General information

Course type AMUPIE
Module title Polish Rock Music: People, Events, Contexts
Language English
Module lecturer prof. UAM dr hab. Anna Idzikowska-Czubaj
Lecturer's email a.czubaj@amu.edu.pl
Lecturer position
Faculty Faculty of History
Semester 2026/2027 (summer)
Duration 30
ECTS 5
USOS code 18-PRMPEC-PIE

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 phonographic and stage industry in the realities of a planned economy of a socialist state, and to familiarize students with the phenomena 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

 

  1. Elements of youth lifestyle in postwar Poland

 

  1. Cultural and moral effects of the "thaw"

 

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

 

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

 

  1. "We are looking for young talents" and "Polish youth sings Polish songs"

 

  1. The big beat revolution of customs and behaviours

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

  1. "Music of the Young Generation" and the Jarocin festival

 

  1. Rock in the 1980s

 

  1. Rock and youth culture as a third cultural circuit

 

  1. Was the rock music a "safety valve" for the socialist state?

Reading list

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

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

Wertenstein-Żuławski Jerzy, To tylko rock’n’roll, Warszawa, 1990

Siwak Wojciech, Estetyka rocka, Warszawa 1993

Walicki Franciszek, Szukaj, Burz, Buduj, wyd. II, Warszawa 2002

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

Gradowski Mariusz, Rock and Roll. Styles and Genres in Poland 1957-1973, https://sciendo.com/article/10.1515/muso-2016-0003

Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context. Beyond the Borders, ed. Ewa Mazierska, Zsolt Győri, Palgrave, Macmillan 2019

Raymund A. Patton, Punk Crisis. The Global Punk Rock Revolution, Oxford University Press, 2018

Raymund A. Patton, The Communist Culture Industry: The Music Business in 1980s Poland, Journal of Contemporary History 2012, 47 (2), 427-449

My Blood Your Blood, documentary, directed by Andrzej Kostenko, 1986

Beats of Freedom, documentary, directed by Leszek Gnoiński, Wojciech Słota, 2010