254, The Musical Underground * Note on quoted vulgarity in today’s talk and slideshow
Musical intro The Plastic People of the Universe: “Magické noci” (“In the magic night”)
By way of introduction
- Clay Shirky is a New Media scholar, he studies social networking, but he also has a great (and famous) quote about something else that will serve as a way of framing – at the level of human identity – the subject of today’s talk: the role of the musical underground under “normalization.”
- “All that stuff the elders said about rock n roll? Miscegenation [interracial marriage], teenagers running wild, the end of marriage? They pretty much nailed it.”
- We all, I think and hope, know that there is something radical about music, even classical music: it’s not just beautiful and moving, but liberating and freeing; music touches something in us that is pre-rational (although we can rationalize it later if we want to); it is about something primal in us that does not deal primarily or directly with politics (although it can be political).
- In other words, it’s not too much of a surprise that music could serve as a catalyst for a revolution (in whatever sense you want to see what happened in Czechoslovakia).
- Today we’ll tell that story – two separate and complementary stories actually, of the band the Plastic People of the Universe and of an organization called the Jazz Section.
- At the outset, we might point out that these stories represent an intersection of all three of Jonathan Bolton’s “reigning narratives” of dissent: the Helsinki narrative, the Parallel
Polis narrative, and the Ordinary People narrative.
1 - It is also a story that embodies the trajectory of dissent as we have been discussing it: from the level of personal identity through the pre-political, interpersonal, and cultural levels, to the level of politics; dissent may culminate in political engagement, but that doesn’t always happen and only comes at a later point – and the story of the musical underground in Czechoslovakia prior to 1989 makes that clear.
- Both of the groups that we’ll be looking at today – The Plastic People of the Universe and the Jazz Section – do come into open political conflict with the post-totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia, but this is not the intention of either group; the political part is rather a by-product of, to quote Havel’s “Power of the Powerless,” the “aims of life” at the personal and cultural levels coming into conflict with the “aims of the system” at the political level.
- This suggests that the earlier pre-political levels are as important as the ultimate political drama that the story culminates in.
Some background: literature on Western music in the Soviet Bloc
• This is a vibrant field of research, not limited to the Czechoslovak context.
- Timothy Ryback, Rock around the Bloc, 1990.
- Sabrina Ramet, Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and
Russia, 1994.
- These two early books looked at the topic primarily through the lens of Helsinki
Narrative: a cultural confrontation of East and West with the latter prevailing.
2 - Later research takes a more nuanced approach to the topic and looks at local context:
Western music didn’t mean exactly the same thing to Poles or Czechs, for instance, that it did for Brits or Americans.
- Note a recent collection of essays, including ones about the Polish context (which we won’t be discussing in the course): Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc, 2015.
• Very briefly set the stage with some context that I took from Ryback’s book:
- Spring 1964: Beatlemania hits.
- Ryback says that it “smashed through the Iron Curtain.”
- He notes the “hunger for rock ‘n’ roll in Soviet Bloc.”
• “Western rock culture has debunked Marxist-Leninist assumptions about the state’s ability to control its citizens.”
- So we’re already back to the Shirky quote and the sense that music liberates, music is radically subversive in some fundamental way.
• Before the Beatles, there was jazz.
- Ryback’s book details attempts to control jazz – that bourgeois, decadent music – as well as other kinds of music.
- We’ll come back to jazz in Czechoslovakia in the course of this lecture.
• “Rock music, despite the claims of Communist leaders, was, for Soviet and East
European youths, a visceral rather than political experience.”
3 - It was an escape from politics, about which they were utterly cynical.
- It was not a way of engaging in political activity, but a way of affirming themselves and finding themselves.
- We still think music (and art and poetry) in this way, don’t we?
• Two other curiosities in Ryback’s book.
- These aren’t the main part of the lecture today, but help set the scene:
• (1) Allen Ginsberg – the openly gay beat poet of the (in)famous long poem Howl (1955)
– spent two months in Prague in 1965 at the invitation of students from Charles
University; he gave readings, attended “happenings” and was eventually expelled from the country; Ginsberg later wrote of the experience: “I was arrested thrice in Prague, once for singing drunk on Narodni Street, once knocked down on the midnight pavement by a mustached police agent who screamed out “Buzerant! [Faggot!]”, once for losing my notebooks of unusual sex politics dreams opinions.”
- Has anyone read Howl or seen the 2010 experimental film (with James Franco)? Howl is interested because its publication becomes a political phenomenon in the US: in 1957, the publisher is put on trial for publishing an obscene book. The ACLU (what is that?), among other organizations, defends the publisher, and the judge rules against the state’s obscenity claim, which opens the door to freedom of speech in literary publications.
- This judicial drama in the US runs parallel to the Plastics’ story in the Czechoslovak context: they are eventually put on trial by the state for much the same reasons, although the judge doesn’t rule in their favor (indeed, there was no independent judiciary so that was never possible).
4 • 92) Ryback describes a concert given by the Rolling Stones in Warsaw in April 1967:
The first several rows were occupied by communist leaders and their families, and the
Stones took one look at them and told them to get the hell out of the concert and free up the seats for their real music fans – and they did. The concert was followed by riots.
• Our main subject today is The Plastic People of the Universe – henceforth to be known as the PPU.
• Ryback cites one of the PPU’s songs from 1973, the lyrics of which are:
Bring your kilo of paranoia into balance!
Throw off the horrible dictatorship!
Quickly! Live, drink, puke! The bottle, the Beat!
Shit in your hand!
• And then he juxtaposes this with an inspiring quote from the Czechoslovak official newspaper Rude pravo in 1975: “Our society will not tolerate any forms of hooliganism or public disorder, and quite naturally, will resist any moral filth and efforts to infect our youth with that which every decent man condemns and which harms the spiritual health of the young generation.”
PPU
• Their name…
- comes from the lyrics of a song by Frank Zappa’s band Mothers of Invention.
5 - The Plastics were originally formed – shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1968 – as a cover group to play music by the Velvet Underground and other Western bands (the
Doors, Captain Beefheart); at the start, they sang primarily in English.
• A musical sampling.
- Before we get to the details of the story – and how that story serves as an illustration of our pre-political approach to dissent – let’s listen to some of their music.
- We’ll discuss the song we heard just before the start of today’s talk and then listen to parts of two other songs and look at the lyrics.
- All three of these songs were based on poetry written by Egon Bondy, a man with a great name who was a banned writer under normalization. Someone who knows Bondy’s poetry well has described it as “awkward poetry that is magical in its awkwardness,” and we’ll perhaps see why.
• Magické noci. In the Magic Night
Magické noci In the magic night
Magické noci počal čas In the magic night time began Kocha snad z toho vezme ďas Koch will be in a devilish mood Magické noci počal čas In the magic night time began
My žijeme v Praze to je tam We live in Prague it is there Kde se jednou zjeví Duch sám Where the Spirit himself will appear My žijeme v Praze to je tam We live in Prague it is there
- Enigmatic lyrics: Koch was an underground poet and a friend of the Plastics, so there’s a shout-out to him in the second line (although it’s unclear why he’d be in a devilish mood).
6 - One music critic describes the sound of the Plastics as “the sound of a phantasm haunting the totalitarian imagination,” (totalitarianism becomes, in this view, not a political -ism but rather a state of mind!) and we can hear the phantasm part well here.
• Toxika. (50secs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y7qJ2G8BMQ
Toxika Toxics
Jsem obětí vázanosti I’m a victim of a dependence Toxikomanické Toxicomaniacal Mohlo by to býti ke zlosti It might be enough to make a saint swear Ale je to komické But it’s comical
Piju pivo žeru prášky I drink beer I gobble pills Stejně sotva usnout smím Still I can hardly sleep Ráno prodám prázdný flašky In the morning I sell empty bottles Julie mi helfne s tím Julie will help me with that
- The theme is serious but it’s approached playfully, which is a Czech artistic specialty
(we’ll see more of that when we watch the film Daisies).
- A music historian and critic writing about the Plastics said: “The Plastics‘ songs were generally surreal, psychedelic and black-humored — only one was openly political,” and it’s doubtful that you can call either song political.
• Zácpa. (start at 25secs, end at 1min 20secs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvKBP4_7G4
Constipation
Ach jak mě souží a trýzní Oh how it plagues and torments me Zácpa svou hroznou přízní Constipation with its terrible patronage
V břiše nosím tvrdej kámen I have a hard stone in my belly V měchýři mě pálí plamen A flame burns in my bladder
7 Střeva hnijou mi mám dojem My guts are rotting I think Nebo se spekou tím hnojem Or fusing together through rot
Plyny vycházej mi ústy Gases escape from my mouth Někdy taky roztok hustý At times also a thick spew
Ach mě souží a trýzní Oh how it plagues and torments me Zácpa svou hroznou přízní Constipation with its terrible patronage
- Of course one could interpret a song about constipation in political terms — it is arguably a good way of parodying the current US Congress — but that’s not the main point here.
- One critic wrote that the Plastics had a “talent for tapping into a generation’s collective despair,” and someone else wrote that the PPU “gave a whole generation a way toward self-realization.”
- These song perhaps illustrates how and why.
- There’s something about how music can do this: it doesn’t solve any problems, but it captures what we’re feeling, and that is somehow key for helping us feel better about it, we are somehow better positioned to take control over a troubling situation when we can connect to it at this emotional level.
- And maybe what this suggests is that a connection or understanding at a more primal level is often a necessary prerequisite for understanding – or ultimately problem-solving
– at a higher level like a political one.
Pictures
• The poet Egon Bondy is on the left.
8 • The original members of the Plastics (top photo from Dec 1968, bottom from Feb
1969):
- The leader of the band, Milan or Mejla Hlavsa, is on the far left in the first photo and second from the right in the second.
Ivan Jirous (Magor)
His nickname was Magor, and it means “crazy/loony or whacko.”
• The manager and muse of the PPU.
- He was also an art historian and art critic – an intellectual – who was connected to the dissident movement and knew something about politics (which the PPU didn’t).
- Kind of like the Czech Andy Warhol since Warhol acted as a muse to the Velvet
Underground.
- He was also the husband of the woman you read about in Making History last week,
Vera Jirousova, who also wrote some of the Plastics’ early lyrics.
• The second culture (eg, a special kind of Parallel Polis).
- in 1975, in response to a police crackdown prior to a music festival headlined by the
Plastics, Jirous wrote a manifesto titled “A Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival”
(I’ve uploaded it to our Canvas site) in which he said: “One of the highest aims of art has been the creation of unrest. The aim of the underground here in Bohemia is the creation of a second culture, a culture that will not be dependent on the official channels of communication, social recognition, and the hierarchy of values laid down by the establishment.”
9 - In the same manifesto, Jirous declares: “They don’t want us, and we don’t want them,” which encapsulates quite nicely the idea of a second or parallel polis that ignores the
“official culture” of the regime and goes it own way.
- Jirous went on to write: “They [the regime] have taken over the channels of communication and don’t want us to have access to them, so we must create our own channels and make use of those.”
- We might understand this idea of second culture or a parallel polis – as the dissident intellectuals came to understand it – as a nascent civil society.
- Magor believed that just expressing oneself, especially through art, could eventually undermine the totalitarian system if enough people did it.
- That is, in Havel’s terms, if enough people lived in truth, then the system itself would crack because it was really just a front, a house of cards. Given that it was “post- totalitarian,” it was also vulnerable since it depended on the complicity of large parts of the population.
• The Plastics’ “most imprisoned member”
- As a dissident intellectual, Magor was imprisoned 5 separate times during normalization.
• Magor on the PPU:
- He wrote about the band: “At the start of the band, they thought they could get by in a suffocating time with their apolitical, disengaged, mythological approach to the world – a world which the normalizing grayness had swallowed up like a swift plague.”
10 - So we see that the band was not political at its inception – an extraordinary thing, given that they were founded less than a month after the Soviet invasion – but was forced eventually to become so given the circumstances in which they worked.
More pictures
• Magor on left and another shot of the PPU on the right.
Another famous member of the band: Paul Wilson
• A Canadian living in Prague and studying Czech from 1967-1977.
• He eventually became – and remained – Havel’s main English translator.
• He joined the band through Magor and sang in English.
- Only in the early period.
- He was expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1977 for “dissident” activities.
• Wilson says that the PPU was really “the evolution of dissent – the cultural becoming political when it parts ways with officialdom trying to crush it.”
- About Magor: “He realized that one way of defeating the kind of stultification of communism was to do what you really wanted to do, regardless of what the regime wanted you to do. And playing the music you love – despite the pressure not to – was a very important principle in the way Jirous treated the band.”
11 More pictures
• Havel (direct center, bottom row) and Wilson (on the far right with white hair) at a
NYC premiere of a new translation of one of Havel’s plays.
• The band members playing ping-pong outside at Havel’s country home in 1983.
(Havel’s country house as locus of “second culture” activities for many in the dissident community.)
Chronology
• September 1968: formation.
• February 1969: first concert.
• April 1969: the band meets Magor.
• 1970: professional life becomes trickier.
- Their license to perform is revoked.
• September 1970: Paul Wilson joins.
• 1972: first major conflict with authorities.
• 1973: they start singing in Czech (Bondy).
• July 1973: another police incident, Jirous jailed for 10 months.
• June 1975: a wedding concert followed by police raid. Arrest but everyone released after two days.
• February-March 1976: Magor’s wedding. Mass arrests.
Havel’s “The Trial” (echoes of Kafka, idealized story of the trail to create a compelling imaginary space for dissent)
12 • July 1976
- It was a show trial with a predetermined, political ending.
- 18 musicians, including most of the Plastics, charged with “disturbing the peace.”
- Certain dissidents were able to attend the trial, including Havel.
• National and international attention.
• Plastics are vulgar hooligans…
- This was the judgment of the official press as they launched a scathing attack on the band members: essentially a smear campaign.
• The founding of Charter 77.
- The Plastics were the catalyst. We’ll hear more of this story on Thursday.
Quotes
• Hlavsa 1: no political ambitions. Dissidents in spite of themselves. “We just loved rock
‘n’ roll and wanted to be famous. All we did was pure intuition, no political notions or ambitions at all.”
• Hlavsa 2: Rock n roll in modern world. What about the West? Is rock the same or has it been thoroughly commercialized? Should we understand Indie music as a reaction to that? “Rock ‘n’ roll is the medium to express the situation of man in this world... We don’t do the music just for the sake of music, you have to be the author of your own life.”
13 • Brabenec (sax player): reminiscent of Havel’s East-West comparison… “I hate it when people talk about 1989 as a ‘revolution.’ A revolution is supposed to change things. But what has changed? I don’t consider myself any less subversive now than I was back then.
I am no less a dissident in a society of shopping, shopping, and shopping than I was in a society of socialism, socialism, and socialism. It’s all still shit only different shit. The
Communist Party, Nokia mobile phone party – what’s the fucking difference?... You must remember one thing above all others about this band and our so-called revolution: none of us ever got anywhere.”
The Jazz Section / Jazzová sekce
- This is something that deserves more discussion than we have time for here, but unfortunately there’s not a lot written about the JS that’s accessible in English.
• It was started in 1969 by jazz enthusiasts as a non-profit cultural group to promote jazz in Czechoslovakia.
- They wanted an officially recognized but independent organization but this wasn’t entirely possible in the context of normalization.
- Eventually they had to set it up as a sub-organization in the official Musicians’ Union, but its charter gave it a great deal of independence even as a subordinate group.
• Its leading figure was a man by the name of Karel Srp.
- Its initial activities included the printing of a bulletin for its membership and promotion or organization of concerts, classes, lectures on jazz.
- Later it expanded this to include publication of books on jazz (and other arts themes) as well as organizing the popular Prague Jazz Days – a jazz music festival.
14 • It got in trouble with the regime in the mid 1970s because it was too independent and allegedly had “undesirable” bands performing during the Jazz Days: it was true that the
Jazz Section pushed the limits of what was allowed, but it did not want to be an openly dissident – or political – organization and was very careful to distance itself from the so- called dissidents.
- Eventually the regime tried to dissolve the JS – that is, to get rid of its official status within the Musicians’ Union, and this is where things got interesting: the JS fought this process through legal action.
• From 1977 until 1986, it was often in court, challenging rulings that the regime would manufacture and using the legal code against the regime itself.
- They were committed to this approach to such an extent that when what would seem to be a final or definitive ruling went against them, they would ignore the ruling – and fight onward, taking a different legal tact; needless to say, this surprised the regime.
- The regime eventually had to shut down the whole Musicians’ Union in order to try to stop the JS as an official organization (kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater), but even this didn’t put a total stop to the organization because they fought the legality of that move, too.
- The end of the JS came in the mid-1980s when the regime raided the homes of its board of directors and arrested them; there was a show trial in 1986 that resulted in the imprisonment of Srp and others, but it caused an international outcry – the JS had been a member of the International Jazz Federation under UNESCO since 1978.
15 - Major Western celebrities spoke out against the show trial and organized benefit concerts for the JS: Kurt Vonnegut, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Wynton Marsalis, Bob
Geldof, Sting, Arthur Miller, etc.
• What then is the significance of the JS? Several points here:
1. Its membership was much more numerous than Charter 77’s (it had 8,000 or so members at its height).
2. It was an official organization that also engaged in “second culture” activities: there wasn’t a definitive line between what was legal and what was not, and the JS showed that it was possible to push the limits; in the words of one historian, the JS showed that a
“window of opportunity for social activism” was possible.
3. The regime was wedded to its legalistic alibi.
- It needed the law in order to justify its actions; as a historian writes: “With its strictly legal approach in the struggle with socialist authorities, the JS opened up a second front which it was no easy task to rupture.”
- Havel, in fact, talks about the legal system as a kind of alibi in “Power of the
Powerless,” which we didn’t make much of in our discussion of the essay, but…
- The story of the JS only confirms that Czechoslovak society was, in fact, a new type of totalitarian regime (ie, it was a “post-totalitarian” regime, one that took formal legal justifications seriously) – just like Havel argues in his famous essay.
Summing up
16 • The stories of the PPU and the JS combine the three reigning narratives of dissent (but in reverse order): Ordinary People, Parallel Polis or Second Culture, Helsinki.
- Ordinary people who wanted to do something personal and cultural (not political) who end up participating in and co-creating a parallel polis (second culture, musical underground) outside of the boundaries of the official system, who then come into political conflict with the regime and invoke the Helsinki accords in their defense.
• The musical underground is a case study in dissent as part of a trajectory. We clearly see the trajectory from personal through interpersonal/cultural to political. The political dimension is the culminating point of the trajectory.
• The stages of the trajectory prior to the political culmination matter.
- Our tendency is to privilege the political stage, but the political stage is grounded elsewhere.
• Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll”: we’ll revisit the theme of the musical underground as the culminating text for the Czechoslovakia part of the course.
Upcoming classes
• Tomorrow’s discussion section: Karel Gott as the Normalization superstar and then more with voices of dissent in Making History.
• Thursday: the (intertwined) story of Charter 77.
• Next Tuesday: two one-act and absurdist plays by Havel, written in 1975.
17