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 “ Retuning Culture explores vital new ground in the way musical—as opposed to broad cultural—change has occurred recently in Eastern and Central Europe. It adds substantially to our knowledge of how musical behavior, performance, and traditions act and are acted upon in providing both continuity and adaptation to change.”—James Porter, University of California, Los Angeles “An example of new thinking in area studies, Retuning Culture is an important book, valuable for its originality and for its overall statement regarding the nature of culture in political change. Of all the professional discourses brought to bear on the study of Eastern Europe in the past, musicology has been the least developed. This book will change that.”—Michael Holquist, Yale University ""Retuning Culture" explores vital new ground in the way musical--as opposed to broad cultural--change has occurred recently in Eastern and Central Europe. It adds substantially to our knowledge of how musical behavior, performance, and traditions act and are acted upon in providing both continuity and adaptation to change."--James Porter, University of California, Los Angeles Mark Slobin is Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. Retuning Culture Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe By Mark Slobin Duke University Press Copyright © 1996 Duke University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-1847-7 Contents Introduction, Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement, Kundera's Musical Joke and "Folk" Music in Czechoslovakia, 1948&ndsh;?, The Aesthetic of the Hungarian Revival Movement, Lakodalmas Rock and the Rejection of Popular Culture in Post-Socialist Hungary, Continuity and Change in Eastern and Central European Traditional Music, The Southern Wind of Change: Style and the Politics of Identity in Prewar Yugoslavia, The Ilahiya as a Symbol of Bosnian Muslim National Identity, Nationalism on Stage: Music and Change in Soviet Ukraine, The Romanian Revolution of December 1989 and Its Reflection in Musical Folklore, The Dialectic of Economics and Aesthetics in Bulgarian Music, Wedding Musicians, Political Transition, and National Consciousness in Bulgaria, Music and Marginality: Roma (Gypsies) of Bulgaria and Macedonia, Change as Confirmation of Continuity As Experienced by Russian Molokans, Works Cited, Contributors, Index, CHAPTER 1 THEODORE LEVIN Dmitri Pokrovsky and the Russian Folk Music Revival Movement To a friend of the enlightenment the word and conception "the folk" has always something anachronistic and alarming about it; he knows that you need only tell a crowd they are "the folk" to stir them up to all sorts of reactionary evil. What all has not happened before our eyes — or just not quite before our eyes — in the name of "the folk" though it could never have happened in the name of God or humanity or the law! — Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus The phone rang in the austere one-room apartment that Dmitri Pokrovsky, founder and artistic