Why go
Start with the sound that interests you: a gusle performance centres on sung storytelling, while kolo belongs to collective dance. Guča is associated with trumpet music and Nišville with jazz. For opera, the National Theatre in Belgrade and Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad provide a different cultural setting.
The full story
Traditional instruments range from bagpipes and flutes to trumpets, drums and the gusle, a one-string fiddle. Epic singing accompanied by the gusle carries stories of history and mythology. Kolo has regional forms, including those associated with Užice and the Morava region, so folk music is itself a varied category. Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac was a formative composer and musicologist in the development of modern Serbian music. Later composers, including Petar Konjović, Stevan Hristić and Miloje Milojević, combined national expression with changing European musical languages. Their work offers a bridge between the folk material and the concert tradition. Rock developed within the wider Yugoslav scene during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Acts such as Ekatarina Velika, Idoli and Električni Orgazam belong to that history, while independent scenes developed further in later decades. Pop reached another international audience when Marija Šerifović won Eurovision in 2007 with “Molitva”. Listening across these forms gives a broader cultural picture than treating Serbian music as a single folk sound.