Audiences of Slovenian Folk-Pop Music

Slovenian folk pop (narodno-zabavna glasba) is one of the most popular music genres in Slovenia, and yet there have been almost no attempts to analyse it or to connect it to various social, cultural, political etc. contexts. To learn more about its audiences, we have conducted a research based on a sample of 1022 individuals. Primarily, we were interested in demographics of the respondents, who have indicated that they listen Slovenian folk pop. The results show that this genre is popular primarily by older, less educated, religious, politically right-leaning population at the countryside, but also that there is only a weak correlation between listening to folk-pop and social class. This goes against the results of research conducted in other countries, which find strongs link precisely between aesthetic preferences and class. One possible explanation is that Slovenia is economically relatively undifferentiated county, which means that existing economic positions do not generate distinctive class taste cultures (at least not yet).

In place of marked class tastes one can infer from the results notable correlation between listening to Slovenian folk-pop and education, age, religiosity, political affiliations and location. It could be argued therefore, that in Slovenia taste cultures as related primarily to these structural elements,

Our previous research has shown that the symbolic universe of contemporary Slovenian folk pop is very coherent: with set of values, stylistic conventions and cultural references that almost never depart from a clearly defined normative frameworks. This is an important detail, but even more importantly it indicates – in combination with the results of demographic analysis, which showed that it is listened primarily by various socially marginalised groups (elderly, farmers, lower educated etc.) – that in Slovenia it effectively deepens various social divisions as it fixes lower social strata on the positions of rigid traditionalism.