Like in the Old Days. Concerning the piece “…and I need a room to receive five thousand people with raised glasses… or …what a glorious day, the birds are singing ‘halleluiah’…” by Ana Sokolović

Abstract

The article offers a discussion of …and I need a room… (2013), a piece for large chamber ensemble by Ana Sokolović (Ана Соколовић), inspired by songs by the former Belgrade rock band Ekatarina Velika (EKV, Екатарина Велика, ЕКВ; “Catherine the Great”). Dedicated to the 1980s urban generations of former Yugoslavia, the work occupies a unique place in its author’s oeuvre, by virtue of opening, on the one hand, a world of memory concerning her own youth, and relaying, on the other hand, a message about the large amount of cultural capital that the music of EKV commands and, furthermore, about all that it represents for her. The composer’s existential bond with the music made by one of former Yugoslavia’s most influential rock acts informs her own creative procedures in this piece, actualizing the postmodernist principle of play, which in fact results in voiding the work’s referential material of meaning by means of a procedure that simulates working in the medium of electronic music.