Vortrag im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung „Kulturen des Klangs“

This paper explores the sonic dimensions of cultural memory through the lens of popular music, understood as a site where social, historical, and affective meanings are nego-iated. Focusing on the post-Yugoslav space, it examines how mainstream rap articulates a shift from memory-saturated narratives—especially those marked by political conflict and collective trauma—toward an “endless now” characterized by apolitical materialism and hedonism. Drawing on big-data lyric analysis, the study interrogates this temporal transformation not as a complete rupture, but as a layered reconfiguration of memory practices. We argue that the market-driven internationalism of regional (t)rap music still harbors residual and rearticulated forms of
both individual and collective re-membrance. In this way, sound becomes not only a vehicle of forgetting but also a resonance chamber for suppressed or transformed histories, embedded in new affective and commercial regimes.

Short bio
Jernej Kaluža holds a PhD in Philosophy and is a researcher and assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia). His current work spans the areas of critical theory, communication- and popular music studies. Before joining the Faculty for Social Sciences, he had been also working as a journalist and editor (on Radio Študent, Ljubljana) for more than a decade. Among other things, he has published several articles in the field of popular music studies and worked on the project Slovenian Folk-Pop as Politics: Perceptions, Receptions and Identities.