Introductory Remarks by Marko Kölbl and Fritz Trümpi After Donald Trump’s failed re‐election as President of the United States of America in fall 2020, the Republicans’ out‐of-the‐blue claims of “electoral fraud” is just one of countless warning signs: to varying extents and degrees, democracy is in great danger all over the world. Already in the early 2000s, Colin Croach noted …

Underground Music Reproduction and Distribution in the US and USSR, 1960s and 1970s Marsha Siefert   Abstract: This chapter takes a participatory approach to the reproduction of live music performance by looking at the history of “bootleg” sound recordings in two formations during the 1960s and 1970s. The first builds on the history of how opera lovers, mostly in concert …

Reproducing Narratives of Democratization in Music Streaming Debates Raphaël Nowak and Benjamin A. Morgan Abstract: At the turn of the 2020s, music is largely distributed and consumed via streaming services. This new “moment” in recorded music has attracted a lot of attention from scholars, with the aim of identifying the nature of transformations that are occurring at an economic and/or …

David Ferreiro Carballo Abstract: The Spanish National Society of Music was founded in 1915 with a double objective: first, to define, once and for all, the musical identity of the country; and second, to create a space where composers and musicians could develop their artistic careers. In this sense, both the society’s self‐denomination as “national,” and its apparent integrating nature …

A celebrazione verdiana Among Fascists Gabrielle Prud’homme Abstract: This chapter examines the political appropriation of Giuseppe Verdi in Fascist Italy through a study of the celebrations commemorating the fortieth anniversary of his death in 1941. More specifically, it provides an analysis of the Verdi Year through the lens of a landmark event held among fascist officials at the Academy of …

Popular Music and Political Liberalization in the Eastern Bloc Dean Vuletic Abstract: During the Cold War, Eastern Bloc broadcasting organizations held the Intervision Song Contest (ISC) as an alternative to Western Europe’s Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). Staged in Czechoslovakia and Poland between 1964 and 1980, the ISC has usually been depicted in the popular media as merely a belated, fleeting …

Eastern European Working‐class Cultures Mimicry in Contemporary Hardbass Ondřej Daniel Abstract: In this chapter, I discuss the contemporary developments of hardbass, a predominantly Eastern European electronic dance music style that emerged at the turn of the first decade of the twenty‐first century in Russia and spread to different countries of the region and beyond. Specifically, I focus on de‐politicized and commodified hardbass …

Rumya S. Putcha Abstract: This chapter exposes the role of expressive culture in the rise and spread of late twentieth‐century Hindu identity politics. The author examines how Hindu nationalism is fueled by affective logics that have crystallized around the female classical dancer and have situated her gendered and athletic body as a transnational emblem of an authentic Hindu and Indian …

Counterpublics, Citizenship, and Participatory Art Milena Dragićević Šešić and Julija Matejić Abstract: This paper explores subaltern cultural counterpublics in Serbia in the last three decades, through different forms of performative and participatory music activism: from radio activism, public noise, and performances in public spaces during the 1990s, to self‐organized choirs in the 2000s and 2010s. By referring to the concept …