Introduction

The introduction defines “political action” and “solidarity” theoretically, as frameworks for organizing and dispersing the relationship between music and protest. It also introduces the Polish opposition to state socialism, giving an overview of the political agents (activists, critics, citizens, priests, bureaucrats, Party members, journalists) who are the main protagonists of this history and who guide the musics and scenes upon which the book focuses. One cabaret anthem, Jan Pietrzak’s “So That Poland Will Be Poland,” serves as an orientation point. The song’s text, key performances in Warsaw, and use by the US Information Agency for propaganda give insight into national and international perspectives on the Solidarity movement and its historiography from the 1980s into the present.

Chorus

The chapter presents the history of one patriotic and Catholic hymn, “God Save Poland” (1816), to take a long historical view and gesture toward the real power of imagined musical solidarity. The hymn was ubiquitous in Poland in the 1980s and exemplifies the saturation of symbols at the heart of Solidarity’s nationalist enterprise, even showing this nationalism to be driven by song. A performance history of the song reveals its constant position as both a hymn of Polish Catholicism and a galvanizing refrain at the secularized scenes of popular uprisings. At times the song has challenged Catholicism as normative for Polish identity, at times confirmed it. Collective song’s communicative power is also articulated in Krzysztof Meyer’s Polish Symphony (1982). The symphony, like other art music examples across Musical Solidarities, suggests that, despite their abnegation of political entanglement, composers, too, joined in the core musical strategies of the opposition.

Megaphone

This chapter examines the sonic amplification of some of the opposition’s most charismatic leaders. Through Solidarity’s decade, speeches and ceremonies on public stages shaped a broad audience. In December 1980 a monument was unveiled to commemorate a violently squelched 1970 protest. The playback of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Lacrimosa (1980) over loudspeakers at this event is contextualized with the Party’s relationship to Penderecki and the composer as a public figure. The 1970 protest also unfolds across interpretations of a ballad, “Janek Wiśniewski Fell.” This vernacular song’s use in leftist media, in films, and within electronic music opens up a discussion of trauma, memory, and place in counterpoint to the commemorative work done at the unveiling. The chapter concludes with a musical study of Lech Wałęsa through media networks. His charisma invigorated Joan Baez, who wrote songs for him and traveled to Gdańsk to perform for the opposition.

Voice

The symbols and rituals of Polish Catholicism structured much of the opposition’s work and discourse. When one cherished leader, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, was violently murdered by the Security Service in late 1984, he became a martyr for the opposition across religious differences. The chapter presents a media archaeology of his voice to suggest that the priest’s power lies at the nexus of sound technology, sound theology, and sound musicology. Historical recordings offer intimate access to his sermons and Polish-language chant and intimate recollections of his person. His murder was commemorated in compositions by Krzysztof Knittel, Andrzej Panufnik, and Muslimgauze. The analysis of his voice also unpacks his 1984 burial through ethnographic encounter at the 2009 reenactment of his funeral. The portrait sprawls and shows how the opposition, as a media assemblage, was concerned with bodily vulnerability.

Protest

Successful nonviolent protests are the celebrated theaters of musical politics; the same is true for the month of protests that brought about the legalization of the Solidarity Union, the first independent trade union in the Eastern bloc. This chapter takes the reader into the important role that sound media played both in coordinating efforts on the ground and in narrating the August 1980 strikes’ power to a broader public in Poland and abroad. Written and recorded accounts of the protest scenes show sound’s coordinating power and music’s entertainment value for this occupational strike. The charismatic workers’ representative Lech Wałęsa sang at the negotiating table, bringing music to the political stage. The chapter also critiques romantic notions of music and protest to dwell on questions of authorship and agency by tracing the rise of the opposition’s protest anthem, “Walls” (1978), by singer-songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski.

Silence

This chapter offers a history of martial law (1981–84) in Poland to argue that music was a mode of civil resilience as well as a crucial means of conveying information and writing histories from below. The declaration of martial law brought about economic hardship and the curtailment of civil liberties, but also stimulated music making in three zones: public streets, church sanctuaries and private homes, and internment camps/prisons. This chapter revisits oral histories and diaries from the time to rehear the interplay between singing and military sounds during protests against the declaration. Experimental scores, concert programs, and observational songs played in domestic salons complicate the assumption that martial law effected a cultural hold—a metaphorical silence. The material culture of music in detention reveals that song—religious hymns, ballads, and legion songs—provided internees and prisoners the opportunity to reclaim authorship over their own histories.

Sound

Chapter 1 lays out the tension between ideas about music’s political efficacy and the productive work that sound did for the opposition in Poland. Within the intellectual community that shaped much of dissident culture, poets, filmmakers, and actors were more engaged with politics than composers and musical performers. To understand the logic behind claims that music was less politically meaningful, the chapter compares the Communist Party’s policies toward music with those debated in the oppositional journal Independent Culture. In contrast, the opposition’s cassette culture circumvented the Censorship Bureau and stumped secret police surveillance, revealing the powerful political potential of sound. Its founders were invested in tape contra print as well as cassettes’ transnational distribution and alternative economies. Listening to these cassettes as sounding artifacts reveals diverse repertories and creative editing techniques that belie the assumption that music was politically impotent for the opposition.