Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland

Join the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies for a presentation and discussion of Andrea Bohlman’s monograph Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland (Oxford University Press, 2020). Participants include Anna Krakus University of Southern California), Donald Reid, professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the author Andrea Bohlman, associate professor in the music department at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Musical Solidarities is a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland. The story unfolds along crucial sites of political action under state socialism: underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, labor strikes, student demonstrations and commemorative performances. Through innovative close listenings of archival recordings, Andrea Bohlman uncovers creative sonic practices in bootleg cassettes, televised state propaganda and the unofficial, uncensored print culture of the opposition.