Slovenian folk-pop music as a place and nation making strategy between heritage and popular culture

ABSTRACT

Cultural heritage tourism partly depends on authorized heritage definitions, and partly on complex bottom-up processes of heritage identification, interpretation, and communication. This paper addresses the ways in which music, when understood as intangible heritage, may be used for place making and nation branding purposes, and the dynamic between these two processes, as seen from the perspective of cultural and heritage tourism workers. To analyze this dynamic, we focus on the genre of Slovenian folk-pop music. Invented in the 1950s, it has since then become the prevalent (popular) musical element of the Slovenian cultural landscape, while its variants have also, and in parallel to ‘national’ characterization of the genre, been appropriated in various local contexts. We trace how Slovenian folk pop simultaneously partakes in the construction of the country’s national brand and in local place making strategies of heritage promotion, deployed by national, regional, and local stakeholders. We draw on an extensive literature review, document analysis, and interviews with folk-pop festival organizers. Based on this initial mapping of the major stakeholders, we propose a classification of folk-pop music festivals that accounts for the different ways in which folk pop is used as an instrument of heritage tourism, place making, nation branding, and entertainment industries.

KEYWORDS:

• Folk-pop music
• heritage tourism
• place making
• nation branding
• Slovenia

Introduction

Over the past few decades, there has been a visible increase of cultural festivals on a global scale (Giorgi & Sassatelli, 2011, p. 2). These events, which have successfully instrumentalized diverse cultural expressions, practices, and identities to be marketed to potential visitors (Hafstein, 2020), have become important drivers of regional development and place branding strategies, as well as key tourist products (see Getz & Page, 2016; Mair & Weber, 2019). Festivals are, moreover, multi-layered events with multiple functions and consequences that go beyond their temporal and spatial boundaries (Duffy & Mair, 2021, p. 14) or market considerations. They ‘are much more than simply a source of financial gain; rather, the processes of festivals enable notions of place, community, identity and belonging to be to some extent actively negotiated, questioned and experienced’ (Mair & Duffy, 2018, as cited in Duffy & Mair, 2021, p. 14). However, despite the festivals’ socio-cultural complexity, Kockel et al. (2020, p. 1), writing on heritage and festivals in the European context, note that much of the policy-makers’ interest in the festivals and their role in tourism is primarily oriented towards revenue potential, ‘leaving key concepts, such as heritage, identity and indeed Europe, defined in rather vague and often contradictory terms.’

Taking our cue from Kockel et al. and the notion of (heritage) festivals as memory agents, ‘sites for the reframing of col­lective memory’ (2020, p. 1) as well as sites where notions of what constitutes heritage of a community are reinterpreted, we would like to examine music festivals and their role in (re)framing folk and popular musical heritage. Specifically, we zoom in on Slovenian folk pop, one of the most popular musical genres in Slovenia, which is regularly listened to by 48% of the population (Stanković & Bobnič, 2022), and the many festivals dedicated to this musical form.

Despite the many indications that Slovenian folk pop is a contemporary popular music genre, it is more often considered in association with folk music (the continuation of a pre-industrial, localized, rural music tradition) rather than with contemporary, genre-based music. Qualitative audience studies (cf. Majsova, 2016) show that this is due to its characteristics, such as polka and waltz rhythms, folk costumes, mandatory sound of the accordion, and lyrics that more often speak of traditional life in the countryside rather than contemporary social formations (see Stanković, 2021). Some definitions place the origins of the genre in the early twentieth century (Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2017), others connect it with the musical inventions of the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble, probably the most internationally famous folk-pop band, which became active in the 1950s (Stanković, 2021). All definitions, however, highlight the importance of Slovenian folk-pop music as a proverbially traditional genre that either draws on folk sounds, customs, traditions, etc., recreates them in a more modern context, or both.

Although folk pop is already considered a Slovenian tradition and was entered in the Slovenian Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage,¹ managed by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, in 2017, the genre’s status as national heritage is neither self-evident nor clearly defined. Although a heritage item, Slovenian folk pop exists as an almost purely commercial genre, which is generally classified in the media under the heading of ‘entertainment’ rather than ‘art and culture.’ At the same time, the number of folk-pop cultural events, such as thematic music festivals, and thematic heritage institutions has been on the rise over the last three decades, or, in other words, since Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia, as if reflecting the country’s search for a distinct national brand (Stanković, 2021; Šepetavc & Majsova, 2023).

The genre’s entanglement with identity construction, nation branding and place making is complex and constantly redefined on transnational, national and local levels. Here, a conceptual explanation is in order: the term ‘place making,’ which we use throughout the article, derives from Lew’s (2017) differentiation between concepts of ‘place-making,’ ‘placemaking’ and ‘place making.’ Place-making describes organic actions by individuals and communities that shape an image of a place. Placemaking on the other hand is an organized branding effort by the governments and tourist authorities. As most places are shaped by both bottom-up and organized initiatives, Lew proposes the term ‘place making,’ a concept, which tries to encapsulate this complex dynamic. In our case, ‘place making’ thus indicates that the construction of places and identities through folk-pop festivals is an interplay of both organic and organized efforts. Following this analogy, we also use the spelling of the term ‘nation branding’ throughout the article.

Despite its popularity and influence, folk pop is still an under-researched phenomenon. This article was written in the context of the first systematic research project devoted to folk pop, ‘Slovenian Folk-Pop as Politics: Perceptions, Receptions and Identities’ funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (code J6-2582). A part of the research was dedicated to the analyses of folk pop’s nation branding and place making potential and the ways this musical tradition is used for tourism-promotion purposes on the one hand, and local (and national) community building on the other. The claims that folk pop lays on tradition and heritage need to be addressed in relation to the various stakeholders that have made use of it – in this case the local music festivals that capitalize on the connotations carried by folk pop.

While no national heritage or tourism strategies specifically address the genre, our fieldwork has indicated that local folk-pop music festivals are important heritage gatekeepers, preserving and reinterpreting folk pop as heritage. Through festival programming and marketing, they articulate and refine the definitions, musical elements, aesthetics, rituals, and symbols associated with this music. To better understand their activities, we have conducted ten interviews with folk-pop festival organizers in Slovenia (in 2022). We were interested in the role of the festivals and folk-pop infrastructures in consolidating both the definitions of the genre – as prominent ‘Slovenian’ cultural heritage and/or entertainment – as well as its associations with cultural and geographical spaces. How do stakeholders conceptualize the heritage and entertainment value of folk pop at the conceptual level, and in what ways do the practices that they associate with the genre materialize through festival events? Our sample also included folk pop festival organizers in the Slovenian diaspora in Italy, which allowed us to find out to what extent the definitions of popular music phenomena as cultural and national heritage coincide or differ when recontextualized outside the national borders.

In this article, we present an initial classification of these music heritage festivals, focussing specifically on the dynamic between nation branding and place making in the context of these events as heritage tourism attractors. We will first shortly outline the field of festival research in relation to heritage. Then we will describe the ways in which folk pop – as an audio-visual invented tradition – has related to place-conditioned identification and sketch out the infrastructures that the genre has been a part of throughout its history, and the role of folk-pop music festivals in consolidating and advancing the perception of folk pop as heritage. Finally, we will discuss the levels on which place making happens in the context of these festivals, and how it is related to heritage discourses on the one hand, and commercial agendas on the other.

Folk pop’s heritage and infrastructure

Festivalization of heritage

Festival research has demonstrated the complex cultural roles of festivals that go beyond economic instrumentalization of culture. Festivals are events that function on different levels, in various settings and with diverse goals in mind: they can for example be used to revitalize local rural communities facing different social issues (economic decline, social changes due to in-migration etc.) (Mair & Duffy, 2018); claim to safeguard local tradition and heritage (Gligorijević, 2014); or can be utilized to rebrand a city, its image and history (Shin, 2004). They can operate both as an economic product for enhancing tourism, as well as occasions that foster a sense of belonging (Duffy & Mair, 2018; Gligorijević, 2019). Moreover, festivals are seen as important sources of ‘soft power’ (Muktupāvela & Laķe, 2020; Nye, 1990), and pivotal for a nation’s branding processes on a global scale (Jovićević, 2017). The festival is thus:

a doubly useful symbolic event: on the domestic front, it helps to secure nationalist sentiment across lines of internal division, cementing the fragile bonds of ‘imagined community’; no less importantly, on the field of international relations, it serves to project a depth and richness of national heritage together with the administrative competence of a properly modern state apparatus. It assists the nation in improving its symbolic position among the many nations of the world. (English, 2011, p. 66)

Furthermore, several authors warn that different interpretations of local culture, histories, place, and identities that are used to frame the festivals can also be divisive; festivals are therefore sites where local, national, and transnational identities are constantly (re)articulated and negotiated (Duffy & Mair, 2021; Mair & Duffy, 2018; Shin, 2004).

Focusing on the connection between festivals, tourism and heritage, different authors (e.g. Gibson & Connell, 2005; McKerrell & Pfeiffer, 2020; Taheri et al., 2020) demonstrate how notions of heritage and nostalgia are mobilized for the (re)constructions and framing of identity, place, a sense of belonging, history, and sense-making. Used by national and local stakeholders as a strategy of ‘“rediscovering the local” in the wake of economic and cultural globalisation,’ heritage became a marketable cultural and economic resource used in tourism and place making strategies (Brandellero & Janssen, 2014, p. 226). Writing about the nexus of heritagization and festivalization, Hafstein (2020, p. 205) additionally stresses, that festivals are ‘central to the implementation of [the UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage],’ being both a form of safeguarding of intangible heritage and one of the ways modern societies reflect their own culture, themselves as a social collective, and respond to social transformations brought by modernization.

The very notion of heritage festivals and the frameworks of their impact are therefore very complex, as our case studies will demonstrate. ‘What is heritage, and whose is it?’ (Brandellero & Janssen, 2014, p. 224) are crucial questions applicable also to Slovenian folk pop, which is not only positioned between heritage discourses on the one hand and discourses on popular music on the other, but is also a highly polarizing genre among the Slovenian public (Hafner-Fink et al., 2021).² Not all musical traditions are seen as heritage by the state or are accepted by the communities as such. Whereas classical ‘music has long been seen as a key element of European heritage and identity,’ diverse ‘folk musical expressions, by contrast […] have been strongly tied to national and regional politics for at least two centuries’ (Kockel et al., 2020, p. 9). Heritage has also been conventionally ‘regarded as something apart from the “popular,”’ popular music being seen as somehow inauthentic and thus less likely to be supported by the state founding capacities (Brandellero & Janssen, 2014, p. 225).

Folk pop is a case in point: the entry of this musical phenomena in the Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage is deliberately very broad, the loose definition emphasizing folk pop’s widespread and multifaceted socio-cultural significance rather than its characteristics: ‘Slovene popular-national³ music is an integral part of both everyday life and festive occasions. It is performed by vocal-instrumental or instrumental groups, mainly to the rhythm of the polka or waltz.’ (Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2017). The definition therefore emphasizes its cultural functions rather than its musicological value or aesthetic frameworks and implies a vernacular safeguarding of the phenomenon. Our research indicates that folk pop’s definitions and contestations take place on local levels and are tied to the ideas and practices of local folk-pop stakeholders, who benefit directly, usually financially and symbolically: producers, songwriters, performers, the media, as well as organizers and selectors of cultural events devoted entirely to the genre, and the custodians of thematic museums. Moreover, folk-pop festivals (re)define and use folk pop music as cultural heritage for constructing specific meanings of a place, a local community, and the nation.

Folk pop, identity and place making

Folk pop emerged in the wake of mid-twentieth century rustic nostalgia as an innovation in popular music and popular culture that facilitated the success of several Slovenian (then Yugoslav) musicians in the wealthier, capitalist Alpine states. The Yugoslav Communist Party had an ambivalent attitude to this development: on the one hand, it encouraged the celebration of various local cultural traditions; on the other hand, the commercial success achieved by certain Slovenian folk-pop musicians, notably the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble, was seen as a potential (symbolic) threat to state-wide ‘brotherhood and unity’ (Sivec, 1998, pp. 34–39; Stanković, 2015, 2021).

Over the several decades since its inception, folk pop became localized: widely regarded as an integral part of Slovenian tradition and national identity, and therefore a cultural form that facilitated national differentiation in the multiethnic context of the socialist Yugoslavia. Folk pop’s sound and imagery produced a complex interplay of meanings drawing on all sorts of spatial and temporal borders: borders between the city and the rural, between Slovenia, identifying itself as an Alpine region, and the Balkans, between the idealized past and a potentially morally corrupted present. Much of the visual aesthetic of folk-pop bands and their performances, as well as the songs’ lyrics have mostly focused on idealizing the Slovenian landscape, its people, and their everyday lives (see Bobnič et al., 2022; Stanković, 2021).

The oeuvre of the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble, widely regarded as folk-pop pioneers, clearly demonstrates the significance of discourses on place and community to this musical form. The Avseniks persistently popularized the sound in Slovenia and beyond Slovenian national borders, especially in the transnational Alpine region (Cvetko, 2008; Stanković, 2021), where it is known under its German name, ‘Oberkrainermusik.’ In doing so, the band also pioneered Slovenian nation branding and identity construction through music, at home and abroad. To illustrate: ‘Slovenia, whence thy beauty?’ is a title of one of the most famous folk-pop songs, performed by the Avseniks in 1974. The song paints a Slovenian landscape of immense beauty and virtue. In the video, the Avseniks don traditional costumes from Northern Slovenia (Upper Carniola) – where the band originated – and stand in the middle of the striking Alpine region. The shots of the Slovenian natural landscape function almost as a tourist board advertisement and the band sings:

As far as the eye can see,

there is dreamy beauty,

where is a more beautiful world to be found,

is there a place more wondrous than home?

The Avseniks produced a standard which has since become the norm – the regional costume worn by the band became known as ‘Slovenian’ national costume and was for a long time a mandatory part of the folk-pop musical performance at home and abroad (Knific, 2005, pp. 156–159). Moreover, the rural Alpine landscape praised in many songs and used as the mise-en-scène of many videos, was established as a quintessentially Slovenian image. Since the 1950s, some of these elements of folk-pop aesthetics, symbolism and sound have stubbornly persisted in folk pop, and have become key connotations connected to it (Stanković, 2021). The association of folk-pop music and national identity, which has been consolidated since the genre's inception, has served as a symbolic demarcation of the nation from others (especially the Balkans), and the musical tradition has often been territorialized: it has not only been associated with a specific territory, but has had to represent the nation and its identity (Stanković, 2021; Bobnič et al., 2022). As our cases show, these elements still inform aesthetic and thematic choices of folk-pop festivals.

Leaning on Butler (2006) and Moore and Pell (2010), Brandellero and Janssen (2014, p. 227), we highlight that heritage discourses and practices are ‘often grounded in territoriality, tied to the key preoccupation with tracing its origins and authentic expression.’ Moreover, heritage is crucial in the construction of places, as it connects the past and present localities in specific ways. Folk pop plays an important role of the link with the imagined past and is often marked as ‘our’ tradition and expression by the relevant stakeholders. At the same time, taking into account studies of the mobility of cultural forms and their transformation through time and place (see, e.g. Lidskog, 2016) and our fieldwork, it becomes clear that folk-pop music has never been homogeneous or static. It contains a multitude of local traditions (the most evident one being the distinction between two main styles invented by the genre’s pioneers – Slavko Avsenik’s, which highlighted the piano accordion, and Lojze Slak’s with the diatonic accordion).⁴ Additionally, over the course of its history, the genre has sought to incorporate some globalized musical elements of jazz, pop, turbo-folk, rock, etc., and slowly modernized its aesthetics, which nowadays also appeal to younger and urban listeners (see Stanković, 2021).

Folk-Pop infrastructures

After the disintegration of Yugoslavia, folk pop has gradually become generously endorsed by Slovenian media: today, the genre dominates a popular Friday-night prime-time TV show and is proliferated by several commercial television channels and radio stations (Kaluža & Bobnič, 2023a). The infrastructures – ‘taken-for-granted, invisible, underlying structures contributing to shaping local music activities and identities’ (Magaudda, 2020, p. 27) – of folk pop also reach beyond classical and social media: the genre is featured in history and music textbooks for primary and secondary schools, has generated over a dozen themed music festivals, and is increasingly recognized as not only a mechanism of heritage promotion, but also as a heritage object (Majsova, 2016; Zevnik, 2014).

Certain performers – like the aforementioned Avsenik and Slak – have become canonized, and an increasing interest exists among private and local stakeholders, such as families and municipalities, to institutionalize their histories in museums. So far, two museums dedicated to folk-pop pioneers have been built (the Avsenik Museum in Begunje and Lojze Slak and Tone Pavček Museum in Mirna Peč), and two more are under construction.

While folk pop is clearly linked to national identity and culture, at the same time, the genre does not feature in nation-wide cultural policies or tourism development strategies. This apparent lack of inclusion into policy indicates it is primarily understood as a completely commercial cultural product. It is regulated primarily by market mechanisms, remaining in-between heritage and transient entertainment, (local) institutionalization and the free market. As heritage, folk pop is mostly preserved and interpreted by private stakeholders; at the same time, it continues to be perceived as a cultural resource, especially among local stakeholders who use local reinterpretation of musical heritage to their advantage. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how different folk-pop festivals’ place making strategies are entangled with definitions that distinguish between what is popular, transient entertainment and what is heritage, and how this conundrum is involved in both national branding and national self-stereotypization.

Methodology

We understand festivals as gatekeepers (cf. Van der Hoeven & Brandellero, 2015) of folk-pop and related traditions as heritage, and as important heritage tourism stakeholders. We have examined how these stakeholders understand folk pop as heritage – both in theory and practice –, what role the ideas of place (discourses of local, national, home and abroad) play for these stakeholders in the construction of the very idea of a Slovenian folk pop, and how they promote the genre and their festivals as tourist destinations.

Following an initial mapping of stakeholders through a literature review, institutions, events, and media reports, we conducted ten semi-structured interviews with all the interested festival organizers in 2022.⁵ The interviews, which are available in the Social Science Data Archive of the University of Ljubljana (Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023), covered the following strands: (1) the festival’s history, organizers, main objectives and the target audience (2) the understanding of folk pop and related genres, as well as the embeddedness of music in heritage discourses and policies at different levels; (3) the understanding and construction of the frameworks of the genre within festivals and the relevance of music for local, national and transnational identities. Finally, we asked the interviewees specifically about the relevance of heritage and cultural tourism to their event. All but one of the interviews were conducted in person. Due to their schedules, the interview with the organizers of the Števerjan festival was conducted via Zoom. On average, the interviews lasted 68 minutes. Interview transcripts were coded in QDA Miner to facilitate classification, topic-clustering, and cross-topical data comparison. The stakeholders covered are presented in Table 1. In addition to interviews, festival publications, audio-visual archives, and social networks, etc. were reviewed to gain a better understanding of the festivals’ scope, their history, image, and media strategies. It should be noted that this list of festivals is not exhaustive (thematic events that do not foreground the heritage-aspect of folk pop have been omitted), but it provides a referential insight into the diversity of the field.

Table 1. Overview of festivals and their representatives.

Festival	Organization / Representative	Summary of objectives and activities
Folk-Pop Festival Ptuj / Festival narodnozabavne glasbe Ptuj (1969-)	Radio Tednik Ptuj / Domen Hren, Editor of Radio Ptuj	Oldest folk-pop festival. Emphasis on the national importance of the festival and the genre. An important element of Ptuj as a tourist and festival destination. Nationwide audience.
Števerjan Festival / Festival narodnozabavne glasbe Števerjan (1971-)	Catholic Cultural and Educational Society Frančišek Borgija Sedej / Ilaria Bergnach, President of the association and Stefania Beretta, Secretary of the association	Second oldest folk-pop festival; a cross-border festival with a focus on community bonding and the preservation of Slovenian heritage among the Slovenian diaspora in Italy. A part of the festival are tourism, gastronomy and highlighting local providers. Local and international audience.
Singing and Dancing on Graška gora / Graška Gora poje in igra (1976-)	Cultural Association Graška Gora / Drago Plazl, President of the association	Third oldest folk-pop festival. Involving the wider local community in the organization. National and international audiences.
Folk-Pop Festival Cerkvenjak / Festival Slovenskogoriški klopotec Cerkvenjak (1986-)	Cultural Association Cerkvenjak / Danijel Zorko, President of the association	Involving the wider local community in the organization. Focus on local audiences. Partly national and international audiences.
Vurberk Folk Pop Festival / Festival narodnozabavne glasbe Vurberk (1992-)	Vurberk Tourist Board / Janez Toplak, Secretary of the association	Initiated by the Vurberk Tourist Board, with the aim of revitalizing the town and the castle courtyard. Emphasis on the Slak style of folk pop. Nationwide audience.
An Evening of Slovenian Dialectal Songs Škofja Loka / Večer slovenskih viž v narečju Škofja Loka (2001-)	Radio Sora / Nada Jamnik, Director	Emphasis on singing in dialects. Emphasis on local audiences. Partly national and international audiences.
Oberkrainer / Folk-Pop Hit Parade / Oberkrainerfest / Narodnozabavna hit parada, Bled (2004-)	Bled Culture Institute / Lili Ošterbenk Janša, head of the Oberkrainer Hit Parade project	Tourism initiative to revitalize Bled in the ‘dry’ month of November. Focus on the Oberkrainer or Avsenik style folk pop, both Slovenian and foreign ensembles invited. Primary focus on international audience.
New Year's Celebration Volksmusik Festival / Novoletni festival narodnozabavne glasbe Dolenjske Toplice (2005-)	Dolenjske Toplice Municipality in Tourist Information Center Dolenjske Toplice / Franc Vovk, Mayor of Dolenjske Toplice	Tourism initiative to organize a musical festival during Christmas holidays. Primarily aimed at a local audience. Partly a nationwide audience.
Folk-Pop Music Festival at the Foothills of Pohorje, Oplotnica / Festival pod Pohorjem Oplotnica (2017-)	Cultural Association Festival Oplotnica / Franci Ribič, President of the association	Involving the wider local community in the organization. Primarily aimed at local audiences. Partly nationwide audience.
Modrijani Night / Noč Modrijanov (2003-)	Blaž Švab, main Vocalist of the Modrijani ensemble and Modrijani Night organizer	Two-day event headed by one of the most popular contemporary Slovenian folk-pop bands, Modrijani, and their musical guests from different musical genres. Organized in the Slovenian town of Celje, known for its medieval history and trade fair tourism.

Our research has led us to propose a provisional classification of folk-pop festivals considering the different strategies and aims they have regarding linking music to heritage and place making strategies. So far, we have identified four distinct types of folk-pop festivals with different approaches and goals of connecting popular music, heritage, nation branding and place making. We have pinpointed several important characteristics through which the festivals can be differentiated and grouped into the four types. These are: the function of folk pop as heritage in the festival’s concept; organizers’ strategic priorities; target audiences; funding sources; the festival’s role in framing music as heritage; and the relevance of place making and nation branding to the festival’s concept. In what follows, we present the resultant classification of folk-pop festivals with reference to the most clearly outlined cases in point: Ptuj, Števerjan, Bled, and Modrijani Night (Celje).

Analysis

Type 1: a nation, concentrated: national heritage in a micronational setting and the Folk- Pop Festival in Ptuj

Following Gligorijević’s work (2019) on the two main Serbian music festivals – Guča and Exit –, such events can be conceptualized as ‘symbolic micronational spaces,’ reproducing notions of national identity, culture, heritage, and locality. According to Gligorijević:

[…] music festivals are real places embedded in the geography of pre-existing locations and their wider networks, national, transnational, and otherwise. Therefore, they invariably draw on the experience of a given locality and actively participate in the (re)construction of space-based identities including nation-building projects (2019, pp. 26–27).

The Ptuj Folk-Pop Festival is a case of construction and reproduction of a nation through music. The remote Styrian town of Ptuj was the first community to recognize the cultural significance and potential commercial and touristic appeal of Slovenian folk pop music in 1969. Just a decade into the genre’s history, the municipality had set out to organize a festival intended to showcase, according to its current organizer, Domen Hren (as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023), the crème de la crème of Slovenian folk-pop music. The organizers envision the festival as a ‘high-culture’ event, attracting important personalities (e.g. local and national politicians as well as an audience of musical connoisseurs) from the whole country. Although the organizer lists foreigners (especially those from the European Alpine regions) among the visitors, the festival is primarily aimed at the Slovenian public and frames folk-pop music as a distinctly Slovenian speciality. Here, the distinction from similar Alpine and Central European musical traditions is especially important – the organizers in Ptuj clearly territorialize folk pop, highlighting that: ‘Slovenian folk pop was made on Slovenian territory,’ has distinct, nationally-significant symbolic power, and, despite some similarities and a common conception, has nothing to do with Austrian music (Hren, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023).

The organizer’s approach to folk pop’s heritage and framing is thus strict: Hren associates folk pop primarily with the tradition of the piano accordion, folk-pop quintets, Upper Carniolan costumes, etc., and prohibits ripped jeans and other modern fashion options on stage. However, contrary to the selection policies of the event, the archive of yearly TV screenings of the festival reveals a greater flexibility of folk-pop aesthetics and musical influences among performers, which is in line with folk pop’s modernization and the festival’s strategies of responding to political circumstances and market demands.

This adaptability of the Festival is evident in two areas: both musical and the city’s heritage are, firstly, mobilized as important resources for tourism; and, secondly, connected in the Festival’s media strategy, which includes televising heritage for a nation-wide audience. Festival organizers have managed to leverage the support of national Radio-Television Slovenia, becoming the only folk-pop festival to date to receive consistent financial, organizational, and logistical support from the national media. The long tradition of cultural events in Ptuj – the oldest Slovenian town, as is pointed out in its promotional materials – is also taken into account in the annual planning of the Festival venues, which have to, according to Hren, look good both live and on TV:

We have a lot of squares in Ptuj and we move events from one square to another. Why? Because we want the half a million people who are watching this in the reruns and on national television to see the beauty of Ptuj, to see the intricacies of this facade, that facade, that Orpheus, that castle and so on. / … / Janez Puh was born here / … / He was one of the world's greatest inventors in the field of motoring, or motor engines / … / [T]this needs to be shown to the people and they need to be educated. So [for the festival’s 52nd anniversary] we put the engines on the scene and said to ourselves that all this can be connected. All this is our heritage, not only cultural, not only musical, not only technical, it's our pride. (Hren, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023)

The mediatization of musical and cultural heritage can, however, be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can record and archive intangible and tangible heritage, making it accessible for a larger audience; on the other, it can disrupt our sense of a physical place and our intimate connections to it (Malpas, 2008, p. 198). Nevertheless, mediatization of the folk-pop scene can, in turn, not only increase virtual participation, but also promote tourist imagination and activities, prompting audiences to travel to a specific place, as is the case in film tourism (e. g. Connell, 2012).

Ptuj’s organizers do not appear to be concerned by the potential negative consequences of the mediatization of their heritage, and use various media outlets to archive and promote their event. The Festival is televised and available on You Tube, creating the conditions of a truly collective consummation of this invented tradition. According to Hren, one-fourth of Slovenia’s population or half a million viewers tune in every year to watch the country’s biggest folk-pop spectacle.⁶

In terms of place making strategies, the Festival’s approach to folk-pop music revolves around the following key strategies:

1. showcasing ‘the best’ productions (this is ensured by a long and strict selection process overseen by several levels of gatekeepers – organizers, juries, etc.);

2. highlighting the pan-Slovenian dimension of the event by consciously selecting acts that ‘respond to the tradition’ or rather what they define as tradition: sonically, narratively, and visually;

3. special efforts to ensure the event is attended by prominent locals and tourists from Slovenia;

4. special attention to the Festival settings and stage decorations, keeping in mind how the selected places are going to be framed on television.

Ptuj’s Festival positions itself as an entertainment spectacle that attracts around 5000 visitors over three days. It is also an event that is visited and then re-visited by the same guests; this is achieved by switching locations, alternating between different locations in the city and even in the nearby countryside, as well as Ptuj’s status as a tangible and intangible heritage tourist destination.

Finally, as an event that celebrates its own claim to national significance, the Festival in Ptuj functions as a ‘micronational space’ (Gligorijević, 2019), a symbolic event, where the notion of folk pop as national heritage is at the forefront. Once (in the 1960s–1980s) a key urban cultural event celebrating rustic nostalgia, it has become the flagship of Slovenian nation-centered and tradition-focused music festivals. The overall mission of the Festival is to contribute to a specific brand: ‘Ptuj is Ljubljana [Slovenia’s capital city],’ Hren has pointed out in the interview, going on to explain how Ptuj – a peripheral cultural centre, considered as remote in relation to Ljubljana – has always been a town of festivals, the festival of folk-pop music being one of the key events of the year.

Type 2: folk pop as community building and the Števerjan Festival

The folk-pop festival in Števerjan is the second oldest of its kind. Inspired by the festival in Ptuj, it was established in a small village on the Italian side of Slovenian-Italian border in 1971. The three-day annual event is organized by the local Slovenian minority, and is an important tool for building Slovenian national identity and a sense of belonging.

Research on the role of music in the formation of ethnic identities in the context of migration suggests that music and dance are two key axes for the formation of diasporic cultural identities, for community cohesion and for maintaining ties with the homeland (see Boura, 2006; Klein, 2005; Lidskog, 2016). Through music, communities preserve, transmit and form new cultural memories (Baily & Collyer, 2006; Klein, 2005). Thus, music is a key element of diasporic cultural heritage; communities invest their efforts in organising dances, festivals, etc., to preserve their heritage and affirm their identity in the context of the majority society (Boura, 2006).

In the context of minorities living in a historically somewhat discriminatory environment, the nationalist sentiment connected to folk pop becomes more pronounced and visible, as identification is exercised through intentional self-exoticisation. Števerjan’s brochures exemplify this clearly. One cites Slavko Avsenik, Jr., the son of the aforementioned famous folk-pop pioneer, who, when visiting the Festival in 2010, claimed:

Here [in Števerjan] you feel directly the importance of belonging to your nation and to everything that helps to preserve the culture of your nation, something that we are sometimes too rarely aware of, even in the midst of the capital of our country, Ljubljana. (as cited in Hlede, 2020, p. 7)

Statements like this indicate a struggle for one’s identity and heritage from a minority position in a foreign country and in this case, the tool of this struggle is music.

While Števerjan is an anchor of national identity, the crux of its politics is glocal, rather than national. As the village is located amidst hills and surrounded by grapevines (another typical image of the folk-pop aesthetic), the organizers – as explained by Ilaria Bergnach and Stefania Beretta (as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023) – make sure to combine romantic landscape vistas, music, and gastronomy, focusing on the promotion of local farms and winemakers. They aim to construct the picturesque village as a tourist location (think of Tuscany for comparison). This is partly an economic consideration, a way to supplement profit, but also one of their strategies of building a specific place and experience. Moreover, the organizers act on both local and transnational levels, which is evident in:

1. the framing of the Festival for the Slovenian public on both sides of the border, and internationalizing their locality and folk pop. Filmed by both national broadcasters – RAI in Italy and RTV in Slovenia – the Festival is broadcast to a wide multicultural audience;

2. ensuring that Števerjan’s messages remain timely and respond to current challenges, investing great care in sustainable development, sustainable and local gastronomical offerings, and ecological concerns.

In contrast to Ptuj, Števerjan has never aimed to become a national cultural centre or to position folk pop as the crème de la crème of a national popular-music industry. Rather, it has relied on young, local organizing teams with short mandates, who are active in preserving Slovenian heritage for future generations and transforming folk pop infrastructures for younger audiences. This offers them more flexibility in their criteria of what constitutes folk pop’s heritage, insisting merely that the two songs that each band performs – one original, one old – be in Slovenian and do not involve electronic instruments. The latter criterion, however, will be up for deliberation in the following years. While the language and acoustic performances still remain obligatory, the aesthetics of the Festival and the bands – as seen in their archives – have always been a lot more flexible in Števerjan than at other festivals in Slovenia, revealing a multicultural environment.

Accordingly, the Festival archives, digitized by the tech-savvy team to promote folk-pop heritage in a modern way, are now skilfully used for social media campaigns. Here, folk pop is reframed through an aesthetically pleasing nostalgia in an effort to make the traditional genre look cool on Instagram and engage younger audiences, which the organizers are actively seeking to attract.

Type 3: folk pop as tourism – Bled’s hit parade as a thrifty regionalist initiative

The commercial allure of folk pop is even clearer in the case of the Bled Oberkrainer Hit Parade. This festival, initiated in 2004 by the local tourism organization, has been launched with profit and place branding in mind, as a way of making Bled come to life in the grim month of November.

The organizers had defined a set of parameters, according to the local tourism manager, Lili Ošterbenk Janša (as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023): they were looking for something ‘authentic’ and envisioned an event that would fill up hotels for the weekend. Since Upper Carniola is traditionally the birthplace of folk pop, Bled is in close proximity to the Avseniks’ Restaurant and Museum in Begunje, and the region has already hosted a successful festival dedicated to the genre (Alpski večer), the organizers decided the event would be organized around folk pop, specifically the Avsenik’s (Oberkrainer) style. The festival, which is primarily aimed at the German-speaking market, was quickly embraced by the municipality. Since 2004, it has gradually grown to regularly sell out the entire Bled’s Ice Hall (around 2.500 seats), as well as a range of accompanying events.

The festival responds to the tastes of a very specific fan base and heritage: Oberkrainer-sound afficionados from various corners of the Alps; ‘a highly musically educated public’ (Ošterbenk Janša, as cited Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023), employed in a range of sectors, from farming and agriculture to hospitality and medicine. One third of the guests, according to Ošterbenk Janša, who regularly communicates with them, attend the festival every year, and a lot of them have transferred their love for the genre and the event onto their children.

These fans, usually not too busy in November, are keen to come to Bled due to the specific profile of the festival:

1. its location in the heart of Oberkrainer music, not far from Begunje, the headquarters of the famous Avsenik dynasty, and in the picturesque town of Bled, a proverbial international tourist magnet;

2. its dedicated focus on the specificities of the Oberkrainer tradition; the Hit Parade resembles Austrian and other Alpine events, e.g. the Kastelruther Spatzenfest, more than other Slovenian folk-pop festivals, due to the homogeneity of the sound and experience that it offers;

3. its capacity to accommodate the transnational Oberkrainer musical scene and the fans – the festival features both Slovenian and foreign Oberkrainer bands and the event is mostly in German rather than Slovenian;

4. the tradition, landscapes, and lyrics promoted at Bled are Oberkrainer, just as much as they are Slovenian.

In this sense, the Hit Parade has carved out a specific brand among the festivals, promoting only a fraction of the broad spectrum of Slovenian folk pop, and allying with similar-sounding foreign bands, rather than with the slightly different local ones. The visitors come to the festival for a specific kind of sound, Ošterbenk Janša underscores, and this means bands like the folk pop stars Modrijani, who are not a part of the Oberkrainer tradition, are excluded from the festival’s framework. However, even though the Bled Oberkrainer Hit Parade promotes and capitalizes primarily on the heritage of the Avsenik (and Oberkrainer) tradition, its visitors also contribute their own meanings and traditions to the event – for example, the foreign guests often attend the festival in their unique regional costumes.

The success of the festival’s business model is evident from the fact that ‘the festival markets itself’ (Ošterbenk Janša, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023), having gained a strong foothold in the hearts of its specific target audience. Contrary to most Slovenian folk-pop festivals, where media presence – on the local and/or national level – is of the utmost importance, the Hit Parade is not televised nor particularly active on social media.

Moreover, it has inspired two similar initiatives: the biennial Avsenik Festival and ‘National Folk Weekend’ organized by the Veseli Begunjčani ensemble in Begunje since 2011. Both these events, the first directed by the Avsenik heirs, and the second by another local Oberkrainer band, are pronouncedly international and geared at an international audience, and both promote the specific Oberkrainer sound and heritage. At the same time, in contrast to the Hit Parade in Bled, these two festivals also market their ‘Slovenian essence,’ dedicating special space to the topic of ‘Slovenia’ and ‘the homeland’; possibly in a self-exoticizing attempt to profit from their geographic origins, and to attract Slovenian fans. This dimension brings them closer to festivals like Ptuj, Števerjan and Modrijani Night, as well as many other smaller local events around Slovenia. However, their insistence on the Oberkrainer sound presents an insurmountable obstacle for possible collaboration with these other initiatives.

Type 4: folk pop as heritage with (potentially) global allure: Modrijani Night

Modrijani Night has lately been⁷ a record-breaking folk-pop yearly two-night event that capitalizes on the notion of pop-folk stardom. Currently on hiatus, the festival was established in 2003 by one of the most popular contemporary folk-pop bands, Modrijani, and developed into a folk-pop spectacle that was regularly sold out. To put this in numbers, its last iteration in 2018 lasted two days, was attended by 12.000 people and featured 700 musicians each night (Po izjemni Noči Modrijanov … , 2019). Even though it was set in Celje, a city known for its Roman and medieval heritage, as well as a developed trade fair tourism infrastructure, the event was not focused on branding the city or connecting the local community, but on the band and its concept.

As the lead singer of Modrijani and a popular Slovenian TV host, Blaž Švab (as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023), explains, the band’s goal was to make firstly, a spiritual event focused on praising God and, secondly, a complex and challenging event that would eventually be comparable to bigger popular music festivals found abroad. Modrijani Night was an ambitious endeavour. It was self-funded by the band members (but generated profit), who were preoccupied with its organization for several months. Moreover, every year’s festival had a new concept: ‘First the content, then the form – so we know what the story is going to be, what the content is going to be, then the form – […] I'm fascinated that it can be done.’ (Švab, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023)

The whole spectacle was carefully and professionally mediatized: featured in various national, local, and niche media outlets, and in aesthetically thought-out social media campaigns, the festival itself was shot with multiple cameras by a private professional film crew, aired on Slovenian national television, and partly made available on YouTube.

The concept of the event leaned on the idea of national identity, Slovenian culture and heritage, and the importance of Slovenia’s territory. An example of this is the 2018 festival theme ‘This is our home.’ The enormous stage featured traditional houses from different Slovenian regions, and representatives of different musical traditions from all parts of the country performed alongside Modrijani, forming a miniature festival microstate.

However, the brand of Modrijani themselves is quite more complex: on the one hand, they are the modern symbol of a traditional folk-pop genre; on the other, they are seen as proponents of a hybrid and transformed folk pop that mixes musical and aesthetic heritage elements (like the accordion, waltzes, polkas, etc.) with modern globalized cultural forms (pop, rock, jeans, and a polished media brand). This hybridity, claims Švab, is present only in 20 per cent of their repertoire, but is what brought the band its visibility and popularity on the one hand and a fair amount of hate, according to Švab, on the other.

Folk pop’s popularity that is on the rise among younger audiences (Hafner-Fink et al., 2021) can be seen as a response to modernization and globalization (e. g. Hafstein, 2020), as Švab’s testimony confirms:

I think it was basically that it was a response to globalisation. The whole world is at our fingertips, everything has gone global, and now we need something of our own. Not in a pejorative way or in a nationalistic way. But we need something of our own. Even if we don't like it, but the accordion is ours.

This, however, does not, at least for Modrijani and their festival goals, exclude other genres and musical experimentation: ‘We, I, always think with a totally open mind.’ (Švab, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023).

Modrijani Night was different from other folk pop festivals in its scope and goals. Only Ptuj is comparable in terms of visitor numbers and scenography, but the ambition of Modrijani went beyond national frames or regional economic initiatives; their goal was to produce world-class events rooted in national traditions but also transgressing them, in line with successful cultural and musical industry examples like San Remo (Švab, as cited in Majsova & Šepetavc, 2023). On the topic of folk pop festivals and their future, Švab proposes:

[They are] not in the spirit of the times […] production-wise. San Remo is in the spirit of the times, it has survived and it is better than Eurovision. They have kept the tradition of the orchestra, but it was in the spirit of the age. But these [folk-pop] festivals … it's not enough to just have ensembles singing under a tent or on a stage. New media must be considered. Content-wise, how to make it appeal to a wider audience. These festivals played a strong role in their time, but now we need to adapt and adapt the content and the format to make it also for new media and to appeal to new people.

Modrijani’s and Švab’s reinvention of the large-scale festival format after Covid-19 is – for the time being – a series of concerts, ‘Modrijani in Person,’ which offers an intimate setting in smaller venues around the country, and a powerful media presence both on social media and on national TV, where new trends of folk-pop hybridity can be seen during the prime-time Friday night show V petek zvečer, hosted by Švab.

Conclusion

This article contributes to the rich sub-field of festival studies literature focusing on festivals as sites of heritage work (e. g. Azara & Crouch, 2015; Gligorijević, 2019; Hofman, 2014; Merkel & Ok, 2015) and is the first to turn its attention to folk pop, a proverbially quintessentially ‘Slovenian genre,’ and systematically analyse its festivals. This also means there is still a lot of work to be done in comparing similar regional festival phenomena that instrumentalize and draw their meanings from definitions of folk musical expressions, cultural heritage, national traditions, etc., and study what role these events have played in the constructions and transformations of local, regional, and national cultures, identities, and brands. Moreover, another important topic for future consideration concerns festival activities among the diasporas around the world. Our preliminary research shows that folk pop and its festivals are important for social cohesion but are also places of the rearticulation of diasporic identities and musical heritage in relation to both Slovenian and American / Argentine / Australian, etc. cultures, potentially opening up folk pop to musical, aesthetic, and symbolic transformations.

The purpose of this article was to provide a twofold reflection: on how folk pop is understood and harnessed as heritage in the context of thematic festivals, and how this aspect is integrated into the broader spectrum of folk-pop industry infrastructures. We have demonstrated how Slovenian folk-pop festivals exploit, negotiate, and curate the genre on four levels: as an expression and gatekeeper of the national folk-pop canon, as an identifier of a community, as a lucrative tourist commodity, and as a cultural resource with global ambitions.

Furthermore, we have identified that these festivals, as commercial affairs aimed at attracting different kinds of audiences, consciously engage with the question of folk pop as a heritage tourism product (see Table 2). Slovenian folk pop was first recognized as a tourist attraction in an attempt to revitalize and promote a place rich in cultural heritage (Type 1); it has then also been used as a heritage signifier by a cross-border minority community, in attempts to attract funding and tourists from their homeland (Type 2). Even more recently, the understanding of folk pop as heritage has become used by tourism workers to create niche, regionally specific entertainment products in an ‘authentic’ environment (Type 3). Concurrently with these discussions and the recent rise in popular (and media) interest in folk pop, attempts are being made to harness it as heritage on a national level, tying the signifier to specific popular bands, rather than places, in the tradition of modern pop stars’ tours with wide fan bases and cult followings (Type 4).

Table 2. An initial typology of folk-pop festivals as heritage tourism stakeholders with national and local place making agendas.

Characteristics	Type 1	Type 2	Type 3	Type 4
Function of folk pop as heritage in the festival’s concept	Folk pop as national heritage in a micronational setting	Folk pop as local and transnational community building	Folk pop as a tourist attraction and regional (transnational) heritage	Folk pop as national heritage with global popularity potential
Organizers’ strategic priorities	To stage ‘national tradition’ as a matter of quality, resonance, and popularity.	To stage ‘local (and minority) cultural tradition’ as a matter of cultural specificity, social interaction, specific customs, and habits.	Local tourism promotion (&profit) by staging ‘local cultural tradition’ as a matter of cultural specificity and excellent sound.	To rebrand the genre for new (younger) audiences and branding of the band as folk pop’s contemporary stars. Modernizing the festival infrastructure. The tourist attraction is not the place where the festival is held, but the band itself – folk pop fan tourism.
Target audience/s	Slovenian upper-middle- and middle-class tourists, local distinguished figures, less-so foreign tourists.	Locals; tourists from both sides of the border.	Foreign Oberkrainer-sound lovers.	Fans from Slovenia and abroad.
Funding sources	Some national, mostly municipal funding.	Some regional funding, municipal funding (from Italy). As well as Slovenian funding by the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad.	Completely commercial initiative.	Completely commercial initiative.
Festival’s role in framing music as heritage	Stakeholder in critical and popular discussions on what folk pop is/not.	Harnesses music as a local social-cohesion mechanism & tourism attractor; endorses a loose definition of folk pop as heritage.	A regionally specific musical tradition is promoted as a localized attraction and a regional and transnational community-building factor.	Folk pop music is understood as a personal, national, and potentially global brand. A loose and open definition of folk pop is endorsed for ensuring appeal to diverse audiences.
Relevance of place making and nation branding to the festival’s concept	Specific place as a microsetting of the nation; ambition to canonize ‘Slovenian tradition’ through music, settings, selection process. Model example: Ptuj.	Specific place uses locally available music ‘tradition’ for local social cohesion and strengthening ties with the homeland. Glocal strategies (promotion of minority culture). Model example: Števerjan.	Specific place affirms ‘local tradition’ (intangible heritage) as larger than nation and region through marketing, programme curation, supporting programme. The notion of tradition is, in this case, seen as incommensurable with the ideas of the nation and region, because it exceeds and cannot be framed within these terms. Model example: Bled.	Nation posited as a metaphysical, spiritual ‘place’. Folk pop used as a ‘national’ tradition and heritage to reinforce a popular band’s iconic brand. Folk pop is seen as a tradition of nationally specific entertainment that can be hybridized with global popular genres and modernized. Model example: Modrijani Night.
Other similar cases	Similar intentions, but not as place-oriented: Vurberk; Škofja Loka.	Similar intentions, but not as tourist-oriented: Oplotnica, Cerkvenjak.	Similar intentions, but not as place-oriented: Dolenjske Toplice (not Oberkrainer sound).	Similar intentions: Festival Avsenik

Our fieldwork and contextual research have confirmed that all the examined festivals can be seen as infrastructures for constructing, reflecting, and performing national imaginary and heritage. Stakeholder interviews have actually additionally emphasized this aspect as an important element, almost as significant as the musical aspect. While our research shows that most of folk-pop festivals are local affairs with different priorities, they do insist on national branding. At the same time, as performative affairs, they demonstrate that national traditions and local specificities are not fixed identity anchors, but resources of constructing a specific place, festival experience and/or folk pop stars, which are then marketable to tourists and television executives.

Folk-pop festivals are intersections of different elements; they are built on ideas about heritage and authenticity, they are specific places and infrastructures that host the event, organizers, musicians, and audiences, and lastly, they act as affective webs connecting music, memories and communities that can encourage different national, local and/or musical identifications. This makes the festivals versatile and dynamic places of negotiation about what folk pop is or is not, what it symbolizes, how the genre is transforming, and what its future holds.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and generous suggestions for improving this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is part of the Slovenian Folk pop as Politics: Perceptions, Receptions, Identities project, funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), under project number J6-2582.

Notes on contributors

Jasmina Šepetavc

Jasmina Šepetavc is an assistant professor and a researcher at the Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana). Her research interests include film- and popular music studies, feminist- and queer theory. She also works as a film critic and film festival selector.

Natalija Majsova

Natalija Majsova is an associate professor of cultural studies at the University of Ljubljana. Her research cuts across the fields of memory studies, film and media studies, heritage interpretation, and (post-)socialist popular cultures. She is especially interested in the mechanisms of collective memory and remembrance practices at the nexus of projections of the future and imaginaries of the past, and in how gradual technological transformations contribute to nostalgias for past utopias.

Notes

1 The concept of intangible cultural heritage and its safeguarding follows the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Convention), which entered into force in Slovenia in 2008. Intangible heritage includes ‘practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.’ (Convention, 2003). The Slovenian Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage is the central database of national intangible heritage. The Register is managed by the Ministry of Culture and the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum is the coordinator for the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

2 Analysing data from the Slovenian Public Opinion poll (Hafner-Fink et al., 2021), Stanković and Bobnič (2022) show that the genre is popular principally among older, less-educated, religious, politically right-leaning people in the countryside (vs. Slovenian two big cities – Ljubljana and Maribor – where its popularity is the lowest). Even though the urban population has frequently distanced itself from this rustic genre with traditional connotations, the authors also highlight that folk pop is gaining ground among other segments of the population (specifically younger audiences aged under 30), albeit in a smaller degree.

3 Folk-pop music is the closest approximation to the Slovenian term ‘narodnozabavna glasba’ in English. The few extant studies on the subject have, however, also referred to it as ‘popfolk’, ‘national-popular’ and ‘popular-national’ music.

4 Avsenik’s style is characterized by a typical quintet instrumental line-up (composed of the trumpet, the clarinet, the baritone, the guitar and the piano accordion). Slak’s style on the other hand originated from the southern Slovenian region of Dolenjska and is more frequently described as closer to Slovenian folk traditions. It is characterized by a trio composition (of the diatonic accordion, the guitar and bass or baritone). Both bands collaborated with various vocalists as polyphonic singing is an important part of Slovenian folk and folk-pop traditions.

5 We have contacted all the relevant national and cross-border festival organizers, and all agreed to participate in the study.

6 This number was later disputed as an exaggeration by the entertainment editor at Television Slovenia (cf. Vardjan in Kaluža & Bobnič, 2023b). Nevertheless, it is an important indication of the organizers’ specific ambition to attract a nation-wide audience.

7 First organized on a smaller scale in 2003, the event gained unprecedented popularity in the 2010s. It was, however, discontinued in 2019 and its future remains unclear.