks of Balkan Culture: Serbian–Turkish Connections in Music and Dance from Ottoman Period until Today (TRackeRS ). Nowadays, these communities are specific because of their atypical migration direction, from Serbia and former Yugoslavia – toward the East. They cherish their traditions through choirs, and nostalgically remember their homeland through two types of urban folk music related to Serbia (and former Yugoslavia) – sevdalinka (which evokes their Ottoman ancestry) and novokomponovana narodna muzika (‘newly-composed folk music’, which evokes their Yugoslav reality from the time of their youth). The article examines the role of these popular folk music practices, their potential in safeguarding the culture of origin (especially because of the threatening oblivion of the language), as well as the potential for social cohesion in choral singing.