This special issue explores different aspects of the yet uncanonised disco culture that thrived in Yugoslavia from the late 1970s until the early 1980s. Yugoslav disco culture points to the many issues and dilemmas at the heart of late socialism: With funk pioneers and Estrada emulators, gender transgressors and male chauvinists, affluent clubbers and Roma dancers, mainstream promoters and hostile critics, disco resists the polarizing definitions of conformist or progressive, official or subcultural, repression or dissent. Operating within gray zones, it highlights the inadequacy of the outdated binary matrix typically used for the interpretation of popular culture under socialism.

Juri Giannini is senior scientist at the Department of Musicology and Performance Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. His current research focuses are: Issues of interculturality in the didactics of music history; Ideology and (Music) historiography; Relations between Translation Studies and Musicology; Cultural history of music.