“The soundtrack of their lives”: The Music of Crno-bijeli svijet

Ana  Đorđević

doi:10.25038/am.v0i17.267

Authors

Ana Đorđević

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i17.267

Keywords:

film music, pre-existing music, new wave, Yugoslav pop music, Croatian television

Abstract

Crno-bijeli svijet [Black-White World, HRT, 2015–] is an on-going Croatian television series set in the early 1980s depicting the then-current pop music scene in Zagreb. The storyline follows several characters whose lives are intertwined by complex family relations, while also following the beginnings of new wave/punk rock bands and artists, and their influence on the Yugoslav youth who almost religiously listened to their music, like some of the series’ characters do.

The role of music in television series is a complicated question that caught the attention of film music scholars in recent years. The significance – and, at the same time, the complexity – that music produces or can produce, as the bearer of cultural, social and/or political meanings in television series brings its own set of difficulties in setting out possible frameworks of research. In the case of Crno-bijeli svijet that is even more challenging considering that it revolves around popular music that is actively involved in, not just the series soundtrack, but several aspects of different narrative elements.

Jon Burlingame calls the music of American television “The soundtrack of our lives”, and I find this quote is appropriate for this occasion as well. The quote summarizes and expresses the creators’ personal note that is evident in the use of music in this television series and myriad ways music is connected to other narrative and extra-narrative elements, and in a way, grasps the complicity of the problem I will address.

Article received: March 31, 2018; Article accepted: May 10, 2018; Published online: October 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper

How to cite this article: Đorđević, Ana. “'The soundtrack of their lives': The Music of Crno-bijeli svijet." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 17 (2018): 25−36. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i17.267

Author Biography

Ana Đorđević

University College Cork
Ireland

Ana Đorđević (1991), holds MA in musicology (MA thesis “Composing for the offensives – music in Yugoslav war cinema”), currently PhD candidate at University College Cork, Ireland. Her research concerns film music in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cinema. She participated in several student conferences in Serbia and abroad, and has several papers published concerning film music in Yugoslav war cinema. She is the member of Centre for popular music research in Belgrade, and also co-founder of Association for preservation, research, and promotion “Serbian composers”.

References

Ajduk, Marija. “‘Vesele’ osamdesete kroz prizmu televizijske serije Crno-bijeli svijet.” Antropologija 16, 2 (2016): 9–25.

Deavile, James. “The ‘Problem’ of Music in Television.” In Music in Television: Channels of Listening, edited by James Deaville, 1–7. New York: Routledge, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203831014

Deavile, James. “A Discipline Emerges: Reading Writing about Listening to Television.” In Music in Television: Channels of Listening, edited by James Deaville, 8–34. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Jergović, Miljenko. “Mit osamdesetih.” 2015. https://www.jergovic.com/sumnjivo-lice/mit-osamdesetih/. Accessed April 30, 2018.

Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015.

Smith, Jeff. The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i17.267 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i17.267