Traditional music, folklore and folklorization in Romania before and post-1989

by Speranța Rădulescu

Folklore and folklorization in the post-1989 period: the Romanian case

Soon after 1989, the number of “folklore” shows and broadcasts dwindled dramatically in
Romania. Many TV viewers and radio listeners imperatively demanded their elimination by
radio and TV stations, suggesting that this “folklore” represented the symbolic side of nationalist
communism. Worked up by the revolution and determined to reject the symbols of the old
regime, the citizens voiced their opinions out loud, and the fearing, discredited media paid heed.
After a while, producers (i.e. cultural activists) plucked up courage and set about
gradually recapturing their audience. Radio and TV show and concert producers, members of the
Centers for folk culture, teachers from community art schools, conductors of folk orchestras and
ensembles, stage directors, bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture clung to their occupation,
the only one they were capable of plying, which secured a comparatively important social status
for them. They were implicitly supported by an audience that had internalized the national-
communist ideology and its esthetic standards, hence by all those who were learning again to
comply. Folklore broadcasts and shows increased in number, albeit without reaching the
magnitude from past times.
Most ethnomusicologists and ethnochoreologists from the Balkans give a lot of attention
and respect to the state-controlled folklore promoted by the media, which they do not always
distinguish from the genuine one in their works. Why? Because in our countries, where it is more
widespread than in any other European country, it was for decades on end presented as the
superior, anthology-worthy version of folklore. Should we be concerned about the fact that many
of us have inherited it from communist activists? Should we be worried that some Western
ethnomusicologists claim that this “adjusted” folklore reflects the totalitarian and/or nationalistic
societies in which we used to live? Are we able to devise more sophisticated ethnological ways
of approaching it?

During my three participations in the meetings of our study group, I absorbed a lot of
information and ideas from its members – professors, researchers, students, folklore group
leaders, and folk music and dance instructors from Southeastern European countries. I have
publicly stated my wish – which I reassert now – to remain affiliated to this study group.
However, one issue has been puzzling me: folkloric musics produced by state ensembles are
placed by some of my colleagues on the same level as rural and urban musics produced by folk
musicians and dancers in traditional contexts. Here I open a parenthesis to mention that in the
French-speaking world “the term ‘folklorization’ is used […] in the human and social sciences
literature, as well as in the vernacular, to refer to […] processes through which folklore becomes
the object of a construction.”1 (Bolle 2007:204). The music obtained through folklorization is
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“le terme de ‘folklorisation’ est utilisé […] dans la littérature des sciences humaines et sociales, comme dans la
langue parlée de tous les jours, pour référer […] aux processus par lesquels le folklore fait l’objet d’une
construction.”

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called musique folklorique (folkloric music). I haven’t found exact equivalents of the two
concepts in the English-language ethnomusicological literature. However, I did find writings that
refer to them. Some of these wrintings address chiefly the ideology and politics of the state that
initiated and sponsored folklorization. In the former communist countries, it was the one-party-
state that, in the early 1950s, on orders from the Stalinist regime in Moscow, created the
principles, institutions and esthetic standards, and appointed, paid, and controlled the cultural
activists that put it into practice (Rice 1994:175-176). I’ll cite a few illuminating passages that fit
the Romanian case like a glove:

Marc Slobin: “In central and Eastern Europe, music was understood by cultural bureaucracies as
a powerful tool in their social management schemes and was pursued with an almost maniacal
hypersensivity and discipline (Slobin 1996:6). [...] The state offered and overarching identity:
nationalism [...]” (Slobin 1996:7), a “musical identity as a key component of citizens’
consciousness” (Slobin 1996:8). Further down, the author makes an apparently puzzling
observation: “[So] a troupe understood in Czechoslovakia as a representation of regional official
culture “for decades” can become the showcase of newly independent Slovakia.” […] “The
country changes, while the choreographer remains,” Slobin explains (Slobin 1996:11). To which
I must add: not only the choreographers and their unshakable habits, but also the disciples that
they formed.

Timothy Rice on folkloric ensembles from Bulgaria: “The music has been constructed to stay
symbolically for the state, and the people’s dissatisfaction with the state was expressed, among
other ways, by their distaste for this kind of music. But on the other side of the coin was that,
since the Communist party succeeded in turning rural peasants into urban proletarians, the folk
no longer wanted to work land or listen to folk music in any form. Its oldest forms seemed too
primitive and the new ones were too closely allíed with the state and its inadequacies.” (Rice
1994:257) “[The] production [of the recordings with this music] was tied not to public demand
but to the sales estimated of store managers who were necessarily conservative.” (Rice
1994:259) “Folk music schools’ purpose was to foster the preservation of Bulgarian folklore as
understood by academics and the ‘culture establishment’ and defend it against both external and
internal challenges. […]” (Rice 1994:262).

Donna Buchanan identifies, also in Bulgaria, several instruments for bolstering the official
esthetic dogma: “The establishment of folk music secondary schools and the Plovdiv Institute
precipitated the writing of textbooks for sight-singing, music history, music theory, ethnography,
and instrumental music.” (Buchanan 2006:328). Of course, the author does not fail to mention

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the ideological orientation of the music: “The Ensemble’s regionality however was largely
curbed in favor of a nationalistic focus.” (Buchanan 2006:274).

Marianne Mesnil: “One of the ideological values that the [communist] regime [of Bucharest]
defended, at least in its discourse if not in its politics, was traditionalist, peasant nationalism.
Thus folklore was activated to glorify the ancientness and particularity of Romanian culture, and
bolster the nationalist policy against the ‘enemy brothers’, Slavs and Hungarians in particular.”2
(Mesnil 1990:35).

Other (or the same) authors deal with the transformation undergone by traditional musics
through folklorization:

Donna A. Buchanan, referring to the radio folk orchestra of Bulgaria: “When instrumentalists
began recording professionally […] the structure and the length of pieces they played suddenly
became important [… ] First, it standardized group accompaniment of soloists into pripev-solo-
pripev-solo-pripev form […]. [Second], it caused musicians to transform their individual
improvisatory sitnezbi into fixed phrases that could be strung together to produce tunes of
predetermined length, again to accommodate media needs.” (Buchanan 2006:126).

Salwa El-Shawan, referring to the Firqat Al-Mūsīqa ensemble set up in 1967 by the Egyptian
Ministry of Culture, draws the attention to the differences between this group and the equivalent
traditional ones: “This ensemble is at the origin of major modifications. These concern the size
and makeup of the group [much larger and comprising a choir], the conducting style [by
introducing the conductor function], ways of passing on repertoires [through intermediaries and
by means of Western notation], principles of the interaction between the musician and the
audience, and concert programs. […] These radical changes […] had a powerful impact on the
knowledge and practices of composition and improvisation.” 3 (El-Shawan 1987:155-156). Their
effects, the author adds, are “the uniformization of the execution and the suppression of
improvisation” (El-Shawan 1987:157).

I will add a few personal observations on folklorization in Romania, but I will correlate the
modifications enforced on the music (similar to those mentioned above) with the symbolic

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“L’une des valeurs idéologiques dont le régime [communiste de Bucarest] se fit alors défenseur, au moins dans son
discours sinon dans sa politique, fût le nationalisme traditionnaliste et paysan. Le folklore fût donc mobilisé pour
exalter l’ancienneté et la spécificité de la culture roumaine, et pour renforcer la politique nationaliste contre les
‘frères ennemis’, slaves et hongrois en particulier.”
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“Cet ensemble est à l’origine de modifications capitales. Elles concernent la dimension et la composition du
groupe, la manière de diriger, les procédés de transmission du répertoire, les principes d’interaction musicien-
publique et les programmes des concerts. […] Ces changements radicaux […] ont eu un grand impacte sur les
connaissances et les pratiques de composition et d’improvisation.”

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meanings that can be attributed to them. These observations describe the state of affairs before,
but to a great extent also after, 1989: inertia works.

Vocal and instrumental timbres were/are deliberately distorted, softened, toned down to
symbolize civilization. The musical phrases invariably follow(ed) a four-bar pattern, and their
rhythms are exact even in pieces in which they should unfold freely, in order to suggest
discipline. The orchestral apparatus is always oversized – a hint at the greatness of the country,
the party, and the Leader. Since performing in a large group raises problems, the conductor,
absent in folk culture, obliges all the musicians to start and to finish their execution at his precise
signal – in a communist state obedience is not optional. The same conductor compels all the
members of the soloist compartment to play exactly the same versions of the tunes, and the
accompanists to play exactly the same chords, juxtaposed in the same rhythm – thus reminding
the citizens the obligation to embrace the opinions of the one-party-state. In this way, the leader
of the ensemble reduces variability, an essential quality of traditional music, not recommended in
a folkloric ensemble – just like dissonant personal opinions are not recommended in society.
Falsely or genuinely archaic songs are at odds with their complex, modern accompaniment: thus
true Romanians, masters of their own land, are proving that the values of Occidental civilization
are familiar to them. The lyrics are often “straightened out” to eschéw subversive ideas – just
like, in society, political correctness is imperative. (Modification of the lyrics is the most
superficial aspect of the deformation of music through folklorization; yet most cultural activists
still consider it the only concession made to the communist political power!) It goes without
saying that the national music, that of all the citizens of Romania, is Romanian, necessarily pure,
unsoiled by foreign musics. Tough luck for ethnic minority members who are not represented by
it: Hungarians, Roma, Ukrainians, Serbs or Bulgarians! (Rădulescu 2002:124-125, 137-142).

In folkloric ensembles, the functions of the traditional music and dance have been replaced by
the function of representation. Together, they must make up the sound and visual image of the
country and the nation, preferably a ceremonial one. To be persuasive, representation through
performances has a number of means at its disposal: costumes, makeup, bodily postures, settings,
choreography, staging of rituals – whether extinct or made up… Judged against the culture of
reference, the overall image is false and never innocent. It aims to reinforce a myth that is either
created or remodeled to suit the dominant ideology, to stimulate the positive feelings that the
regime is interested in fostering. This is how Eric Hobsbawm describes invented traditions:
“‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly
accepted rules of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of
behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where

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possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. […]
However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of ‘invented’
traditions is that the continuity with it is largely fictitious.”4 (Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger
1983, apud Aubert 2011:90 )

I understand perfectly why the interest of ethnomusicologists, from both our countries and from
elsewhere, is gradually shifting towards the productions of folkloric ensembles and their large
diffusion that transforms them into mass culture. The village, at least the Romanian one,
produces less and less music, and has reoriented towards consumption fed mainly by the media.
The esthetic quality of its music – about which we rarely talk, although it has always been
important to us! – has dropped considerably. Both the conventional and the electronic media
have gained strength, and their power of persuasion is proportional to the reputation of the
broadcasting channels. Rural productivity has gone down and is dying out, while urban
productivity is thriving, but is often expressed in musics and dances with ever weaker ties to the
traditional ones. The consumers of rural-source musics are now mostly city dwellers with vague
connections to the village. Our past study topic has depreciated and is dwindling fast. Under the
circumstances, in order to avoid dumping it after having regarded it as a valuable cultural asset
for so long, we believe that we must reorient ourselves towards another, resembling one:
folklorized music. The question here is not why we are dealing with this latter one, but why we
are automatically equating it with traditional musics. Shouldn’t our approach set different
objectives, one of which is its relationship with power and the dominant ideology? Or specific
research methods? It is true that in some cases the similarity between the two types is more
noticeable, but it never allows for identification between them. For example, I always distinguish
between the voice of a regular peasant vocalist and that of a folk music singer, or the sound of a
traditional band (taraf) from that of a “popular music orchestra”: two seconds are enough for me
to make the difference, just as they are for each of you.

However, with the passage of time, I realized that la musique folklorique did not appear and live
only under the umbrella of the state. I am briefly enumerating a few phenomena that stimulate it:

Construction of national culture, as initiated in one country or another by intellectuals as a

prelude to independence from the Ottoman Empire is a first one. Jean-Jacques Nattiez speaks
about it in general terms: “Since the 19th century, the contact between the music of dominant
cultures and traditional musics has favored the ‘folklorization’ phenomenon, in the negative

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Les « traditions inventées » désignent un ensemble de pratiques de nature rituelle et symbolique […] qui cherchent
à inculquer certaines valeurs et normes de comportement par la répétition, ce qui implique automatiquement une
continuité avec le passé » […] toutefois, même lorsqu’il existe une telle référence à un passé historique, la
particularité des traditions « inventées » tient au fait que leur continuité avec ce passé est largement fictive ».

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sense of the term, in order to satisfy the taste of the dominant ones.”5 (Nattiez 2007:25). We must
admit that nationalism is still deep-seated in the Balkans. Right now, it may be the conservation
engine of the relation of dependence between folkloric music and the state – a relation that does
not exist in Western countries.

Reconstruction of national culture, in the aftermath of major political events, the expression of
a new political orientation of the country, is another propitious condition. Several Balkan
countries are still in its grip. This was also the case of Turkey, which following the foundation of
the modern state (1923) aimed for Europeanization: “Our national music will be born from
fusion between Western music and our folk music. […] Harmonize folk songs and what you’ll
get is our national music!” 6 (Atatürk, quoted in Erguner 1990:40).

The complexes of a country and nation afraid of being viewed as backward. This is the case of
Romania and Romanians. Any cultural activist is still convinced that the folklore of ensembles
represents the superior version of peasant music, the only one worth showing to the public.

There are other stimulating factors too, e.g. urbanization of the rural population, to which I
have already referred; globalization (fr. globalisation), which undermines the particularities of
local musics, and generalized globalization (fr. mondialisation) (apud During 2011: 62-68),
which brings about the mixture and/or fusion of musics however different; one must not ignore
the indirect pressure from other musics that have become familiar due to the media: academic,
popular (in the English sense of the word), romance, jazz, ethnopop etc.

It is not by accident that I quoted extensively several prestigious ethnomusicologists in my paper.

I needed their support for statements that I have made which may seem unusual or even
offensive.

Since the size of this paper is necessarily limited, I could not demonstrate these statements or
present others that are as important. For instance, I did not deal with the way ordinary people
perceive folklorized music; nor did I speak about the phenomenon of rejection, concretized in
pan-Balkan fusion musics, a subject treated in depth by Timothy Rice. Roughly speaking, this
paper is in fact the summary of the lesson on “folklorization” that I teach every year at the
Bucharest University of Music as part of my course entitled “Oral Musics of Romania”.

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“Dès le XIXe siècle, le contact entre la musique des cultures dominantes et les musiques traditionnelles a favorisé
le phénomène de la ‘folklorisation’, au sens négative du terme, pour répondre aux goûts des dominants.”
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“Notre musique nationale naîtra de la bonne fusion entre la musique occidentale et notre musique populaire […]
Harmonisez les mélodies de la musique populaires, et vous obtiendrez notre musique nationale!”

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Works cited

Aubert 2011. « Nouveaux objets, nouveaux enjeux : repenser l’ethnomusicologie ». Musique et

globalisation : musicologie - ethnomusicologie, Jacques Bouët et Makis Solomos, éditeurs.
Université Paul Valery – Montpellier 3 : L’Harmattan, 87-106.

Bolle, Sylvie 2007. « Folklore et folklorisation. La construction de l’autre et de soi ». Musiques.

Une encyclopédie pour le XXIe siecle. 5. Unité de la musique. Actes du Sud / Cité de la musique,
204-217.

Buchanan, Donna A. 2006. Performing Democracy. Bulgarian Music and Musicians in

Transition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

During, Jean 2011. « Globalisation de l’ère préindustrielle et formatage de l’oreille du monde.

L’écoute de l’ethnomusicologue ». Musique et globalisation : musicologie - ethnomusicologie,
Jacques Bouët et Makis Solomos, éditeurs. Université Paul Valery – Montpellier 3: L’Harmattan,
39-68.

El-Shawan, Salwa 1987. « Aspects de l’improvisation dans la musique arabe d’Egypte ».

Improvisation dans les musiques de tradition orale, Bernard Lortat-Jacob ed., Paris : Selaf, 151-
157.

Erguner, Ahmed Kudsi 1990. « Alla turca – alla franca. Les enjeux de la musique turque ».
Cahiers de musique traditionnelles 3,  « Musique et pouvoir », Laurent Aubert ed., Genève :
Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie/AIMP, 45-56.

Mesnil, Marianne 1990. “Une flüte de Pan peu bucolique”. Cahiers de musique traditionnelles
3,  « Musique et pouvoir », Laurent Aubert ed., Genève : Ateliers d’ethnomusicologie/AIMP, 35-
45.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques 2007. « Éclatement ou unité de la musique ? » Musiques. Une

encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle. 5. Unité de la musique. Actes du Sud / Cité de la musique, 17-
32.

Rădulescu, Speranța 2002. Peisaje muzicale în România secolului XX [Musical Soundscapes in

the XXst Century Romania]. București: Editura muzicală.

Rice, Timothy 1994. May it Fill Your Soul. Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press.

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Slobin, Marc. 1996. “Introduction”. Retuning Culture. Musical Changes in Central and Eastern
Europe. Duke University Press.