Fragile Sound, Silent History: Music and Unofficial Media in Communist Poland

FAIN: FA-233201-16

Andrea Florence Bohlman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

Preparation of a monograph on the history of media and music in communist Poland, 1945 to 1990.

I will complete the research for a book project, Fragile Sound, Silent History: Music and Unofficial Media in Communist Poland. I argue that the precariousness of sound media in East Central Europe has contributed to the assumption of a logocentric--too often, silent--cultural history, obscuring a vibrant network of unofficial sound production and reproduction. In Poland, untrained recordists and engineers took recourse to sound media in order to critique top-down narratives, to disseminate music outside of the commercial market, and to commemorate traumatic historical events. The book is structured around three case studies: (1) reel-to-reel recordings in the 1950s, (2) homemade records in the 1960s and 70s, and (3) cassette tapes in the 1980s. In this first large-scale media history of East Central Europe, I reframe the discourse of Cold War music studies, now focused on ideological control and revolution, to a new historiography of music in everyday life under state socialism.

Associated Products

"On Route to Grunewald--By Ear" (Article)
Title: "On Route to Grunewald--By Ear"
Author: Andrea Bohlman
Abstract: xx
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.wiko-berlin.de/en/wikotheque/koepfe-und-ideen/issue/12/brief-aus-berlin/
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Koepfe und Ideen 12

"Critical Constellations of the Audio Machine in Mexico," CTM Festival 2017 (Article)
Title: "Critical Constellations of the Audio Machine in Mexico," CTM Festival 2017
Author: Andrea Bohlman
Abstract: xx
Year: 2017
Periodical Title: Sound Studies 3:1, 90-93

"Making Tapes in Poland: The Compact Cassette at Home" (Article)
Title: "Making Tapes in Poland: The Compact Cassette at Home"
Author: Andrea Bohlman
Abstract: xx
Year: 2017
Periodical Title: Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 14, no. 1, 3-24

"Tape: Or, Rewinding the Phonographic Regime" (Article)
Title: "Tape: Or, Rewinding the Phonographic Regime"
Author: Andrea Bohlman
Author: Peter McMurray
Abstract: xx
Year: 2017
Periodical Title: Twentieth-Century Music. vol. 14, no. 1, 3-24

Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Polan (Book)
Title: Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Polan
Author: Andrea F. Bohlman
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://academic.oup.com/book/41748?login=false
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190938314

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