Charting Post-Underground Nostalgia: Anachronistic Practices of the Post-Velvet Revolution Rock Scene

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F17%3A73583369" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/17:73583369 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Charting Post-Underground Nostalgia: Anachronistic Practices of the Post-Velvet Revolution Rock Scene

Original language description

The 1990s music scene in East-Central Europe has often been described as a melting pot of various genres wherein different official and unofficial musicians from the socialist era merged with all kinds of contemporary Western impulses. This begs the question: did all those new influences necessarily lead to a change of taste and expectations among audiences or even to a change in the music industry’s policies? In contrast to the popular narrative of the dynamic post-Velvet Revolution transformation of culture and society, this article offers a contrasting view of a particularly anachronistic tendency that unfolded during the transition, the mover of which was a conservative post-underground audience that longed much less for novelty than for continuity and survival of the cultural and aesthetic patterns of the normalization period. Following a case study of the Czech alternative rock band Psí vojáci (Dog Soldiers) and pointing out several paradoxes that framed and determined its musical production and reception, the goal of the essay is to examine the socio-cultural mechanisms underlying the anachronistic and nostalgic stance that substantially shaped the post-socialist music landscape. In doing so, it will also explain the role of the audience, the music industry, and journalists whose attitude led to a stereotypical branding of the band as an “underground legend,” a reduction that was only intensified by the business strategy of the band’s leading label, Indies Records. Drawing on the sociological approach to rock music and music industry studies, this study also exposes the contradictory nature of the anti-commercialism myth of alternative music culture.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60403 - Performing arts studies (Musicology, Theater science, Dramaturgy)

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Iluminace

ISSN

0862-397X

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

29

Issue of the periodical within the volume

3

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

22

Pages from-to

65-86

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85041424099