Polish Rock Music: People, Events, Contexts

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The aim of the module is to provide knowledge of Polish rock music (taking into account the world context), as well as to show the specifics of the functioning of the phonografic and stage industry in the realities of a planned economy of a socialist state, and to familiarize students with the fenomena of youth culture and various types of subcultures in the People's Republic of Poland.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

No

Syllabus

1. Rock'n'roll from the beginning. The birth of rock culture in the context: musical, cultural, social, technological and political

2. Elements of youth lifestyle in postwar Poland

3. Cultural and moral effects of the 'thaw'

4. Entry of jazz into the framework of official culture and the first symptoms of rock'n'roll

5. The first wave of rock'n'roll music in Poland

6. 'We are looking for young talents' and 'Polish youth sings Polish songs'

7. The big beat revolution of customs and behaviours

8. The formation of a forum for the presentation of youth expression

9. Insertion of big beat into the framework of official culture

10. The 1970s and the finished mission of big beat

11. The role of the underground and the rock avant-garde in the 1970s

12. 'Music of the Young Generation' and the Jarocin Festival

13. Rock in the 1980s

14. Rock and ythe youth culture as a third cultural circuit

15. Was the rock music a 'safety valve' for the socialist state?

Reading list

A. Idzikowska-Czubaj, Rock w PRL-u. O paradoksach współistnienia, Poznań 2011

A. Idzikowska-Czubaj, Funkcje kulturowe i historyczne znaczenie polskiego rocka, Poznań 2006

J. Wertenstein-Żuławski, To tylko rock'n'roll, Warszawa 1990

Made in Poland, Studies in Popular Music, ed. P. Gałuszka, Routledge 2020

D. Gradowski, Rock'n'Roll. Styles and Genres in Poland 1957-1973

Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context. Beyond the Boarders, ed. E. Mazierska, Zsolt Gyori, Palgrave, Macmillan 2019

My Blood Your Blood. Documentary, directed by A. Kostenko, 1986

Beats of Freedom. Documentary, directed by Leszek Gnoiński, Wojciech Słota, 2010