An analysis of the concept of locality on the example of Slovenia’s new-wave music scene

Abstract

In this paper, the concept of locality is problematised through perceiving the relationship between the global and the local on the example of the new-wave music scene that developed in Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1980s from the Slovenian perspective. Created initially in London and New York, punk and then new wave sparked the development of an authentic music scene in Yugoslavia. Singing in the local languages and dealing with local themes made these music genres a local musical and cultural phenomenon, which is the underlying thesis of this paper. The theoretical framework in which that thesis is considered is founded on understanding new wave as a cultural phenomenon and the observation of the correlation between the concepts of music and the place through the notion of the music scene. The analysis has shown that new wave can be considered to be a local music phenomenon because an authentic music scene existed during the 1980s, but also that, in that period, punk was present to a greater extent, so, according to the respondents’ perception, it is a more significant local marker than new wave.