Plastered alongside layers of weather-beaten election posters, samizdat-style nightclub fliers announce the concerts of KUD Idijoti, Haustor and Laibach, the biggest names from Yugoslavia's New Wave movement of the '80s. Until just recently, not only the guitars but the spirit of the entire urban cultural scene in Serbia had been subdued--and almost completely silenced outside of major cities. Now this country's urbanity is re-asserting itself with spontaneous flair, in Belgrade music clubs as well as elsewhere across the country in the art world, youth culture, media and, not least, politics.

In Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, the obnoxious repetitive beat of turbofolk, a synthetic mesh of techno and folk, drowned out the clever lyrics and catchy guitar riffs of rock groups that 10 years ago boasted followings across all of Yugoslavia. In Belgrade, alternative rock bands were dropped from state-run airwaves, the once vibrant club scene banished to isolated niches. Groups like the punkish KUD Idijoti from Croatia or Slovenia's eclectic agit-provocateurs Laibach wouldn't consider playing Serbia, even if they could have received visas or venues to perform. The same went for artists, theater groups and film companies.

Turbofolk was more than an assault on the eardrums, blaring loudly and nonstop from

SASA STANKOVIC/AFP

cafés, television sets and taxis. It was a component of Serbia's political ideology, the score to which Milosevic orchestrated his 14 years of rule. On cheap videos, the industry's garish silicone queens glorified the violent, greed-driven life of Serbia's gangster elite. For young people, especially from the countryside, turbofolk's icons became the role models for making it in Serbia. The renowned turbofolk star, Ceca, was the wife of the notorious war criminal Arkan, who was gunned down last year in a Belgrade hotel.

"In terms of culture, nothing new was born in the last seven years," explains Natasha Milojevic, a professional journalist and an activist in the progressive Social Democratic Party. "But now minds and ideas are free again to express themselves publicly. Among musicians, artists, painters, our rock 'n' roll culture has been reborn." New art galleries and impromptu exhibitions brighten up dreary Belgrade in winter.

A major catalyst in the urban renaissance, and a critical factor in the overthrow of Milosevic, was a student movement, most of whose members were in diapers when Laibach recorded its first albums. The underground youth organization Otpor ("Resistance") combined pop culture and politics, guerrilla tactics and youthful verve to mobilize thousands of people, young and old, across Serbia. Otpor's brash anti-regime slogans and nonviolent theories of resistance took opposition from the cities to the countryside, the bedrock of Milosevic's support. Under Otpor's icon, a simply stenciled black fist, the group pushed the message that every individual act of resistance was part of a nationwide movement.

"The fist symbol itself is pop," says Marija Baralic, 25, a stick-thin Otpor activist with a Palestinian kaffiyeh around her neck. Rock bands performed at the first Otpor rallies, she says: "We promoted them because they had subversive things in their music, and they brought in people who were turned off by politics-as-usual."

Though funded by foreign governments--including the United States--as well as the Serbian diaspora, Otpor's influences are closer to home: the World War II Partisans, the '60s student protesters in Yugoslavia and the '80s Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) movement, a group of iconoclastic artists from Slovenia.

There is also a good dose of the anarchistic, rebellious energy of punk rock in Otpor, but without a Malcolm McLaren or Johnny Rotten. Otpor is leaderless and anti-hierarchical, a key to having successfully avoided the dragnet of Milosevic's secret police, and, as the kids put it, a natural response to a lifetime of leadership cult.

Perhaps most profound, the students don't exude a trace of the ugly nationalism that held Serbia in its grip for so long. For the time being, at least, their civic-minded thinking--and the sudden death of the Milosevic propaganda machine--have virtually snuffed out the nationalist jingosim that once poisoned the atmosphere here. Remarkably, on the streets of Belgrade today, the NATO bombing, Bosnia and the loss of Kosovo are non-issues. Like Otpor, people are looking forward, not backward.

With Milosevic gone, Otpor is in the midst of rethinking its strategy and priorities. Observers admit that the movement may have lost some of its momentum. "There's a high level of awareness now," Baralic says. "People saw that power and politics are not exclusive. But we have to fight against inertia and apathy setting in."

During the campaign period late last year, Otpor mobilized young people to vote for the democratic opposition coalition, the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia, or DOS. Otpor's black-and-white posters, billboards and graffiti blanketed Belgrade. But now that Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and the DOS are in power, some activists remain vigilant. "Our support for DOS isn't unconditional," says Milja Jovanovic, wearing an impossibly baggy pair of green army fatigues. "We don't want another one-party rule."

Otpor is also pushing to cut mandatory military service to six months and offer amnesty to those who dodged military duty during the '90s wars. The Laibach concert is just one of dozens that Otpor is sponsoring across Serbia. "We know that Laibach poses really critical questions about Serbia," says Jovanovic, referring to the band's use of swastikas and fascist imagery to mock authoritarian ideologues. "But we're not afraid of those questions. If Serbia is becoming healthy again, it can't be afraid."