Tracing Music from Ceauşescu's Romania to Multicultural America
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 Spectacular Politics and Everyday Performance: Tracing Music from Ceauşescu’s Romania to Multicultural America Benjamin Dumbauld The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2429 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] SPECTACULAR POLITICS AND EVERYDAY PERFORMANCE: TRACING MUSIC FROM CEAUŞESCU’S ROMANIA TO MULTICULTURAL AMERICA by BENJAMIN MILLS DUMBAULD A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 ii © 2017 Ben Dumbauld All Rights Reserved iii Spectacular Politics and Everyday Performance: Tracing Music from Ceauşescu’s Romania to Multicultural America by Benjamin Mills Dumbauld This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Music in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date Peter L. Manuel, Ph.D. Chair of Examining Committee Date Norman Carey, Ph.D. Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Jane Sugarman, Ph.D. Margaret Beissinger, Ph.D. Jonathan H. Shannon, Ph.D. THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv ABSTRACT Spectacular Politics and Everyday Performance: Tracing Music from Ceauşescu’s Romania to Multicultural America By Benjamin Mills Dumbauld Adviser: Professor Jane Sugarman Drawing from fieldwork conducted throughout the United States and Canada, this dissertation examines the continued performance of socialist-era music within the Romanian- American community. It addresses why a community largely made up of people who sought to leave the country during the authoritarian regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu continue to perform music tied to that period by tracing the historical performance and reception of multiple genres, ranging from traditional peasant music to folk rock. The dissertation begins by examining the nationalization of Romania’s music industry under the early socialist regime (1944-1965), and locates the difficulties Communist Party members confronted in delineating a clear aesthetic policy for the newly socialist country. It then introduces ways the Ceauşescu regime in particular used mass performance as a means of cultivating a sense of nationalist and socialist subjectivity within the populace, and argues that this project ultimately failed to maintain Ceauşescu’s cult of personality due to the ideological contradictions that developed during the era. These contradictions allowed citizens the opportunity to approach the music at mass performance in a polysemous fashion. After discussing the development of these genres during the socialist era in Romania, the dissertation then turns to accounts on the performance of the music within the Romanian American community. First, it considers the extent to which the performance of the music acts v nostalgically for Romanian-Americans, especially in comparison to the ways nostalgia may be musically manifested in postsocialist Romania. Second, it interrogates the notion that these socialist-era genres act to create a sense of cultural solidarity or diasporic consciousness within the community, by examining first how the performance of this music serves to separate the community along historically-developed class lines, and second how assimilation processes act to disrupt any sense of ethnic or national solidarity. The dissertation concludes by arguing that the ideological contradictions that came out of the Ceauşescu era granted socialist-era music a polysemous character, which in turn greatly allowed their perpetuation within the immigrant community. At the same time, the social environment during the Ceauşescu era, coupled with assimilation processes within the immigrant community and continuing class divisions, also contributed to the immigrant community’s difficulty in establishing strong communal bonds. vi Dedicated to my wife, Angel Flesher, who in this endeavor took the far greater leap of faith vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS James Baldwin asserted that “one writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience.” If nothing else, what follows is a testament to my own experience. Yet this experience was informed by the experiences of countless others, which I hope to have accounted for with grace and humanity. Most directly, I would like to thank all the musicians I worked with, and the Romanian American community as whole, who consistently welcomed me with warmth and enthusiasm. I would like to especially thank the members of the Roadrunners, without whom this dissertation might never have taken shape. My immense thanks to Cristina Dragomir—if there is any voice in this work outside of my own, it is hers. Thanks to the community of mentors and teachers that helped guide me: most notably Jane Sugarman and Margaret Beissinger, as well as Peter Manuel, Jonathan Shannon, Steven Blum, Katherine Verdery, Martin Daughtry, Diana Taylor, Edward Miller, Richard Alba, and Robert Courtney Smith. Thanks goes to those without whom my academic life would have quickly fallen apart: Tonisha Alexander and the staff at Mina Rees interlibrary loan office. Thanks to Ana Maria Campos and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, for their continual support and understanding as I negotiated being both a student and a civil servant. Thanks to Jeffrey Taylor and the Baisley Powell Elebash Fund for their support. Finally, thanks to my wife Angel and my son Nicholas, for finding a way to constantly transmute my exhaustion into joy. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 BUCHAREST, QUEENS .................................................................................................................. 1 BETWEEN ROMANIA AND AMERICA ............................................................................................. 9 BETWEEN POSTSOCIALISM AND DIASPORA ................................................................................ 17 CHAPTER 1: MUSICAL PRODUCTION IN SOCIALIST ROMANIA .................................... 34 ROMANIA 1944-1965 ................................................................................................................. 35 NATIONALIZING MUSIC PRODUCTION: TRADITIONAL AND POPULAR MUSIC ............................. 38 CONTROLLING THE ELITE: CENSORSHIP IN ART MUSIC AND MUSICOLOGY ............................... 54 THE AMBIGUITIES, CONTRADICTIONS, AND POSSIBILITIES OF STATE AESTHETIC IDEOLOGY .... 65 CHAPTER 2: MASS SPECTACLE AND THE CULTIVATION OF A NEW SOCIALIST SUBJECTIVITY ........................................................................................................................... 71 ROMANIA 1965-1979 ................................................................................................................. 71 SYMBOLS, SCRIPTS, AND ROLES: DEVELOPING A NEW ROMANIAN IDENTITY ........................... 76 CÂNTAREA ROMÂNIEI ................................................................................................................ 88 PERFORMING HEGEMONY IN CEAUŞESCU’S ROMANIA ............................................................... 99 CHAPTER 3: LOCATING RESISTANCE IN THE SOCIALIST MUSICAL LANDCAPE ... 108 ROMANIA 1980-1989 ............................................................................................................... 109 THE EFFICACY OF MASS PERFORMANCE IN AN ERA OF AUSTERITY ......................................... 116 SUBVERSIVE COMMITMENTS TO RULING IDEAS ....................................................................... 125 MUNDANE RESISTANCE IN A SPECTACULAR AGE .................................................................... 158 ix CHAPTER 4: POSTSOCIALIST MUSIC AND NOSTALGIA IN ROMANIA AND NORTH AMERICA .................................................................................................................................. 176 DOR, LONGING, AND SOCIAL MEMORY IN MUSIC .................................................................... 177 A DOR OF HOPELESSNESS: FRUSTRATION AND LONGING IN POSTSOCIALIST ROMANIA ........... 183 DOR OF HOMESICKNESS: LONGING FOR THE SIMPLE THINGS ABROAD .................................... 196 CHAPTER 5: NATIONAL IDENTITY OR CLASS DISTINCTION? SOCIALIST MUSIC AMONG ROMANIAN IMMIGRANTS .................................................................................... 211 IMMIGRANT MUSIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: ADMISSIONS AND RESERVATIONS .................. 212 THE PERPETUATION OF CLASS IN A “CLASSLESS” SOCIETY ..................................................... 217 THE ROMANIAN MUSICSCAPE IN NEW YORK CITY .................................................................. 233 CHAPTER 6: ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ASSIMILATION INTO THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM .......................................................................................................................... 254 RECONSIDERING CULTURAL ASSIMILATION ............................................................................ 255 ASSIMILATION IN THE ROMANIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY ................................................... 262 THE PERILS OF FITTING IN: