Full Description
As a measure of individual and collective identity, music offers both striking metaphors and tangible data for understanding societies in transition—and nowhere is this clearer than in the recent case of the Eastern Bloc. Retuning Culture presents an extraordinary picture of this phenomenon. This pioneering set of studies traces the tumultuous and momentous shifts in the music cultures of Central and Eastern Europe from the first harbingers of change in the 1970s through the revolutionary period of 1989-90 to more recent developments.
During the period of state socialism, both the reinterpretation of the folk music heritage and the domestication of Western forms of music offered ways to resist and redefine imposed identities. With the removal of state control and support, music was free to channel and to shape emerging forms of cultural identity. Stressing both continuity and disjuncture in a period of enormous social and cultural change, this volume focuses on the importance and evolution of traditional and popular musics in peasant communities and urban environments in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Written by longtime specialists in the region and considering both religious and secular trends, these essays examine music as a means of expressing diverse aesthetics and ideologies, participating in the formation of national identities, and strengthening ethnic affiliation.
Retuning Culture provides a rich understanding of music's role at a particular cultural and historical moment. Its broad range of perspectives will attract readers with interests in cultural studies, music, and Central and Eastern Europe. Contributors. Michael Beckerman, Donna Buchanan, Anna Czekanowska, Judit Frigyesi, Barbara Rose Lange, Mirjana Lausevic, Theodore Levin, Margarita Mazo, Steluta Popa, Ljerka Vidic Rasmussen, Timothy Rice, Carol Silverman, Catherine Wanner
Contents
Introduction / Mark Slobin 1
Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement / Theodore Levin 14
Kundera's Musical Joke and "Folk" Music in Czechoslovakia, 1948-? / Michael Beckerman 37
The Aesthetic of the Hungarian Revival Movement / Judit Frigyesi 54
Lakodalmas Rock and the Rejection of Popular Culture in Post-Socialist Hungary / Barbara Rose Lange 76
Continuity and Change in Eastern and Central European Traditional Music / Anna Czekanowska 92
The Southern Wind of Change: Style and the Politics of Identity in Prewar Yugoslavia / lLjerka Vidic Rasmussen 99
The Ilahiya as a Symbol of Bosnian Muslim National Identity / Mirjana Lausevic 117
Nationalism on Stage: Music and Change in Soviet Ukraine / Catherine Wanner 136
The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 and Its Reflection in Musical Folklore / Steluta Popa 156
The Dialectic of Economics and Aesthetics in Bulgarian Music / Timothy Rice 176
Wedding Musicians, Political Transition ,and National Consciousness in Bulgaria / Donna A. Buchanan 200
Music and Marginality: Roma (Gypsies) of Bulgaria and Macedonia / Carol Silverman 231
Change as Confirmation of Continuity As Experienced by Russian Molokans / Margarita Mazo 254
Works Cited 277
Contributors 293
Index 295
