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The Rolling Stone of a Globalized World by Elia Vargas
"[They were] something heavenly. I felt blissful and
invincible. All the depression and fear ingrained over the years
disappeared. I understood that everything other than the Beatles
had been oppression." - Kolya Vasin 1
Thus began a new trend in the battle between world superpowers.
The race to space, nuclear threats, and global domination, had
been reduced to lyrics, trends, and lifestyles of
music-specifically rock music. In the 1940's and 50's, Soviet
States (the U.S.S.R. and all satellite nations) began to fear the
influence of American jazz as it was adopted and reconfigured to
uniquely Eastern European and Russian identities. Creating what
is now some of the most inventive and unique forms of free jazz
and fusion. However it was not until the early 60's and the
Beatlization of rock music, that the soviet ministry of culture
initiated a massive reform of youth culture to ostracize rock as
a dissident and barbaric form of expression. This platform would
largely remain in effect for the last thirty years of soviet
domination. A wave of youth rebellion typified the effect the
Beatles, and shortly thereafter rock music, had on the
information-deprived nations. Music and culture exploded. From
the U.S.S.R to East Germany, and everywhere in between, rock
began to instantiate the culture of youth. Bands were formed,
dress changed, a peripheral culture was established that grew,
changed, resisted, and transcended Soviet oppression.
As the storm of rock culture infiltrated the domain of soviet
rule, which was considered by the state to be an infiltration of
western hoopla values, a strict and rigid response to rock was
established, forcing the entire culture into a peripheral gutter
existence. Rock music broke through the Iron Curtain and received
widespread official attention for the first time in the early
1960's. Henceforth, no other cultural resistance held the same
ideological furor or unified youth so overwhelmingly against the
state. Rock culture globalized youth under soviet control with
the common ideological wrecking ball of self-expression to
naturally demolish the system of oppression from the foundation
up.
Rock music holds a unique place between society and politics in
that it is neither purely political, nor purely artistic
-particularly during the time period of hhistory in which the U.S.
and U.S.S.R were the two world superpowers. The duality of
ideological battles between democracy and communism (regardless
of how each brutalized these ideologies) created grandiose and
international motifs that transcended national identity and
ethnicity. Societies of differing cultures could unify under
anti-communist pretexts. Thus as the social climate changed,
values of the status quo changed in more places at a single time.
As communism slowly came to an end around 1990, many nations were
united in their struggle to escape it; likewise many nations were
struggling with their own personal transformations at the same
time. Rock music within communism is in a sense, true democracy
displaced within the communist state. It might be the first
convergence of the differing global/social/political trends of
the two ideologies. Therefore there are two separate globalizing
acts taking place: the unifying of many nations under similar
strife and struggle against the mother state, via the globalizing
mechanism of rock music.
Rock music began in the West as its own rejection of conformity.
Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, and slightly later the
Sex Pistols, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, and others paved the way
to musical revolution. The U.S. also enjoyed a period of time in
which rock music and culture was censored in the main stream, due
to the immoral values it impregnated within the youth. Censorship
is a value that has never completely left the western spirit.
Still today segments of society campaign for more rigorous
censorship laws. Typically lobbyists come from religious
fundamentalist groups or radically conservative organizations,
however Tiper Gore, wife of Al Gore has been a rigorous advocate
of censorship since the mid 80's. True to form, rock began as a
culture of rebellion within the land of opportunities itself.
It was the Beatles who inspired rock within Russia in the 60s.
This was the beginning era of rock music in most communist led
countries. Pavel Sedlacek sang "Rock Around the Clock"
in a 1956 youth singing competition in Czechoslovakia, largely
introducing rock music into the public sphere for the first
time.2 The ex-Yugoslavia had a slightly different rock scene than
other nations due to its multiple regions of diverse ethnicities,
but in the beginning rock had the same overwhelming western
influence as most other nations. Belgrade hosted the countries
first rock festival in the Mid 60s, which attracted a crowd of
fifteen thousand youth, solidifying rock within Yugoslavia.3 The
1956 Polish Thaw, much like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
produced a steady flow of anti-Stalinism that manifested in terms
of slight open-mindedness, and acceptance of new ideas, at least
until the early 80s. Poland had a thriving jazz scene by this
time; by 1956 there was a regular monthly jazz newsletter. The
first rock recording also reached Poland in 56.4
Much like the west's evolution of rock in the 60's coming to
represent hippie culture, then changing to a more dissident new
wave or punk reaction in the later 60's through the 80's, many
Eastern European nations had similar transitions. As Sabrina
Ramet, editor of ROCKING THE STATE has discussed, the deaths of
musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison at
the end of the 60's and the official disbanding of the Beatles in
1970 devastated rock around the globe, communist and democratic
states alike. As old heroes of the 60's destroyed themselves with
drugs, alcohol, and depression, new rock idols emerged. David
Bowie, the Who, and Pink Floyd created epic road shows that
attracted legions of new fans, and in the soviet bloc these new
idols hung on bedroom walls and appeared in school notebooks.5
Although most communist nations had negative reactions to the
initial wave of rock music, it took the state ministries some
time before they figured out how to react to the rock phenomena.
The general reaction was tighter and tighter enforcement of
censorship and control over music. As is the case in many
societies, music converges with other forms of artistic
expression, thus rock music put an entire world of creativity and
imagination on the fringes. While the state was figuring out what
to do about rock, rock culture itself was changing. Rock was
first a surge of western values. Bands imitated their western
idols, and fans smuggled western memorabilia into their homes any
chance they had. Once rock scenes had begun to develop their own
national identities and sing of issues relevant to their
homelands, indicative of the 70s, state officials began enforcing
extraordinarily rigid protocol. Thus various national rock scenes
developed at slightly different paces, depending on the reaction
from the state. For instance, even in 1989, when the Berlin wall
came down, Romania had practically no underground at all due to
the No-tolerance policy of the Ceausescu regime. Contrarily,
Czechoslovakia gained a strong underground by the early 70's and
the Hungarian underground was strongest in the early 80's.
The thirty years from the late 50's to the late 80's was known in
Hungary as the Kadar Era. Peter Sziami expands on this, "the
period we call the Kadar era, the period of building socialism in
the countries neighboring and in the soviet union itself, was the
age of silent rage for myself, not only for myself but all the
people living in Hungary and in Poland and Czechoslovakia at that
time, simply because we were colonized by the soviet
union."6 Kadar was a soviet sympathizer, he took power in
the wake of the1956 revolution in which young adults and students
took to the streets and forged a violent revolution against
soviet rule. Although society was never again as rigid as it was
in the early 50's, creative expression was slowly squandered.
Youth clubs were the only gathering place for students. The film,
music, and eventually the television industry were nationalized.
Dissident western punk and new wave artists like David Bowie, Sex
Pistols, and Lou Reed had the largest effect on Hungarian
culture. "I thought it represented my life and thoughts as
well,"7 expressed Jeno Menyhart, member of revolutionary
band URH and cofounder of Europa Kiado. URH stands for Ultra Rock
Agency, in English, but in Hungarian is also the radio frequency
for police. By the end of the 70's, creative Hungarians had found
their place within rock and simultaneously, the state had given
enough leeway that a peripheral culture could be formed-albeit,
not easily. "The person who produced the show hated
everything, all the people I liked, the music I liked. Anybody
doing anything interesting at this time was shut down. The weapon
we had was to make a song."8 Lamented Peter Sziami, founder
of URH, about the producer of the show Blue Light a cop-criminal
show, which he titled a song after.
Czechoslovakia will forever be known for its beautiful
literature, the creation of bohemia, and the romanticizing of the
artist intellectual. In keeping, the Prague Spring of 1968 was a
peaceful resistance to the Soviets through an artistic revolution
(let us not forget about Stalin-Realism that dominated soviet art
for near 40 years). Though it was eventually squandered by a
Soviet invasion, the brief fresh air of creativity and individual
expression saved a comatose nation. Following Prague Spring,
"Pronounced Tribuna, 'We will cultivate water and protect
only one flower, the red rose of Marxism.'"9 This was the
period of Normalization by Communist leader Gustav Husak. As
normalization began to effect rock culture, musicians came under
greater and greater pressure from the state to either disband or
conform to the status quo. Although even the status quo
eventually became difficult; the singer Karel Gott, who in 1964
had recorded Beatle's cover songs on the state label, was
criticized and ostracized by the state in 1970 due to a song
which compared a man's worry about his lover to the flip of a
coin, apparently disrespecting the Czechoslovakian currency. One
of the most infamous Czechoslovakian bands-Plastic People of the
Universe, lost their professional license in 1970 and became the
most influential band of the growing underground culture of art.
This new hard-line stance was reflective of soviet response to
the convergence of rock and national culture in most bloc
nations. Committees were created everywhere in which bands had to
pass tests to receive professional licenses. These tests often
included extensive questions on Marxism and Leninism. Clubs were
shut down, and replaced with state run youth centers. Members of
different bands were repeatedly observed and questioned by state
officials. Secret Police spied on bands and gathered information
on them. Tomas Szonyei, a Hungarian journalist wrote an extensive
novel on the Secret Police's activities within underground
Hungarian music.
There was no censorship officially. But in practice there was
because everything was under control of the state…there were
rules, bands needed a license to be professional, and with the
license their [pay] was also defined by this one, state owned
music organization. But the groups we are talking about…were
amateur and it just didn't come to their mind to get the license.
Why should I get a license to play my music? This is absolutely
stupid, if the audience likes it, I have permission from the
audience. Why do I need a license to play my words?10 -Tomas
Szonyei
Nations such as Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia would engage
in peripheral discussions and round-tables in solidarity with
each other's opposition to the soviets, as well as produce
articles in their own Samizdat journals of the happenings in
their neighboring countries.
Although similar actions and repressions were happening
throughout Eastern Europe, each country had its own, distinct
identity, culture, and history. Romania is noticeably absent from
the discussion of rock music due to the excessively tight rule by
dictator Ceausescu, who modeled his own cultural revolution,
removing all foreign influence, on the Chinese. Previous to the
early 70s cultural revolution by Ceausescu, a cultural political
newspaper Contemporanul published a July 15, 1955 article against
the western influences of rock. The article declared that youth
gatherings "degenerated 'into so-called modern dances, in
which barbarism is pitched to the height of hysteria.' The music
that accompanied these dances was said to arouse 'animal
instincts' and develop 'cruelty, contempt, all their destructive
urges.'"11 After learning of this article, NATO officials
began to research rock and jazz as a means of strategy on the war
against Communism.
In the introduction I used the phrase, the Beatlization of rock.
It was this idea that spread across Europe, from west to east
that began the global spread of rock music as an ideology, as a
political tool, and a social agitator. Beatlization spawned a
meeting between Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon and feminist
artist in her own right, and Mikahil Gobachev, Soviet party head
of state, in 1987.12 The universal sound waves of music
solidified into a language of its own; a global language that
became a tool for anyone with a message. The convergence of that
ideal, the democratic ideal of freedom of expression, within
communism formed a hybridization of cultures. Rock music first
imported western culture, as Tomas Szonyei professed to me, in
English "I started to get my English from the
Beatles."13 Then hybrid cultures of national identity and
rock were formed. In 1972 Vratislav Brabenec joined the
Czechoslovakian band, Plastic People of the Universe, under the
one condition that they ceased playing American covers, and
played only their own material and sang in Czech. A further
example of the globalizing influence of rock-much of the bands
material was adaptations of dissident poets and lyricists such as
William Blake, Henry Purcell, and Jiri Kolar (a Czech poet).14
The hybrid cultures embodied pessimistic minds that were granted
the tool of optimism. Not that music or art is optimistic by
nature, nor that western optimism is a true ideal, but rather
that the music acted as a catharsis in a sense. Rock granted the
ability to centralize the inner angst, frustration, and
full-bodied loathing of oppression in empirical, social, and
cultural manifestations. Directly contrasted to the fear and
oppression from years of isolation, these were exciting,
rebellious, and fun manifestations.
Themes of repression, fear, and isolation were common within the
lyrics of all the underground musicians. A song by Plastic People
called "One Hundred Points" ended with these words:
They are afraid of Marx/They are afraid of Lenin…/They are
afraid of truth/They are afraid of freedom/They are afraid of
democracy/They are afraid of the Human Rights' Charter/They are
afraid of Socialism/So why the hell are WE afraid of THEM?15
Sziami's song Te Vagy En, which means both "You are
Me," and "You or Me," is another example of
dissident thoughts: Pay attention, because I already died/And
dead people rarely speak to people alive/don’t worry its all
just passing by/the gates of light/pass it modestly it is
sympathetic to people already dead.16
The late 80's was typified by the loosening of the state. Mikahil
Gobachev, the U.S.S.R party head admitted in his meeting with
Yoko Ono to liking rock music. Around the bloc, regimes were
loosening their grasp, although it might be more appropriate to
say that national cultures were breaking the chains. For most
soviet ruled countries, the early 80's and late 80's were
different by night and day. There was no hope or discussion of
freedom at the beginning of the decade, however by the end the
changing social climate was visible in the states response to
individual expression. By the late 80's there were already a
number of privately owned businesses in Hungary, including
independent and grassroots record labels, such as Bahia and
Trottel. In 1988 Moscow sold commercial advertising on television
to Pepsi-Cola.17 These are large examples of the changing
climate, however the real differences came in banal and leisure
activities.
The proliferation of culture consumed a giant. It was not
political, it was just about music-were the words of so many
underground musicians of the time, and yet just before the
curtain opens, western values and self expression begin to creep
within the Kremlin. All the years of peripheral existence, the
gutter punks, the barbaric rock musicians, and finally their
culture is creeping in. It is individualism, it is style, it is
imagination and creativity, the universal language of music. The
hybridization of culture was not of western and eastern
values-back in the 50's and 60's it was-but it evolved into
individual values, and human, postmodern values. It may only have
lasted for one moment in time, true propagation of self-exertion,
but thirty years of stifled expression exhaled all at once, in
multiple languages, one long melody of revolution.
Bibliography
Antal, Orkany. Personal Interview. 22 March. 2006
Attila, Begner. Personal Interview. 3 March. 2006
Holt, Jennifer. ROCK MUSIC - Entry for International Encyclopedia
of Censorship
Kan, Alex, & Hayes, Nick. Big Beat in Poland in S.P. Ramet's
Rocking the State (41-55). Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc, 1994
Kurti, Laszlo. How Can I Be a Human Being?": Culture, youth,
and Musical Opposition in Hungary in S.P. Ramet's Rocking the
State (73-103). Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc, 1994
Menyhart, Jeno. Personal Interview. 11 May. 2006
Ryback, Timothy W. Rock Around the Block. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 1990
S.P. Ramet. Rock Music in Cechoslovakia in S.P. Ramet's Rocking
the State (55-73). Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc, 1994
S.P. Ramet. Shake, Rattle, and Self-Management: Making the Scene
in Yugoslavia in S.P. Ramet's Rocking the State (103-141).
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc, 1994
S.P. Ramet. & Zamascikov Sergei, & Bird, Robert The
Soviet Rock Scene in S.P. Ramet's Rocking the State (181-219).
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc, 1994
Sziami, Peter. Personal Interview. 8 April. 2006
Szonyei, Tamas. Personal Interview. 29 April. 2006
Tamas. Personal Interview. 25 April. 2006
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