Call for Papers - Musical Legacies of State Socialism: Revisiting Narratives about Post-World War II Europe

Description

Eligible topics

• Beyond the Iron Curtain: In order to revisit the concept of an impermeable iron curtain which stood between the socialist countries of Europe and the capitalist West, György Péteri has developed the concept of ‘nylon curtain’. While the state-socialist countries were not completely isolated from the West, the degree to which the influence of Western culture was tolerated and the extent of state control over this communication is open to debate. We wish to examine the various channels of communication between the East and the West and to explore in what way certain countries in state socialism system were open to manifestations of Western culture such as visits of various artists, stylistic influences, cultural exchanges, etc.
• ‘Socialist Music’ outside Zhdanovism: Vast swathes of artistic output under state socialism are often described as socialist realism, defined by what was known as Zhdanov Doctrine. However, in certain cases there were also modernist and avantgarde tendencies. The situation was often specific to the country in question, and modernism in art could sometimes become either a part of the ruling state ideology or merely tolerated in order to improve the country’s image in the West. In this respect, the case of Yugoslavia is distinctive, as already in 1948, after the Tito–Stalin split, Yugoslav cultural policymakers began to abandon the basic precepts of socialist realism. Thus, we are interested in investigating both stylistic and political questions which are relevant to this issue.
• The Impact of Official State Policies on Music Production: Beside the aforementioned subtopics, we also welcome other proposals which more generally reconsider the influences of official state policies on music production, in realms of artistic, traditional, as well as popular music. We invite scholars to investigate to what extent policies have shaped (redirected, inhibited or derailed) the development of music practices, for example, in terms of style, technique and the choice of subject matter. We particularly welcome comparative research which takes into account the current scholarship in the fields of literary criticism and art history.
• ‘Socialist Europe’ in the West: While state socialism had been imposed in the East, the communist parties remained strong political factors in some of the post-war Western countries. Certain artists, thinkers, and musicians in Western Europe were influenced by the idea of a socialist society, either seeing it embodied in the state socialist countries, or imagining it as a utopia of the future. We wish to examine how these processes were reflected both in specific musical practices and individual artistic oeuvres.
• Questioned Legacy and Backward Glances: With transitional and economic crises in many of the former state socialist countries, there have been instances of revisiting musical legacies of the past and using them in order to create politically engaged practices which question the current neoliberal capitalist system. Going beyond banal and often commodified instances of ‘nostalgia’ narratives (Yugonostalgy, Ostalgie, etc.), we wish to explore how these processes work and how they recycle what is seen as the musical legacy of state socialism.

Keynote Speakers

Conference Committee

Guidelines for submission

Organizer

• Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA)
• Department of Fine Arts and Music of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• BASEES Study Group for Russian and East European Music (REEM)

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