Applied Musicology and the Responsibility for Shaping the Cultural Scene in Serbia: On the Experience of Working for the Serbian Ministry of Culture

Abstract

This article presents the first discussion of a musicologist’s work as a member of the commission appointed by the Serbian Ministry of Culture to select cultural projects in the field of contemporary music creation and performance for annual funding. The analysis draws from the disciplines of applied musicology and autoethnography. My appointment at the Serbian Ministry of Culture lasted five years, from 2018 to 2022, during which I observed first-hand the inner workings of the Serbian cultural scene and associated policies; more importantly, I utilized my musicological expertise to influence the very same cultural scene. The article also presents the legislative and practical challenges of working in a country that allocates less than 1% of its annual budget for culture.

1. Introduction

In this article, I present my experiences of working for the Ministry of Culture1 of the Republic of Serbia as an appointed member of the commission for the selection of cultural projects, specifically in the domain of contemporary music creation and performance. My appointment at the Ministry of Culture lasted five years, from 2018 to 2022; since commission members are appointed annually, I signed a separate contract each year. During these five years, I had a unique opportunity to observe first-hand the inner workings of the Serbian cultural scene and policies associated with it. However, more importantly, I also had the chance to utilize my musicological knowledge to influence the very same cultural scene and policies. By sharing my experiences, observations, practical insights, and lessons learned, I aim to show to what extent musicology, as a scientific (historical-theoretical) and applied discipline, can (and should) directly underpin, complement, or instigate certain cultural and music practices. This is especially important in a country that allocates less than 1% of its annual budget for culture, which is significantly below the European standard.

In order to avoid mere self-reflection without engaging with the context, the text is structured as follows. After a brief methodological section on applied musicology, autoethnography and cultural models, I elaborate on the context by addressing the notion of post-socialist transition and its consequences and outcomes in Serbia. The next section of the article concerns working for the Serbian Ministry of Culture, where I comment on the legislative matters, the structure of the Ministry, and its general policies. This is followed by a case study—an autoethnographic analysis of my experiences that illustrate the inner workings of the Ministry, including a statistical overview of the funded projects over the observed five-year period. In conclusion, I reengage with the tenets of applied musicology and offer some recommendations for the future. Since this is the first-ever study dedicated to the mechanisms of selecting cultural projects in Serbia, and I do not have any scholarly literature on this topic that I could engage with, I share instead many personal observations and reflect on them. Similarly, there are very few texts that deal with the interconnectedness between applied musicology’s goals and official cultural policies—a gap that my colleagues from the Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and I have recently endeavored to rectify with the first edited volume on applied musicology and ethnomusicology in Serbia (Medić 2024).

2. Methodology

I will examine my experiences of working for the commission for the selection of cultural projects from the perspectives of applied musicology and autoethnography—both relatively new, but fast-growing and increasingly useful disciplines. As highlighted by Chris Dromey, editor of the first comprehensive English-language volume on this topic, The Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology: “An applied-musicological lens allows us to recognize how musical expertise is (or could be) brought to bear in any number of domains or situations, to examine these processes, and to understand their implications” (Dromey 2024, p. 1). The scope of potential applications of musicology has greatly evolved in the past ten years to encompass, for example, cognitive psychology and musicotherapy (Ockelford 2013), ecomusicology (Titon 2013; Allen and Dawe 2016), public musicology (Shaver-Gleason 2016; Dueck 2017; Dromey 2018), music publishing (Wiering 2017), and many other subdisciplines. The type of work that I discuss in this article can be understood as applied-musicological because, as members of state-funded selection commissions attached to government bodies, musicologists apply their expertise to shape and influence cultural scenes in their countries. This, in turn, requires a vast and comprehensive knowledge of many types of contemporary music (classical, jazz, traditional, religious, electronic, etc.), as well as knowledge of musicians, ensembles, institutions, promoters, and agencies involved in creating both the professional and amateur music scenes in the country.

On the other hand, as outlined by Christopher Wiley, one of the editors of a recent comprehensive volume on autoethnography (Gouzouasis and Wiley 2025),2 autoethnography is “a specific methodology that draws upon the author’s own (autobiographical) experiences in order to yield an enhanced understanding of both the sociocultural context in which the autoethnographic subject is located, and his or her relationship to that context” (Wiley 2019, pp. 80–81). The “danger” of autoethnography is that a text might resemble an attempt at self-reflection, rather than a serious scholarly inquiry; however, as Wiley points out, “there’s a world of difference between merely telling a story, and using it as a means of understanding the culture of which the storyteller is a part (…). To elevate your work to the level of autoethnography, it would need, at least implicitly, to take its lead from ethnography in terms such as ethical considerations, modes of data-gathering, evaluation and interpretation of the evidence, and so forth, in order to explicate the individual’s relationship to their cultural context” (Wiley 2019, p. 84). This author also asserts that “whether a study constitutes ‘autoethnography’ is fundamentally a question of how the data is framed and presented, how it is used in relation to the main argument, and how it is located within larger scholarly debates” (Wiley 2019, p. 83).

As a primarily historical musicologist, I became interested in applied musicology and autoethnography several years ago. As I explained in my “manifesto” of applied musicology (Medić 2022, pp. 87–102), I was long bothered by the fact that researchers working in the humanities (and especially small, “niche” disciplines such as musicology) are often faced with the expectations of various funding bodies or university administration to make their findings practically applicable, marketable, and “useful”; however, these (neoliberal) goals are incompatible with the humanities’ core methodologies, expertise, purpose, and “mission”. Additionally challenging is the fact that musicology, situated as it is at the junction of science, culture and art, often finds its goals, methodologies, and results measured by triple standards, which, in turn, forces the researchers to constantly rethink their overall role in society (Medić 2022, pp. 87–88).

After winning a three-year project Applied Musicology and Ethnomusicology in Serbia: Making a Difference in Contemporary Society (acronym APPMES), financed by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia (No. 7750287, 2022–2024), I wrote the aforementioned “manifesto” where I attempted to formulate guidelines for the applied-musicological work and stimulate my coworkers to think beyond typical musicological frameworks. At that time, Dromey’s edited collection was yet to be published (and we were unaware that it was being prepared). Hence, we took clues from Svanibor Pettan’s outline of four main goals of applied ethnomusicology, defined as (1) developing new frameworks for musical performances, (2) feeding back musical models to the communities that created them, (3) providing community members with access to strategic models and conservation techniques, and (4) developing broad, structural solutions to structural problems (Pettan 2008, p. 90). Pettan’s argument that the goal of these activities is to merge the pragmatism of acting and ethics of research with a pledge for responsible, productive, and sustainable engagement is universally applicable to all types of music research, and thus provided a suitable model for applied musicology, albeit with a modified understanding of the term “community”, which in the case of musicology does not refer to divides along ethnic, confessional, and class-related lines.

Dromey’s (2024) Companion is divided into five sections (I “Defining and Theorising Applied Musicology”, II “Public Engagement”, III “New Approaches and Research Methods”, IV “Representation and Inclusion”, and V “Musicology in/for Performance”) and twenty-seven chapters, presenting a wide scope of theoretical analyses and illustrative examples of the practical application of musicological expertise. On the other hand, in my manifesto, I outlined six main areas that should be covered by applied musicology: (1) Media and new technologies, (2) Organization of events, (3) Artistic-theoretical work, (4) Archival and curatorial work, (5) Cultural policies and activism, (6) Educational activities (for a complete list with subcategories, see Medić 2022, pp. 90–91). While not all these categories involve activism in the literal sense of the word, they still steer musicology away from its discoursive self-sufficiency towards more direct types of social engagement.

The work for the commission appointed by the Serbian Ministry of Culture can be said to belong to my fifth category, “Cultural policies and activism”, which encompasses, among other things, the creation and implementation of cultural policies compliant with local or international cultural values and standards; international cooperation; preservation and revitalization of tradition; design of cultural programs for vulnerable groups meant to improve their quality of life and foster integration into the new society; and many other types of social engagement aimed at improving the lives of certain communities and the society as a whole (Medić 2022, p. 91).

Regarding the merits of the autoethnographic method, it should be said that the views and conclusions that I present in Section 5, “The Commission”, and Section 6, “Conclusion” of this article, are inevitably subjective. While, as admitted by Wiley, such an autoethnographic approach is the opposite of much social science research, “which seems to place a premium on a large sample size in relation to the overall population, to establish credibility and statistical significance for the findings as well as to minimize the effect of any potential outliers among the study respondents”, he also notes that “what matters is not so much the generalization and generalizability of one individual’s stories, so much as their relatability: whether the narratives that are told resonate with the readers who engage with them, and who may thereby generalize them to other situations beyond the context of the original study” (Wiley 2019, p. 89). My intention is not to turn this case study into some sort of “universal” model; this is not possible because my insights are entirely dependent on the context, which will be described in the next chapter. However, in line with Wiley’s observations cited above, although my insights and conclusions cannot be easily “transplanted” into another context, nor elevated to a “universal” level, I hope that they will still resonate with fellow musicologists and other scholars who have had the opportunity to “apply” their skills in a specialized, non-scientific field, for the benefit of a wider community.

3. Context

Before presenting the case study, I must explain the context in which Serbian culture exists—or rather, barely survives—nowadays. As a former socialist country that has never fully completed the transition—i.e., the systemic political, economic, and social change that the contemporary post-socialist societies of Central, East, and South East Europe had to undergo after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the communist bloc—Serbia has not completely left behind the centralized, government-regulated, and planned production in many domains, including the arts. Furthermore, Serbia is one of the few remaining former communist countries that has yet to complete the ultimate goal of the post-socialist transition—to become a European Union member-state. Regarding its cultural model, Serbia still adheres to the centralized cultural model as defined by Robert Lacombe (2004, pp. 40–41), with a prominent role of the Ministry of Culture and other public funding bodies.3

An onset of nationalism and an aggressive renewal of national myths and false histories that led to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s left Serbia isolated and placed under international sanctions throughout most of the 1990s, which resulted in the disruption of international cultural communications. This led to a provincialization, populism, and anti-elitism of the cultural scene, paired with—as observed by Nada Švob-Đokić—a sharp decline in cultural institutions due to the decrease in the financing, loss of professional personnel, the first encounter with the market-oriented business logic, the interruption of the cultural contacts with neighbors, and the oppression of the minorities’ cultures (Švob-Đokić 2004, pp. 2–3). Even after the end of sanctions and the political turnover in 2000, the situation did not improve much, because the outcomes of the post-socialist systemic changes, including the main one—privatization—were quite disappointing, leaving Serbian cultural institutions stuck in a limbo between the trends of the neoliberal market and the lack of clear guidance on how to transform themselves.

As analyzed by Jelena Janković-Beguš, the notion of cultural policy is “best understood in terms of the necessity to provide equal access to art and culture to all social groups, including the deprivileged ones. Consequently, the democratization of cultural institutions, and particularly in the field of performing arts, must become the first and the most important element in defining a national cultural policy” (Janković 2006, p. 120). In our comprehensive analysis of the contemporary cultural scene in Serbia, Janković-Beguš and I observed that “a majority of cultural institutions in Serbia still belong to the public sector which means that they are heavily dependent on the subventions received either from the Ministry of Culture or from the City Councils—both for the realization of programs and for the salaries of their employees. These organizations are neither prepared nor willing to enter the ’free market’” (Medić and Janković-Beguš 2016, p. 321).

In her analysis of the (desired, but never completed) reorganization of cultural institutions in Serbia, Biljana Ramić regards the cultural policy as an intervention of public authorities (be it federal, republic, regional or local) into certain fields and activities aimed at fulfilling their strategic goals. The intervention may assume different forms—direct and indirect, legislative and financial, and the relevant fields of intervention may encompass education and training, art (and all types of creative processes), protection of the cultural heritage, cultural industries, marketing and distribution, audience development, institutions of culture, freelance artists, networks of users, buildings, and equipment (Ramić 2005, p. 22). Unfortunately, for the past three decades, none of the successive Serbian governments have succeeded in redefining the status of cultural institutions, the reasons for their existence, their aims and goals; hence, these institutions do not know whether they should continue to be the “extended arm” of the state (which was their main raison d’être in socialist times), or strive to be independent. And yet, the latter is impossible when these institutions are still heavily dependent on the state for basic funding, including salaries for their employees.

Milena Dragićević-Šešić and Sanjin Dragojević have pointed out that the issues of cultural democracy and the quality of cultural life are not of primary importance in societies plagued by a crisis (in the case of Serbia, the crisis that has lasted for more than three decades), because, in such societies, the greatest efforts are being directed towards the preservation of the cultural system, which is commonly tied to big city centers and public institutions (Dragićević-Šešić and Dragojević 2005, pp. 15–16). But even this notion of preservation is dubious because, in circumstances where cultural politics has not been clearly defined, the decisions on what is to be preserved are made arbitrarily and prone to sudden changes. When analyzing this in 2016, Janković-Beguš and I observed that “the solution was sought in professionals, employed by the state organizations because it was believed that only such autonomy of public professions would prevent political abuse of the area. However, in practice, there is no real autonomy since the funding bodies (ministries and local governments) impose various means of political control on public organizations, for instance by appointing certain politically involved individuals as board members or general managers of these organizations” (Medić and Janković-Beguš 2016, p. 322). Since we wrote this, the situation has hardly changed (if at all).

4. Working for the Serbian Ministry of Culture

When in early 2018 I accepted the invitation to join the commission for selecting projects in the domain of music within the Sector for Contemporary Artistic Production of the Serbian Ministry of Culture (initially just for one year), I was primarily interested in discovering what it was like to be “on the other side” and how the entire system worked; yet, I also wished to ensure that the financial support was awarded to the most deserving applicants and projects. I was vaguely aware that this would be challenging, but I soon discovered that I gravely underestimated the difficulties faced by the commission members who wished to perform the task placed before them professionally and with good conscience.

The Serbian Law on Culture [Zakon o kulturi], originally passed in 2009, with additional revisions in 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2023,4 prescribes, among other things, the procedure for financing cultural activities in the country.5 I have copied and translated here extracts from Article 76, which addresses the financing and co-financing of projects in culture, including the appointment of the committee for the selection of projects:

Financing and co-financing of cultural projects

Article 76

At least once a year, the Ministry,6 the organ of the autonomous province,7 or the body of the local self-government unit, publishes public tenders for proposals for financing or co-financing projects in culture, as well as projects of artistic, professional, and scientific research in the domain of culture.

The right to participate in the public tenders is open to institutions, artistic, and other associations registered for carrying out cultural activities, and other subjects in culture, except for cultural institutions founded by the Republic of Serbia, the autonomous province, or a local self-government unit, which are financed per Article 74 of this law and cannot participate in competitions announced by their founders.

Institutions, associations, and other bodies registered abroad to conduct cultural activities have the right to participate in public tenders geared to preserve and promote Serbian culture abroad.

The selection of projects based on a public tender is decided by the Minister,8 the competent authority of the autonomous province, or the competent authority of the local self-government unit, based on the elucidated proposal of the expert committee formed by the authority that announces the public tender (hereinafter: commission).

(…)

The members of the commission are chosen from among respected and established artists and experts in culture, especially for each field of cultural activity that is the subject of the competition. A member of the commission may not participate in the evaluation of projects in which he or she is involved in any way or if there is one of the reasons prescribed by the law regulating the conflict of interest.

The amount of compensation for the work of commission members is determined by the Minister, the competent authority of the autonomous province, or the competent authority of the local self-government unit, in accordance with available funds in the budget.

(…)

The Ministry, the body of the autonomous province, or the body of the local self-government unit can conclude a contract on the financing or co-financing of projects in culture without a public tender, if it is an extremely important project that could not be planned in advance and if that project meets at least three criteria established by the act from paragraph 13 of this article, with the fact that a maximum of 25% of funds from the total mass of approved budget funds for the purposes referred to in paragraph 1 of this article can be chosen for individual benefits.

(…)

Closer criteria and methods of the selection of projects in culture that are financed and co-financed from the budget of the Republic of Serbia, the autonomous province, or local self-government units are determined by the government, in accordance with the principles of cultural development, and especially with respect to cultural and democratic values of local, regional, and national traditions, cultural diversity, preservation of the culture of national minorities, and assets of special importance for the culture and history of the Serbian people, which are located outside the territory of the Republic of Serbia.

As we can see, while the law prescribes that the expert commission evaluates all submitted project applications and prepares a recommendation for the Ministry of Culture, the Minister has the right to make the final decision—which sometimes implies bypassing the recommendations of the commission. Furthermore, Article 76 also allows the Minister to award no less than 25% of the total budget to projects that did not even enter the public tender (or were not recommended by the commission), provided that said projects are considered “extremely important”—obviously, this is entirely open to their subjective assessment.

Since 2023, the Ministry of Culture has been divided into three sectors and each one organizes annual public tenders for projects. These are:

• Sector for Cultural Heritage Protection and Digitization;
• Sector for Contemporary Creativity;
• Sector for International Relations and European Cultural Integration.9

Each sector receives a certain amount of money for public tenders in different cultural areas, e.g., film, theatre, dance, programs for youth, cultural activities of national minorities, etc. The public tender for music-related projects belongs to the second sector—for contemporary creativity (previously called: Sector for Contemporary Creativity and Creative Industries). However, the Ministry of Culture does not determine the annual budget for its sectors—namely, the Ministry of Finances decides how much money is allocated to all other ministries, other governmental structures, and public bodies.

As soon as I accepted the post as a member of the commission in the Sector for Contemporary Creativity and Creative Industries in 2018, I realized that the budget for culture in Serbia was ridiculously small and insufficient to satisfy the demand. Beforehand, I had been vaguely aware of this fact, but only when I saw the actual allocated funds, I discovered that the annual budget for culture revolved between 0.6% and 0.8% of the total budget of the Republic of Serbia. This has to be distributed across the entire country, to cover all activities in all segments of culture—from those taking place in the affluent parts of the country (mainly the capital city Belgrade, some parts of central Serbia, and some parts of the northern province of Vojvodina, including its capital city Novi Sad), to activities in the poorest and most deprived areas of the country (mainly in the southeast and southwest of the country, and in the southern autonomous province of Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, but is yet to be recognized as an independent country by the Serbian government).

The enclosed map, published by the World Bank (Figure 1), illustrates the poverty levels in Serbia, and an additional interactive map10 shows the poverty risks and indicators. This is relevant for the present study because the affluent parts of the country typically have a more dynamic cultural life—particularly big cities such as Belgrade and Novi Sad, as well as Subotica, Šabac, Kragujevac (all marked blue on the map). On the other hand, the poorer parts of the country have very little to offer in terms of cultural events. Hence, one of the goals of the Ministry of Culture is to foster a more even distribution of funds among the country’s regions; however, this criterion sometimes clashes with another key criterion, which is that only the best projects should receive funding. In my experience, the best projects are usually submitted by cultural institutions from the well-off cities and regions, because they have much more experience in preparing, winning, and managing projects, and sometimes they also employ individuals or teams whose job is to write project applications. This gives them a somewhat unfair advantage over the poorer institutions that can not afford to have such specialized teams.

5. Case Study—The Commission

I will now describe the process of working for the commission appointed by the Serbian Ministry of Culture and tasked with selecting the best projects in the realm of music. Due to the word limit, I will use the first year of my appointment as an example. However, the situation was more-or-less similar throughout the observed five-year period. I will also present the statistics (including financial data and the number of financed projects) for each of the five years that I served.

My appointment as a member of the commission for selecting projects in the field of music, within the Sector for Contemporary Creativity and Creative Industries, began in 2018. Among the three members, I was the youngest, and the only musicologist—the other two members were a renowned harpsichordist Smiljka Isaković and a composer and clarinetist Miroljub Aranđelović Rasinski. The Ministry officials from the Sector for Contemporary Creativity and Creative Industries proposed commission members, and the Minister approved. The names of the commission members were kept secret from the public until the results were published, to avoid any pressure or corruption. In accordance with the Ministry’s rulebook for the commission [Poslovnik o radu], upon familiarizing themselves with proposed projects, all commission members had to declare any conflict of interest and withdraw from voting in the case of COI.

The applicants from all over the country submitted their projects in one of the five categories of the public tender for music:

(1)

Festivals;

(2)

Concert series (consisting of at least three concerts in three different cities);

(3)

Projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including projects with and for children);

(4)

Individual projects (e.g., anniversaries, awards, and other annual or one-off events);

(5)

Music competitions, master classes, and workshops.

The official criteria for the selection, clearly stated in the published open call, included the following:

(1)

Compliance of the projects with the general interest in culture and the goals and priorities of the competition;

(2)

Quality and substantive innovation of the project;

(3)

Capacities required for the implementation of the project, namely, (a) professional, i.e., artistic capacities, and (b) necessary resources;

(4)

Financial plan—elaboration, compliance with the project activity plan, value-for-money, and access to multiple sources of financing;

(5)

The expected impact of the project on the quality of cultural life of the community;

(6)

Compliance with the goals and priorities of the strategic documents of the Republic of Serbia.11

The open call also specified that the following types of projects would be excluded from the competition:

(1)

Projects realized without the direct presence of the audience in the concert venue and exclusively intended for media broadcasting;

(2)

Projects solely dedicated to recording and publishing compact discs and other audio or video carriers;

(3)

Projects with a clear commercial potential and purpose;

(4)

Projects (e.g., festivals) primarily focused on tourism, entertainment, local produce, etc.;

(5)

Other projects in which the musical segment did not constitute the basis of the project either programmatically or conceptually.

On the first day of work in 2018, it became clear that our task to select the most deserving projects for funding would be very difficult because 402 applications were submitted to the public tender for music, whereas the allocated budget was only about RSD 72 million or approximately EUR 610,000. This is not a typo—only EUR 610,000 were available to fund all music-related events in the entire country! A simple calculation is that if we had divided that amount equally among all 402 applicants, each would have received about RSD 180,000, or approximately EUR 1500—which is absolutely insufficient to organize any musical event, especially because this is a gross sum, from which one must deduct between 37% and 50% for taxes! However, for three reasons, even such a simple distribution was impossible.

Firstly, for each area, upper and lower limits were determined by the public tender; the minimum amount allocated for festivals was about EUR 10,000, for individual projects about EUR 4000, and for concert series consisting of at least three concerts in three different towns—EUR 6700. Hence, the authors of proposals could not ask for less than EUR 10,000 for a festival, and they could not ask for much more than that either (i.e., they could ask, but they would not obtain it). One may wonder how is it even possible to organize an entire multi-day festival with a budget of only EUR 10,000? Unfortunately, this is the reality in Serbia, and festival organizers are thus forced to seek private sponsorships and beg local governments for additional funds.

The second reason that prevented the possibility of a “one size fits all” approach is that some projects did not even reach the commission, because they were rejected by the employees of the Ministry of Culture, due to some procedural errors (e.g., they arrived after the stipulated deadline, or they requested an amount below the prescribed minimum); therefore, they were automatically disqualified.

The third reason is that the budget of RSD 72,000,000 was not available to the commission as a cumulative lump sum, because it was divided across three budget categories. Namely, in Serbia, each institution that receives public money belongs to a certain budget “line”, i.e., category. Three categories of applicants are allowed to apply for these public tenders, referred to by budget lines 424, 463, and 481. Each budget line is allocated to a different type of organization, and the Ministry of Finance does not allow transfers from one budget line to another—even if such transfer is necessary, justified, and fair.

Budget line 424 encompasses institutions founded by the Republic of Serbia, including state-funded high schools, universities, and institutes, as well as agencies and LTD companies. Budget line 463 comprises institutions established by local governments (cities and municipalities), such as primary and secondary schools, cultural centers, libraries, museums, etc. Finally, budget line 481 encompasses the entire independent sector—NGOs, private enterprises, and various professional and amateur associations. The main difference between the first two categories on the one hand, and the third category on the other hand, is that institutions competing under budget lines 424 and 463 already have state-funded salaried staff and premises; therefore, for them, applying for projects is just an additional, but not essential, activity. In stark contrast, the institutions that apply to the budget line 481 are mostly in a precarious status, without any stable funding; therefore, for them, applying for projects is the lifeline. As expected, the commission received the largest number of project proposals in this budget line, and the competition there was the fiercest.

Another issue is that the Ministry of Culture finances projects all over Serbia, and the committee must ensure that the funds are distributed as evenly as possible across the regions. As the poverty map above has shown, some regions have much more disposable funds than others, and the ethical question that arises is whether the commission should stimulate cultural projects in the poorer regions, even if they are perhaps not as good as the projects submitted by institutions from more affluent regions. We did not reach a consensus on this, and the decisions were made on a case-by-case basis.

Adding another unknown to the already complex equation is the fact that, as mentioned earlier, the Ministry of Culture finances five types of manifestations (festivals, concert series, etc.) in all genres of music—classical, popular, folklore/vernacular; needless to say, some of these genres are more commercially viable than others. Therefore, again, the question was whether some excellent projects (e.g., from the domain of popular music) should be “punished” because they could actually sell tickets; i.e., whether we should prioritize projects that perhaps had a higher cultural prestige, but limited commercial viability. This dilemma is particularly applicable to classical or contemporary art music, which is “still linked almost exclusively to the elite cultural model, and thus it is ‘consumed’ by a relatively small number of people” (Janković 2006, p. 120). There is no universal solution to this problem, and this is where musicological expertise becomes valuable, because each project must be assessed on its own merits. On my part, I often “clashed” with the other two commission members (especially the harpsichordist who, expectedly, favored older music), in order to push through as many good projects dedicated to contemporary music creation and performance as possible. My argument was that, since we worked for the Sector for Contemporary Creativity, we had to stimulate contemporary music creation, despite its relatively small audience.

The issues of cultural prestige, “elitism” and popularity became particularly acute when we tried to assess fairly the projects from the domains of folklore and amateur creativity. Due to being a subcategory in the public tender for music, the projects related to children’s choirs, amateur music making, and folklore festivals were pinned to compete against professional, often academically trained musicians—which made it impossible to establish unified criteria across all categories. Additionally, the projects from the domain of folklore/vernacular practices were, in many cases, not strictly music-related, but interdisciplinary, encompassing folklore dance, customs, handmade products, cuisine, etc. This is entirely in accordance with the very nature of (not just Serbian) folklore, which is essentially syncretic; however, it meant that folklore projects were placed in an unfavorable position when compared to more “artful” or “serious” projects from the domains of professional musicianship.

To make matters even more complicated, some important institutions such as the Kolarac Endowment, home to the best concert hall in Belgrade, do not have stable funding—namely, as an endowment (foundation), they officially belong to the NGO sector (budget line 481), and thus must apply to public tenders for all their activities. During the meetings of the commission at the Ministry of Culture, it was tacitly understood that the Kolarac Endowment had to receive funds for their projects; unfortunately, that also meant that other, less important institutions, would be disadvantaged.

A similar situation also occurred in the realm of popular music festivals, because some very renowned and popular festivals of jazz, rock, pop, or ethno music,12 such as Guitar Art Fest (Belgrade), Nishville Jazz Festival (Niš), or Arsenal Fest (Kragujevac) are organized by independent associations or agencies; hence, they all have to apply to the most in-demand budget line 481, thus siphoning substantial funds and leaving very little for other, smaller projects.

This overview has hopefully demonstrated the complexity of the task placed before the commission, which had to solve an extremely difficult “puzzle” and distribute funds to the most deserving applicants, taking into consideration all of the above. In order to fulfill this task, we had to establish some additional criteria. First, we decided that we would not fund newly established festivals; instead, we opted to focus on festivals that had previously had at least three editions, because that proved that the organizers had already attracted the audiences and demonstrated not only the merit of their concept, but also the ability to secure funding from other sources. We also paid attention to the dates when associations, agencies, and other independent applicants were registered and decided against funding the newly established ones, opting instead to give preference to those who had already proved their capacity to organize various cultural events—as well as to spend the funds in accordance with the signed contracts and to submit reports accurately and on time. Occasionally that meant that we had to discard some well-designed and innovative new festivals, simply because we did not have sufficient proof about their organizers’ administrative and financial capacities.

We also decided to reject projects where the organizers requested the entirety of the budget needed for the implementation of the project from the Ministry of Culture, because we concluded that such projects were not sustainable; instead, a preference was given to organizers who proved that they had secured additional/alternative sources of funding, be it from other public sources, or private sponsors.

Even after implementing such additional criteria, our task did not become much easier, and more than 80% of the projects submitted to the open call had to be rejected. After drafting the preliminary shortlist, the three commission members went through several rounds of voting and advocating for certain projects, until we approved the final list. Despite our best efforts, it was not possible to distribute the funds in such a way that everyone was satisfied and, as expected in such situations, some of the projects that I found deserving of funding were not awarded, because I was—outvoted.

When the results became publicly available, and the names of the commission members revealed, we immediately started receiving complaints. Serbia is a small country and there is nowhere to hide; therefore, we had to take dozens of phone calls from disappointed applicants, and even received some threats on social media! This does not happen only in Serbia, for example, American scholar Tressie McMillan Cottom has asserted that conducting academia in public is dangerous, “particularly for women and minority scholars, who are often subject to abuse both on- and off-line” (McMillan Cottom 2012). As for Serbia, the truth is that, due to the extreme scarcity of available funds, no matter how hard we tried, we could never reach a satisfactory solution—because, on the one hand, those who did not receive anything were gravely displeased, and, on the other hand, those who received at least something were dissatisfied because they believed that they deserved more!

Despite these distressing moments and the overall stressfulness of the job, I did not hesitate for a moment when I was again invited to serve as a commission member in 2019, because I firmly believed that our task was important and worthwhile. My appointment continued for another four years, setting a peculiar “record”, because no other commission member was hired for that amount of time. While I do not know the reasons why my contract was renewed four times in a row, I presume that it was due to the Ministry’s realization of the benefit of a musicologist’s comprehensive insight into music in all its facets, not to mention my ample experience with writing, which became particularly useful when we were tasked with writing explanations for the acceptance or rejection of all 400+ projects, to be published on the website of the Ministry of Culture.

Table 1. Statistical breakdown of the open call for projects in the domain of music (2018–2022).

	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
Number of applications	402	408	292	423	460
Rejected applications	63 applications were disqualified due to formal deficiencies. 268 applications were rejected by the commission. 268 + 63 = 331 not funded	One application was disqualified due to formal deficiencies. 331 applications were rejected by the commission. 331 + 1 = 332 not funded	230 projects were rejected by the commission.	49 applications were disqualified due to formal deficiencies. 277 projects were rejected by the commission. 277 + 49 = 326 not funded	41 applications were disqualified due to formal deficiencies. 319 + 41 = 360 not funded
Commission members	Smiljka Isaković, president; Miroljub Aranđelović Rasinski and Ivana Medić, members	Ivana Medić, president; Smiljka Isaković and Miroljub Aranđelović Rasinski, members	Dragan Ambrozić, president; Ivana Medić and Srđan Teparić, members	Ivana Medić, president; Dragan Ambrozić and Ivana Neimarević, members	Dragan Ambrozić, president; Ivana Medić and Ivana Neimarević, members
Ministry of Culture	Vladan Vukosavljević	Vladan Vukosavljević	Vladan Vukosavljević	Maja Gojković	Maja Gojković
Total amount for music	RSD 72,250,000	RSD 65,900,000	RSD 46,500,000	RSD 90,450,000	RSD 87,550,000
Spending by budget lines	424—RSD 9,450,000 463—RSD 30,300,000 481—RSD 32,500,000	424—RSD 8,100,000 463—RSD 25,920,000 481—RSD 31,880,000	424—RSD 9,750,000 463—RSD 13,920,000 481—RSD 22,830,000	424—RSD 11,750,000 463—RSD 28,800,000 481—RSD 49,900,000	424—RSD 11,250,000 463—RSD 26,800,000 481—RSD 49,500,000
Funded events by type	25 festivals 21 concert series 10 projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including children projects) 7 individual projects 8 seminars, workshops, and competitions	26 festivals 19 concert series 18 projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including children projects) 6 individual projects 7 seminars, workshops, and competitions	23 festivals 18 concert series 10 projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including children projects) 7 individual projects 4 seminars, workshops, and competitions	34 festivals 24 concert series 7 projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including children projects) 17 individual projects 15 seminars, workshops, and competitions	31 festivals 26 concert series 13 projects of folklore and amateur creativity (including children projects) 16 individual projects 14 seminars, workshops, and competitions

N.B.: EUR 1 = approximately RSD 117.5.

shows the statistical overview of the previous editions of the competitions for projects, including financial information.13

We can now observe several reasons why working for the commission appointed by the Serbian Ministry of Culture is such a challenging task. First, unlike experts from many other domains, musicologists work with a subject that cannot exist without an audience, which means that public engagement and feedback are almost guaranteed and immediate. For example, if some “bad” projects are funded, the audience will notice promptly and instigate a backlash on social media. As mentioned before, Serbia is a small country, and the names of the commission members and the results of their decisions are publicly available; therefore, there is nowhere to hide.

The first concern of the commission was that many cultural protagonists in the precarious independent sector (budget line 481) depended on the money awarded by the Ministry for their very survival. In 2018, when I joined the commission, the amount allocated to budget lines 463 and 481 was almost identical, although there was a much higher demand in the independent sector. In our report, after completing the selection process, we alerted the Minister that more funds should be planned for the independent sector; and from 2019 onwards, the difference in allocated funds between lines 463 and 481 gradually increased. This is one positive example of how we transformed the Ministry’s policy to respond to the actual demand.

As highlighted by Leah Broad, conducting applied musicology in public “requires time, energy, and the development of skills that are not part of a traditional academic toolkit” (Broad 2024, p. 79). In the circumstances where the funds planned for cultural programs are tragically insufficient, and clear guidelines for their distribution are missing, the musicologist must assess exactly which of the reported projects will have the best results and the greatest impact on the Serbian audience. To achieve this, the musicologist must rely on their experience to evaluate not only the quality of the programs and applicants themselves, but also the kind of audience that they are intended for. Whereas it is necessary to maintain the prestige of the capital cities, the commission must also stimulate culture in the poorest and most underdeveloped parts of the country; therefore, care must be taken to ensure that not all the money goes to Belgrade and Novi Sad. For example, a commission member must make a conscious effort to refrain from elitism and favoritism, even if they personally prefer a certain type of music (e.g., classical), because some projects must be awarded to the amateurs, who may not be musically educated, but still wish to engage in collaborative musicking and present their efforts publicly. We mitigated the danger of elitism and unfair bias by awarding funding to at least ten projects of folklore and amateur creativity each year (except in 2021, when we received a smaller number of applications in this category). When assessing these projects we had to disregard the criterion of “artistic value” of the project and instead focus on its benefits for the community where the event was taking place.

Another reason why musicological expertise is necessary is that musicologists are the ones who write music critiques and program notes, give public lectures before concerts, and engage both with performers and audiences—which means that they have a good knowledge of the entire musical scene in the country. A commission member must be familiar with the institutions that submit the projects and the musicians intended to perform them. This, in turn, requires that a commission member must regularly attend concerts, assess the performances of ensembles and individuals, and thus be able to determine whether what is written in the application is realistic. This is not very difficult in a small country like Serbia, but it still requires significant commitment and responsibility, often incommensurate with the scarce recognition and fee that commission members receive for the job well done.

Some problems related to the commission’s work were due to circumstances beyond our control. For example, as shown in Table 1, in 2020, the year of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual budget for culture was dramatically reduced, in comparison to previous years. The number of submitted projects was also notably smaller. We still managed to fund 62 projects in total, but many of them ended up being canceled or had to be performed without an audience.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic was still ongoing in 2021, the budget for culture was dramatically increased (almost doubled in comparison to 2020), because the government appointed a new Minister of Culture, Maja Gojković, who replaced Vladan Vukosavljević. As a highly positioned member of the ruling party (Serbian Progressive Party—SNS), Gojković secured much more money for her Ministry than her predecessor Vukosavljević, who was not a member of the SNS, and thus his influence in the government was limited.

Table 1 also shows that in 2019 and 2021 I was assigned an additional responsibility—namely, I served as a president of the commission, which meant that I was in charge of preparing feedback for the applicants, doublechecking all spreadsheets with our final decisions, and bearing the brunt of negative reactions by disappointed applicants who did not receive funding. On the positive side, I was quite satisfied when, after the results of the public tender were published on the Ministry’s website, the commission received praise from the Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia association [Nezavisna kulturna scena Srbije—acronym NKSS], which monitors and evaluates all public tenders in the country and provides detailed assessments. The NKSS decided that the public tender of the Ministry of Culture was conducted flawlessly, transparently, timely, and in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations—in stark contrast with the open call of the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade [translation mine]:

At the press conference, the results of the analysis of this year’s competition of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia and the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade were presented. Concerning the trends since 2015, since the NKSS has been monitoring the spending of budget funds, several positive developments have been observed in the work of the Ministry of Culture and Information. They include an increase in the total budget for culture (which, with 0.76% of the total budget of the Republic of Serbia, is the largest in the observed period); an almost three-fold increase in the budget for contemporary cultural creativity compared to the previous year; and an increase in the budget for tenders in this area, which for the first time this year amounts to more than RSD 500 million. The competition itself was also technically conducted correctly, with a list of all supported and unsupported projects, as well as explanations for the decisions made.

At the media conference, however, a series of structural problems burdening the field of culture in Serbia were pointed out.

On the other hand, the analysis showed that the competition of the Secretariat for Culture of the City of Belgrade was implemented disastrously. Out of 242 projects, 29 projects were awarded to organizations that do not even work in culture, which were registered immediately before the competition, or which were not registered in Belgrade. Out of a total of RSD 99,790,000, as much as RSD 20,800,000 (20.84%) were awarded to such dubious projects at the competition of the Secretariat for Culture.14

However, although the work of various commissions appointed by the ministries, local governments, and other public bodies was closely scrutinized by NGOs such as the NKSS, nobody was ever penalized for doing something wrong, which encouraged the questionable commissions of the Secretariat for Culture to continue acting in the same (questionable) way.

6. Conclusions

In this article, I presented an example of conducting applied musicology, understood as musicology practiced beyond the confines of academia, in accordance with Leah Broad’s observation that “the potential for musicologists to enrich conversations beyond universities and to highlight the power and dangers of prevailing narratives about classical music is greater than ever” (Broad 2024, p. 81). Working for the commission of the Serbian Ministry of Culture can be understood as a form of public musicological action because it involves the applicability of musicological expertise in “the real world”, for the public benefit. While this type of work cannot be regarded as activism in the true sense of the word, it still steers musicology away from its discoursive self-sufficiency towards a more direct type of social engagement.

To illustrate the inner workings of the state mechanisms in charge of the entire cultural scene in the country, I presented some hitherto unknown or obscure information. As my autoethnographic analysis has hopefully demonstrated, this type of publicly visible work is quite challenging because it carries considerable responsibility; musicologists invest their reputation, experience, and expertise to benefit the broad community (in this case, the entire country) and, in the process, expose their work to wide public scrutiny. These challenges faced by musicologists (and other experts) working in the open public arena are completely unknown within the protective walls of academia; thus, as aptly observed by Bojana Radovanović, the applied musicologist should not only feel responsible for the participants in the competition, but also for their own well-being (Radovanović 2024, p. 229), because the intensive work in the public sphere and the constantly looming threat of backlash can result in a burnout.

Regarding the discussion of the (lack of) cultural policy in present-day Serbia, Vesna Đukić-Dojčinović has identified three phases of the transitional process, typical for most post-socialist countries:

• Rethinking the country’s national heritage (which was sealed off during the communist regime) and beginning the process of reaffirming the national identity;
• European integration, characterized by two basic processes: decentralization and privatization;
• The final phase, where the country’s institutions are democratized, which presupposes a well-balanced relation of the national cultural policy towards both the national and elite cultural values and the new creativity and contemporary arts (Đukić-Dojčinović 2000, pp. 373–74).

During the sanctions-plagued 1990s, the Serbian post-socialist transition stalled compared to the transformations in other former-socialist countries. As of 2025, Serbia has not completed the second and third phases of transformation, and it is still stuck in limbo between the first and second phases. Furthermore, as observed by Jelena Janković almost 20 years ago, “Serbia has not as yet reinvented its cultural identity, it has not prescribed the cultural values and priorities and thus it does not have a clear strategy of its short term or long term cultural development. It is obvious that in such circumstances all artistic production and promotion in our country suffers from disorientation” (Janković 2006, p. 124); unfortunately, twenty years later, these words still ring true. Considering the lack of clearly defined cultural policies and quite unpredictable funding patterns, the responsibility for shaping the cultural scene in the country is transferred to the experts, who are expected to compensate for these shortcomings and conduct their job fairly and ethically. Although sometimes difficult decisions have to be made, it is still valuable to assign the task of distributing the measly available funds to experts, in order to mitigate the dangers of incompetence, unprofessionalism, or even corruption.

As stated in the methodology section, while my study does not strive to offer any universally applicable models, it serves as a relatable testimony of working in a challenging field, and may thus be generalized to other situations beyond the original context. During the five years that I worked for the Ministry of Culture, I did my best to fulfill the aims and goals of the fifth category of applied-musicological work, namely, the creation and implementation of criteria compliant with local cultural values and standards, preservation and revitalization of tradition, and fostering contemporary artistic creativity. Furthermore, following Svanibor Pettan’s insights cited above, I fulfilled the ultimate goal of applied humanities—to make the most of the merger of pragmatism of acting and ethics of research. Despite occasionally being exposed to extreme public scrutiny, verging on bullying, the satisfaction after a job well done ultimately neutralized the stress and made it all worthwhile.