Lithuanian and Polish Musical Networking during the Cold War: Political Curtains and Cultural Confrontations

Abstract

Poland and Lithuania at the end of the Cold War serve as a case study for the theorization of music and politics. In this article, a little-studied field of two neighbouring countries’ cultures has been chosen: oppositional musical networking, that in addition resulted in politically and socially engaged collaboration between Polish and Lithuanian musicians since late 1970s.

Basing on the concept of a transformative contact (Padraic Kenney 2004), the author reflects on the factors which predetermined the intercommunication of informal communities in mentioned countries in the years of ideological and political constraints and the ways in which such relationships contributed to the cultural and political transformation of societies. Through the interactions of the milieus of the Polish and Lithuanian contemporary music, the participation of the norms and representations of one culture in the field of the other culture is discussed. The author shows that the paradoxical constraints on the informal relations between Lithuanian and Polish musicians were strongly affected by the political relations between the USSR and the Polish People’s Republic, especially in the wake of the intensification of political resistance to the imposed Communist regime in Poland.