This is the first annotated bibliography, in German or English, to gather the rich sources for German-language folk-music scholarship. It presents a comprehensive view of both historical and contemporary trends in a field embracing folkloristics and ethnomusicology, as well as philological and cultural studies. Beginning with early theories of folk song-formulated by Herder, Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, and others-the book examines the most important collections of the 19th-century folk-song movement, and surveys the 20th-century institutions and publications that have made folk-music scholarship essential to an understanding of German-speaking Europe. The book represents the enormous diversity of folk music. Ideas of genre and classification contrast with the ways in which minority and ethnic groups have contributed to the complex constructs of 19th- and 20th-century nationalism. The intellectual history in this book often takes the form of a clash between institutions and the forceful personalities of scholars who theorized that folk music was the product of individuals or the linguistic core of nations. Entries that illustrate the ways in which constructs of folk music have contributed to the politics of culture (e.g., in Nazi Germany or in the workers' culture of the former German Democratic Republic) also constitute the expansive musical landscape covered by this book The author includes diverse disciplinary perspectives, not just those of folklorists, but also concepts from ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and religious and cultural studies. In addition to traditional studies of the canons of German folk music (e.g., ballads and singing-society repertories), Bohlman includes studies of religious and ethnic minorities, and of German folk music in nations and regions outside Central Europe. The comprehensive nature of this book, not only makes available a rich history of scholarship, but also contextualizes Central European folk music as a vital and critical discipline for the interpretation of a changing Europe. Includes index.

This book takes a unique approach to the study of folk music in Central Europe. Through an analysis of this cultural tradition, and of how words and ideas that were first introduced in Latin Antiquity became increasingly cultivated, refined, and established in the centuries that followed, the volume also questions present-day studies of sound and its organization into the field of so-called 'folk music'. In so doing, it breaks down boundaries that separate historical studies from ethnomusicology, and sheds light on what music continues to mean in daily life. While the focus is primarily on Central European folk music, and in particular on material found in the Hungarian archives, the approach taken here also points to a fruitful comparative methodology that could be employed on a larger scale, enabling scholars to consider broader chronological and geographical contexts.

In Local Fusions, author Barbara Rose Lange explores musical life in Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria between the end of the Cold War and the world financial crisis of 2008. With case studies from Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna, the book looks at the ways that artists generated social commentary and tried new ways of working together as the political and economic atmosphere shifted during this time. Drawn from a variety of sources, the case studies illustrate how young musicians redefined a Central European history of elevating the arts by fusing poetry, local folk music, and other vernacular music with jazz, Asian music, art music, and electronic dance music. Their projects rejected exclusion based on ethnic background or gender prevalent in Central Europe's present far-right political movements, and instead embraced diverse modes of expression. Through this, the musicians asserted woman power, broadened masculinities, and declared affinity with regional minorities such as the Romani people.

The aim of this study is to increase understanding of folk music within an historical, European framework, and to show the genre as a dynamic and changing art form. The book addresses a plethora of questions through its detailed examination of a wide range of music from vastly different national and cultural identities. It attempts to elucidate the connections between, and the varying development of, the music of peoples throughout Europe, firstly by examining the ways in which scholars of different ideological and artistic ambitions have collected, studied and performed folk music, then by investigating the relationship between folk and popular music. Jan Ling is Professor of Musicology at Göteborg University, Sweden.

As a measure of individual and collective identity, music offers both striking metaphors and tangible data for understanding societies in transition--and nowhere is this clearer than in the recent case of the Eastern Bloc. Retuning Culture presents an extraordinary picture of this phenomenon. This pioneering set of studies traces the tumultuous and momentous shifts in the music cultures of Central and Eastern Europe from the first harbingers of change in the 1970s through the revolutionary period of 1989-90 to more recent developments. During the period of state socialism, both the reinterpretation of the folk music heritage and the domestication of Western forms of music offered ways to resist and redefine imposed identities. With the removal of state control and support, music was free to channel and to shape emerging forms of cultural identity. Stressing both continuity and disjuncture in a period of enormous social and cultural change, this volume focuses on the importance and evolution of traditional and popular musics in peasant communities and urban environments in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Written by longtime specialists in the region and considering both religious and secular trends, these essays examine music as a means of expressing diverse aesthetics and ideologies, participating in the formation of national identities, and strengthening ethnic affiliation. Retuning Culture provides a rich understanding of music's role at a particular cultural and historical moment. Its broad range of perspectives will attract readers with interests in cultural studies, music, and Central and Eastern Europe. Contributors. Michael Beckerman, Donna Buchanan, Anna Czekanowska, Judit Frigyesi, Barbara Rose Lange, Mirjana Lausevic, Theodore Levin, Margarita Mazo, Steluta Popa, Ljerka Vidic Rasmussen, Timothy Rice, Carol Silverman, Catherine Wanner

"[This book] is a contribution of considerable substance because it takes a holistic view of the field of folk music and the scholarship that has dealt with it." -- Bruno Nettl "... a praiseworthy combination of solid scholarship, penetrating discussion, and global relevance." -- Asian Folklore Studies "... successfully ties the history and development of folk music scholarship with contemporary concepts, issues, and shifts, and which treats varied folk musics of the world cultures within the rubric of folklore and ethnomusicology with subtle generalizations making sense to serious minds... " -- Folklore Forum "... [this book] challenges many carefully-nurtured sacred cows. Bohlman has executed an intellectual challenge of major significance by successfully organizing a welter of unruly data and ideas into a single, appropriately complex but coherent, system." -- Folk Music Journal Bohlman examines folk music as a genre of folklore from a broadly cross-cultural perspective and espouses a more expansive view of folk music, stressing its vitality in non-Western cultures as well as Western, in the present as well as the past.