Abstract
This paper deals with so called Balkan music performed in the Czech Republic. Balkan music is very interesting soundscape in the Czech Republic: It is performed by Czech musicians with no further enculturation or interest in the Balkan culture.
Transnational music genres - with the Balkan music playing an important part of world music - offer a suitable medium to enter the studies of globalization and global cultural flows (Appadurai 1996, Shelemay 1997). Within that framework, we might follow the Appadurais' ethnoscapes and look for the actual ways the Balkan music enters the Czech Republic.
I have researched and interviewed the Balkan musicians at musical Balkan events in the Czech republic. In doing this research, I investigated how exactly they contribute to the image of Balkan music in the Czech republic.
The actual finding is unexpected. What is perceived as Balkan music in the Czech republic is a very interesting soundscape, yet its sound is rather different from the actual music played in the Balkan Peninsula.
Moreover, it turned out that the Balkan music is performed by musicians with no further enculturation or interest in the Balkan culture. Given that, the music production of the Czechs playing (the Czech version of) the Balkan music must be understood as something else.
I identified it as a social practice initiated by certain stereotypes, in this case, balkanism (Todorova 2009). The musicians perform this rather exotic musical style as a "safe entertainment" (Lausevic 2007) and in doing so, they display their attitude towards their Slavic neighbors, in Bigenho's 2012 words, they display an "intimate distance" (used by Bigenho in Andean-Japan music relationship).
Hence, I argue that the ethnoscapes are connected with other -scapes, such as ideascapes and mediascapes in Czech-Balkan counterpoint.