(Based on "The Communist Culture Industry" by Raymond Patton and Up From the Underground: The Culture of Rock in Postsocialist Hungary by Anna Szemere)
Patton’s and Szemere’s writings describe the relationship between rock and pop music and politics in Eastern Europe during the later years of the Cold War; Szemere focuses on Hungary in the 1980s-1990s and Patton focuses on Poland during the 1980s. The authors agree that art is inherently political, but this creates a tension because artists must find a balance between what is socially acceptable and profitable, versus what can express political views.
Szemere argues that politics are inherent to art by using a loose definition of politics. Government and policies are not the only kind of politics; nearly every aspect of our lives are political. Neutrality is almost impossible; all statements either support the state or not, and each viewpoint is considered politics. Szemere also writes that musical subcultures are inseparable from their contexts: “The idea of a musical subculture assumes structural correspondence and cohesion among a specific musical style, verbal and visual images, and patterns of behavior, including ways of speaking, fashion, and uses of mass media” (15). The lyrics, to the artist’s fashion, to the expressions in their singing style, all represent their culture and politics.
Rock music in Hungary was an essential part of shifting public discourse and dismantling the state’s legitimacy towards the end of the war. Rock music was a bridge between socialist cultural policies of the East and market consumerism of the West. Hungarian rock music was defined by three different labels for artists: underground, alternative, and mainstream. Underground music was related to involuntary subjugation by a higher power. Underground artists had less resources, but they were homogenous and had a strong bond. Alternative artists had a voluntary choice to be different from the majority. Alternative artists were varied and fragmented; the shift to capitalism at the end of the war was the tipping point for the collapse of their scene. Both underground and alternative music were passionately against the communist state. However, Szemere argues that the spirit of capitalism, which many of these musicians supported, was incompatible with countercultural art. After the transition to capitalism, many underground and alternative musicians fell into poverty due to the lack of economic regulation.
However, truly mainstream Hungarian pop music was not as politically controversial. The music industry was dominated by large record companies. They would refuse to release music that was sonically challenging or politically controversial, in the interest of profit. This caused a lot of musicians to “sell out” and make homogenous music. Only the underground clubs could play the music that the Stalinist state considered “inappropriate” (Szemere).
Patton writes about the same issue of the tension between ideology and financial necessity in popular music. They argue that this was one of the key factors in shaping the cultural landscape of music in Poland in the 1980s. Some Polish artists were passionate about their political ideals, many of them being anti-communist, but they also had to consider what kind of music would be the most successful, and what kind of music the most powerful record companies would want to release. They also had to be mindful of the political policy that shaped music: government censorship and other mundane institutional constraints.
Patton also goes in-depth on how the Polish government treated the music industry in the 1980s. The government needed to support pop and rock music culture out of necessity because it helped a lot of money flow through the economy, the government got a share from the money made from music, and music was an important tool for educating and uplifting the public. However, this was a very rocky relationship between the state and the music industry. Live performances were common because they made more money for both the state and the artists, but these were also where one could hear the most politically wild and controversial music, compared to the highly regulated radio stations. The government also hurt Polish musicians through the use of martial law and other types of political repression of communist dissenters.
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