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This volume examines the transnational character of popular music since the Cold War era to the present. Bringing together the cross-disciplinary research of native scholars, Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context expands our understanding of the movement of physical music, musicians and genres through the Iron Curtain and within the region of Eastern Europe. With case studies ranging from Goran Bregovic, Czeslaw Niemen, the reception of Leonard Cohen in Poland, the Estonian punk scene to the Intervision Song Contest, the book discusses how the production and reception of popular music in the region has always been heavily influenced by international trends and how varied strategies allowed performers and fans to acquire cosmopolitan identities. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the investigations are informed by political, social and cultural history, reception studies, sociology and marketing and are largely based on archival research and interviews.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Crossing National and Regional Borders in Eastern European Popular Music, Ewa Mazierska and Zsolt Györi.- Part 1: Bringing Foreign Music to the European East.- 2. Loopholes in the Iron Curtain: Obtaining Western Music in State Socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, Adam Havlik.- 3. Quiet Fanaticism: The Phenomenon of Leonard Cohen's Popularity in Poland, Ewa Mazierska and Xawery Stanczyk.- 4. Authenticity and Orientalism: Cultural Appropriations in Polish Alternative Music Scene in the 1970s and 1980s, Xawery Stanczyk.- 5. Eastern Europe as Punk Frontier, Aimar Ventsel.- Part 2: Eastern European Music Crossing the Borders.- 6. Success, Failure, Splendid Isolation: Czeslaw Niemen's Career in Europe, Mariusz Gradowski.- 7. Yugo-Polish: The Uses of Yugoslav Music by Polish Musicians, Ewa Mazierska.- 8. Balkan High, Balkan Low: Music Production between Hybridity and Class Struggle, Slobodan Karamanic and Manuela Unverdorben.- Part 3: Liminal Spaces of Eastern European Music Festivals.- 9. The Intervision Song Contest: A Commercial and Pan-European Alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest, Dean Vuletic.- 10. Between Utopia and the Marketplace: The Case of the Sziget Festival, Zsolt Györi.- 11. A Tale of Two (Or #EverMore) Festivals: Electronic Music in a Transylvanian Town, Ruxandra Trandafoiu.
About the author
Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies, at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She has published over twenty monographs and edited collections on film and popular music including, most recently, Popular Viennese Electronic Music, 1990–2015: A Cultural History (2019) and Sounds Northern: Popular Music, Culture and Place in England’s North (2018). Mazierska’s work is translated into over twenty languages. She is also principal editor of the journal Studies in Eastern European Cinema.
Zsolt Győri is Assistant Professor at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. He is the author of Films, Auteurs, Critical-Clinical Readings (2014) and has co-edited six volumes, including Popular Music and the Moving Image in Eastern Europe with Ewa Mazierska (2018). He also serves as the associate editor of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies.
Summary
This volume examines the transnational character of popular music since the Cold War era to the present. Bringing together the cross-disciplinary research of native scholars, Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context expands our understanding of the movement of physical music, musicians and genres through the Iron Curtain and within the region of Eastern Europe. With case studies ranging from Goran Bregović, Czesław Niemen, the reception of Leonard Cohen in Poland, the Estonian punk scene to the Intervision Song Contest, the book discusses how the production and reception of popular music in the region has always been heavily influenced by international trends and how varied strategies allowed performers and fans to acquire cosmopolitan identities. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the investigations are informed by political, social and cultural history, reception studies, sociology and marketing and are largely based on archival research and interviews.
