Abstract
The Introduction argues that the prevailing way to present popular music in Eastern Europe is by emphasising its self-colonising character, namely its imitation of western music, and its oppositional attitude to the official ideology. Instead, the authors of the subsequent chapters offer a more balanced take on this phenomenon, pointing to its creative engagement with western music and the advantages of operating under state socialist system. It also presents the structure of the book, which is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to music policy and their effect on music produced in a number of countries. The second part analyses the role of ‘gatekeepers’ and mediators between the artists and audiences, namely censors, journalists and DJs. The last part concerns the greatest stars from the region.
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Notes
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If the ‘imitation’ framework to Kanye West’s case is applied, then one might come to a rather absurd conclusion that sampling Omega the famous American rapper acknowledged the superiority of Hungarian music above its own or perhaps even that of Kadar’s ‘gulash socialism’ over Obama’s version of capitalism.
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Imitation is also an issue widely discussed in relation to western pop-rock. Simon Frith argues that the attitude to the cover version shifted from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1960s. While in the middle of the 1960s British cover versions of US hits were regarded as necessarily inferior, by the end of the decade it was agreed that a ‘version’ of an old song could be as original as a new song (Frith 2007: 317). From this perspective it will be a fascinating task to examine the way artists from Eastern Europe covered western songs.
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However, although Risch’s introduction diverts from the simple dichotomies employed by Ryback and Ramet, in some of the chapters they still prevail. For example, Tom Junes’ chapter aptly titled ‘Facing the Music: How the Foundations of Socialism Were Rocked in Poland’ harks back to the idea promoted by Ramet, that rock destroyed state socialism (Junes 2015).
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The use of serious music in the education of the masses is excellently portrayed by Dušan Makavejev in his film Čovek nije tica (Man Is Not a Bird, 1965), where a symphonic orchestra visits a copper-processing plant in a remote region of Yugoslavia. It is not an accident that such practice was shown in a Yugoslav film, because in this country the socialist ideas were taken more seriously than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, where they by this point largely transformed into an empty ritual.
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In this respect Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav countries are most thoroughly represented, largely due to the use of popular music in the discourse on nationalism during the Yugoslav wars and their aftermath, proving the point that the special interest in Eastern European popular music concerns its political dimension.
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Mazierska, E. (2016). Introduction. In: Mazierska, E. (eds) Popular Music in Eastern Europe. Pop Music, Culture and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59273-6_1
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