The Rajkó Gypsy Orchestra of the Hungarian League of Young Communists

FAIN: FT-291440-23

Lynn Marie Hooker
Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN 47907-2040)

Research and writing leading to a book about cultural diplomacy and Hungary’s Rajkó Ensemble, founded as the “Gypsy orchestra” of Hungary’s League of Young Communists in 1952, from post-World War II to the present day.

Final interviews and collections research for a book-length study of Hungary’s Rajkó Ensemble, founded as the “Gypsy orchestra” of Hungary’s League of Young Communists, from postwar to the present day. Under state socialism in Hungary, “Gypsy music” and the Roma musicians who made it became part of a national system that provided entertainment and employment. The Rajkó Ensemble, created in 1952, promoted Hungary to audiences around the world and launched careers for hundreds of musicians. Though “Gypsy music” declined after the 1989 fall of state socialism, Viktor Orbán’s post-2010 “illiberal democracy” has again placed performers of “Gypsy music,” many of them former Rajkó members, at the center of cultural policy. I use archival documents and interviews with dozens of musicians to reveal a story of individual and community achievement, political and artistic negotiation, and Communist and post-Communist efforts at social engineering and cultural diplomacy.