Time shifts increase our sensitivity to birth and death, to the rise and fall of cultural epochs, by drawing attention to all sorts of changes. When years, decades or centuries turn, there need not necessarily be any corresponding great shift in society and culture. What does ‘real’ history care about dates and years? But our way of measuring time produces a sort of numerical magic that sometimes makes us extra sensitive to collective cultural mobility. In aesthetical production and cultural debate, each time turn induces a wish to reflect upon where we stand and what is happening. This sharpened time consciousness may accelerate or consolidate certain changes, if sufficiently many and strong social forces engage in the reflection to transform prophecies into effective mechanisms of change, by the material power of self-definitions.

There is a shared view among insiders that the release of the recording ‘Od izvora dva putića’ ([There are] ‘Two paths leading from the water spring’) by Serbian female singer Lepa Lukić in 1964, marked the beginning of the ‘market history’ of Yugoslav novokomponovana narodna muzika (newly-composed folk music; henceforth NCFM). The song's lyrics depict a young woman in a rustic village whose love is thwarted when her lover moves to the city. The music evokes a motif typical of the Central-Serbian region of Šumadija: a tuneful melody, steady 2/4 rhythm, and a caressing quality in the narration. The title of the song is highly symbolic of the divergence of Yugoslav folk music into a continuing narodna muzika (folk; literally, ‘people's’ music) and an emerging pop stream.