Television news themes (in news lingo, “idents”) are used by TV stations to brand their news operations. Each station uses a sequence of audio and graphics to identify their specific broadcast; this changes with time and is dependent on production technology as well as political shifts and economic situations.
Techno is a form of electronic dance music (EDM) that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the mid to late 1980s. I sometimes use the term techno, while referring to a mind set which was specific to EDM and culture in ex-Yugoslavia, and not to designate a distinct musical genre.
Yugoslavia refers to the three political entities that existed successively on the western part of Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. My focus here is on post WWII Yugoslavia, called the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) that existed from 1945 to 1992, and was later violently dissolved in a succession of ethnically charged wars.
• 19:30 is an anthology of television news music from the geographic region of ex-Yugoslavia. It is also an ongoing collection of commissioned remixes, edits and new versions of the original news tracks. The adaptations are specific to electronic dance music and aspire to sublimate the musical, historical and psychological value of the news music through the local symbolic value of techno in Ex-Yugoslavia.
For the project, musical themes from the first televised Yugoslav news broadcast in 1958 up to the present were taken from national state-owned television stations. As institutions, these public stations are of significant cultural and national importance and have managed to sustain their presence in collective consciousness, keeping their ratings up even after the arrival of private television following the fall of the socialist regime. Since 1970s, the central news show, called Dnevnik, was broadcasted at 19:30 every evening. Therefore the time mark has special significance as it played a rhythm giving but also conditioning role in peoples daily lives.
The first Yugoslav news ident from 1958.
At its beginnings, television was a novelty in Yugoslavia. Each republic had its own national station. Although controlled by the government, these stations had substantial creative autonomy. This resulted in stable high-quality entertainment and information delivery. At the same time, news themes on Yugoslav state televisions did not change often, and the same ident would normally run for 10 or more years. As a result of their codified, daily repetition, the musical signatures of Yugoslavian news shows became a part of the collective memory for television-viewing generations. Further contributing to the strong presence of these melodies in the collective psyche was the changing political tendencies and economic recession of the late 1980s, which ultimately led to the outbreak of war in 1991, and which increased television viewing to an even greater extent.That year, the central news show, which was traditionally the most viewed television program in Yugoslavia—a node to which daily routine was adjusted—became an indispensable part of the day. Each evening at half past seven the streets emptied and people stuck themselves to their screens for half an hour watching Dnevnik.
Dnevnik from TV Ljubljana. The above ident was used from 1968 to 1978.
The title “Dnevnik” translates to ‘diary’ and finds equivalents in shows such as the German Tagesschau or the Italian Telegiornale. It is still the current title of the primary evening television news program in all the former republics. From 1958 to 1968, there was a single Dnevnik, produced in Belgrade, for all of Yugoslavia. Later, each county started producing its own Dnevnik and the central news scheme was abandoned.
• The 1991 start of the war in Slovenia, Croatia, and later Bosnia, was well reflected in the news image. Oppressed republics introduced new idents to symbolize their strive for independence. Flags and emblems would replace the graphics, national anthems the musical themes.
On the broader cultural spectrum, the war period interrupted the conventional production of art and music. A lot of developments did not reach the countries which had previously been well informed about new styles and currents from the West.
In April of 1991 a Belgian band T99 had just released a track called “Anasthasia,” which was to become the rave anthem of Continental Europe, where techno culture was becoming part of a new youth movement.
After the war, the media environment changed again, this time according to capitalist consumer aesthetic. Private TV stations were starting to appear and produce their own informative program. Their idents sounded and looked modern, they advertised aggressively. The competition caused the state televisions to redesign their content and identity more frequently, not always to the advantage of the idents. Emblematic of this period is the use of stock music. The first station to try it out was POP TV, a Slovenian private broadcaster. The same station also set their emission time of the evening news to 19:00h, thus breaking another ‘unwritten law’ and rhythm of the national broadcasters.
POP TV’s central news program used „Eyewitness News “, a news-music-package, written by Frank Gari and previously used in Miami and Hong Kong.
Along with globalized corporate aesthetics came urban subcultures. People had started to travel again and spotted the new musical trends now well underway in the clubs of London, Brussels and Berlin. Techno music was a primal current coursing through the clubs and raves of Europe, we couldn't have been anticipating it stronger.
I was a part of the generation that experienced the brake up of Yugoslavia during my early teens, young enough to be engulfed into identity-defining scenes and movements that came after. Techno created a distance to a political period of nationalistic tendencies and simultaneously represented not only newfound freedoms but a spirit of tolerance and the prospect of international communication. Although certain stable ideas and styles came with the movement, the possibilities to interpret this new culture were nonetheless open.
•It wasn’t until 1995 that the influx of techno from the US to Europe finally reached ex-Yugoslav countries. In Slovenia, where I grew up, our notion of techno was not so much the specific musical genre as a scene mapped around various aspects of electronic dance music. Of course the genre definitions were clear to us, but since techno’s initial appeal appeared much larger, it remained as a generalized term for all aspects of this new musical culture. Techno became our transitional symbol.
The main characteristics of techno music—extreme repetitiveness, exclusive use of sequencers, synths and drum machines, the lack of sentimental sound—are formally not far off, and perhaps symbolically conveyed in the rhythm of the news delivery and stylistic direction of the idents.
It might seem naive or idealistic, but like many of my peers, I recall the post war techno craze as something that brought us together again, if only for short moments of pleasure. There was a genuine feeling of community and lack of violence at parties. Besides the political implications, the rave scene also had a liberating effect in terms of emotional awareness, mental literacy and gender relations. New patterns of public interaction were made possible. Dance culture achieved a great deal in Ex-Yugoslavia simply by existing.
FUTURE SHOCK 2001 - SECOND EXPERIENCE, Zagreb, 3.12.1994.
„Perhaps more than anything, what defines the political character of dance culture is that it is not afraid of the future. Its response to the dislocation of social structures is not simply despair, the celebration of atomization, or a reactionary attempt to recreate lost coherencies, but an attempt to make possible new forms of community and new networks of relation.“ (Discographies: Dance, Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound, 1999; Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson)
This ‘coming together’ that electronic dance music—parallel to the news idents—elicited was manifested in a form of local techno-tourism. Young people, including myself, traveled, some even for the first time, to and beyond the borders of the newly formed republics in order to attend bigger techno parties, so-called raves. We started to discover the neighboring countries ourselves, as the subject of Yugoslav history and geography had fallen from the school curriculum, and the traditional high-school graduation trip to a remote location within Yugoslavia was no longer a constituent part of one’s rite of passage to adulthood. Most of the events were centered in Croatia and Slovenia, which had the most developed club scene and advanced musical production. At the same time, festivals like Futura in Sarajevo and Exit in Novi Sad (founded in 2000 as a student protest against the Milosevic regime) were mandatory stops on the party itinerary.
Festival of electronic music "Futura" Sarajevo – 2000.
• In 2010, I traveled to almost all ex-Yugoslav capitals, Sarajevo, Skopje, Belgrade, Ljubljana and Zagreb. My aim was to collect news idents from the central TV news shows. Later, I was to distribute them to musicians who would hopefully be inspired enough to create remixes, edits, their own versions.
The idea came after I ran across an older Serbian ident online (the famous/infamous ‘world out of dots,’ used from 1978 to 1993). This theme has followed my life since birth all to the break up of Yugoslavia, and after not hearing it for years it had an immense impact on me. It not only brought back memories and captured the feeling of past times—at the same time, it sounded like electronic music and just needed a beat to make it danceable. I was inspired to make a techno version of it. As I continued to research further, I found a remix of it already online, which made me aware that my experience was not singular and I changed my focus from producing something to facilitating a possibility for others to create versions.
The "iconic" news ident used by Radio Television Serbia from 1978 to 1992.
Found remix of the serbian news ident, by Nixy Jungle.
As I was collecting the idents, I began to note how some of the older ones were actually made by famous musicians. For example, the 1968 Serbian countdown theme on vibraphone was performed by the renowned jazz pianist Vladimir Vitas. He learned to play the instrument especially for the occasion and is improvising on the recording. Some of the other idents also have relevant graphic or music authors, while in other cases they were anonymous. In all cases, they tended to reflect the origin, politics and mindset of the republics they were coming from.
Backdrop for Dnevnik – the countdown theme by Vladimir Vitas.
Traveling around ex-Yugoslavia has set me in closer contact to the people in respective countries and I was surprised about the knowledge and memory many still hold of the old idents. While in Serbia, if I had just vaguely mentioned what I was there for, people would automatically start singing the news melody that had ignited my project. In fact, there was a recent tendency in Serbia to revive this iconic ident. As of May 5th 2010, a redesigned version of it is running at 19:30h every night. The old stop motion dots are replaced by computer graphics, the intro melody played anew with an added beat. Even the much older countdown on vibraphone has been remade, although it does not quite match the beauty of the improvised original. This redesign has a contradictory reception. While some praise it as the best ident Serbian television ever had, most do not understand the motive behind the resurrection. The clip reminds them to much of the ‘fucked up’ 90s and makes their hair stand on end.
Redesigned ident of RTS Dnevnik – 2010.
Excerpt from the film Munje! – 2001.
During my research I interviewed Rambo Amadeus, a satirical musician, popular all over ex-Yugoslavia. After spontaneously re-singing all the possible idents he could remember, he told me his theory about the music behind them. He analyzed the pre war tendencies on the basis of the tones and melodies used. For example, he claims it’s no coincidence that the serbian (1978-1993) ident utilized melodies of suspense, thus heightening expectation. The croatian 1991 countdown was extremely tense and edgy while the actual news introduction sounded like call for arms. The Bosnian pre war ident was calm and optimistic, as if without belief in the upcoming conflict.
Rambo Amadeus before his concert in Ljubljana – february 2010.
TV Zagreb (countdown) 1991
TV Sarajevo 1992
Experience with archives was varied; some were more hesitant to give me the material than others. Fortunately, I was able to obtain what I was missing or could not get officially, through the internet. All thanks to the individual enthusiast and Yugo-nostalgics who uploaded it. Collaborations between national studios were cut off because of opposing political relations. Until now, no concise archive exists in any of the former Yugoslav countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia and the newly independent Kosovo.
• I can see how music in the collected news idents of the early 1980s was progressive in terms of its production. Using synthesizers, sequencers and computers. It is conceivable that the first contact with electronic music for a larger audience might very well have been through the news.
Stumbling upon these past idents today brings back memories. For the conditioned recipient, the music acts as a stimulus, reviving feelings of nostalgia or unease. The TV media memories were burned into the citizen minds by the repetitive rhythm of news shows, and the collective experience of following a live program. This was before the event of mass-internet. Now people can choose their viewing time. Particularly in Slovenia, the war was experienced almost exclusively through the media.
1980s Macedonian Dnevnik
I wanted to gather these past and present musical themes and set them free, make them available for translations and reinterpretations – transforming them into techno remixes that would ideally re-circulate in various social contexts. One of them being the dance floor, “a place where the dissolution of certainty and identity is experienced as a pleasure”. (Discographies: Dance, Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound, 1999; Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson)
I redistributed them to musicians, local and international, and asked them to produce adaptations. Most of the invited collaborators come from the field of electronic dance music (EDM). I found it relevant to disseminate the tracks to musicians informed by techno; musicians who would share my excitement in recognizing electronic elements in the news music or could identify with the social and cultural specific of EDM in ex-Yugoslavia. I also sought to engage an older generation of artists that have memory and affinity of the older idents.
The list of musicians is still growing. Psiho, Rambo Amadeus, DJ Ogi, Daniel Rajkovic, Ewox, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Kleemar, M.E.S.H., Trick-C, Timo Rohula, Veztax, Pondskater, Ian F and Miss Sunshine are some of the first contributors.
19:30 by Kleemar
K08 edit2 by Gerwald Rockenschaub
My purpose is dual; on the one hand, it is an archive of news theme songs; on the other, it is an active to promote their creative variation in a way which resonated with my personal experience of techno, an art form predicated on the infinite reinterpretation of other people’s productions.
The project has several manifestations. The continuously expanding archive of remixes, video, audio, links and diverse research material is presented and freely downloadable on nineteenthirty.net.
In an offline context, the project is presented as a two-channel video installation. One channel shows the chronologically arranged anthology, while the second is composed of original and found footage of techno parties from ex-Yugoslavia. Both are superimposed to a soundtrack formed from the newly created remixes and original news music.
The nature of the work remains open ended. There will be endless possibilities for extensions, from vinyl to videos, texts, prints, publications and events. A record compilation and a techno party are already in development.
Aleksandra Domanovic, september 2010