PROFESSIONALIZATION OF JAZZ IN SERBIA: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The creation of jazz as a profession within the domestic frameworks implies a process lasting for one whole century, which was formally integrated by opening the Department of Jazz and Popular Music at the Belgrade Faculty of Music. A field anthropological research study was also begun in the same year, during which study the jazz musicians who had been participating in the contemporary professionalization process took part in it in different ways, either by having been laying the foundations for the institutional establishment of jazz or by having been participating in the establishment and conducting of educational activities during their careers, or by having been participating in the same as the students who were given an opportunity for the first time to be awarded a national diploma of an art institution of higher education. The possibility of obtaining a national diploma, however, raises several significant issues and refers us to certain specificities of the designated process within local frameworks. This paper, which will first of all refer the reader to the earlier phases of the professionalization process, only to be followed by the ultimate clarification of the outcomes readable from the respondents’ narratives as well, is exactly dedicated to them.