LP – History of the Gramophone and the Golden Age of Records

“LP – History of the Gramophone and the Golden Age of Records” is a joint exhibition of the City Museum Subotica and the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade, which is realized with the support of the National Museum Kraljevo. The Exhibition is about the popularity and golden age of gramophone records in Yugoslavia, an era that lasted several decades. The importance of one of the most important home appliances of the 20th century – His Majesty the Gramophone – has not been neglected.

The desire to record and reproduce the human voice dates back to the earliest times. Through music boxes such as self-playing bells used on churches and towers in Europe, then organets and polyphonics, and then phonographs, phonoautographs and graphophones, sound was reproduced through gramophones. Within the exhibition visitors can see more than 25 types of gramophones and their predecessors. The exhibition also deals with cultural phenomena of the 20th century that influenced the lives of citizens of Subotica and Subotica as one of the pillars of popular culture in the former Yugoslavia. Emphasis was placed on gramophones, gramophone records and cultural life and programs in Subotica that were closely related to them.

A special part of the exhibition “LP – History of the Gramophone and the Golden Age of Records” is about the first gramophones and gramophone records in Kraljevo, their purchase from Western European countries, but also from Yugoslav factories. The audience will find out who were people from Kraljevo who recorded gramophone records and which radio stations and shows created musical taste and educated the people of Kraljevo. There is a story about the first discos and clubs where people of Kraljevo had fun, which gramophone record stores existed in the town on the Ibar and how the sound recorded on vinyl has survived to this day.

The author of the exhibition is Viktorija Šimon Vuletić, museum advisor of the City Museum Subotica, while Mirjana Savić, museum advisor and Oleg Romanov, senior curator, joined the exhibition in front of the National Museum Kraljevo as part of the author team.