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oth bloggers and visitors. Furthermore, such mediation of memories and circulation of 4MO
functions as a tool and process of constant re-articulation of the past. Yet it is also a most ordinary
everyday activity of individuals engaging with wider socio-cultural constellations which
significantly rest on re-actualisations of the past. It has to be emphasised here that the former
Yugoslav popular music is not at all de-presented from post-Yugoslav realities. On the contrary,
over the years much music has nevertheless been reissued and the interest in gig-attendance of
former Yugoslav musicians is definitely increasing. However, this does not mean that the sort of
consumptory engagement with the former Yugoslav popular music implies actual interest in the
country‘s past any more than eating out in a ‗foreign‘ restaurant presupposes admiration of
‗foreign‘ culture.
When, however, it comes to the bloggers and their ways discussed above, it becomes clear that
their conduct does not fit into the consumptory, cursory engagement with music. What their work
demonstrates is great appreciation of the music they seek and post. Moreover, it is also clear from
their posts and their storytelling that their motives in using the music are distinctly different. They
in fact use the music to narrate their personal stories and they do so also actively engage with the
history of Yugoslavia and the history of Yugoslav popular music. What is characteristic for these
cases is active re-establishing of a link to the past, indeed a vernacular treatment of Yugoslav
popular music as a relevant historical resource that even today may have something to say, about
the past and present alike.
Unless digitised, made available in DME and subdued to participative co-creation, the music
featured in the music blogs faces a twofold extinction—from history and the media everyday.
Through preserving music in this way the aspects of the past that are re-presenced in and through
the music, in and through the technologically enabled media communications channel, face a
better chance of survival in the commoditised world. The extinction, full-on commodification or
top-down institutionalisation for that matter would even further exacerbate the consequences that
the collapse of the state had for the preservation of Yugoslav history, eliminating the experiential,
engaged, affective, caring attitudes to the musical rarities of the past.
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