Not every reader will agree that post-socialist Slovakia and Hungary as opposed to Austria share sufficient commonality to justify the joint discussion of their modern folk music culture under the regional marker ‘Central Europe’. In her book Lange, however, makes a compelling case as to why a set of factors such as shared historical and cultural traditions dating back to the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, contemporary neoliberal capitalism, and the unsavory nexus between local folk music and resurgent nationalism afford meaningful comparisons between the musical landscapes of three capitals in the region (Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna) in the period between 1989 – the fall of the Berlin Wall – and 2008 marking the onset of the global economic crisis.
Precisely owing to the relatively uncommon practice of treating Central Europe as a geopolitical and cultural entity, Lange places much emphasis on theoretically framing the nine case studies. Whereas this era was relatively prosperous, neoliberalism and its cultural ramifications presupposed and necessitated all Central European musical actors’ flexibility, efficiency and willingness to migrate – in sum, to be resilient in the face of uncertainties deriving from short-term sponsorships and market fluctuations. Economic challenges and the musicians’ respective mindset affected the size and nature of public attention garnered as exemplified by the Hungarian Ferenc Kiss's 1999 album Outlaws of the City, and shaped the gamut of genres, illustrated by the singer Ági Szalóki dabbling in folk singing, jazz, torch song and children's music. Also, the Slovakian revivalist group Banda could have exerted more consistent critique of the antiquated state-sponsored scenic folklore had they enjoyed more financial autonomy.
In terms of aesthetic ideologies, the considerable, although far from untarnished, respect for high culture (‘Kultur’) is a powerful connecting tissue of central European music worlds. Importantly, ‘Kultur’, as Lange points out, is not institutionally defined but rather tied up with the alleged seriousness and authenticity of particular cultural scenes, artists and artefacts. Evidently, large educational and canon-forming musical institutions have contributed to the prevalence of such stratification. Yet this state of affairs, I would contend, has broader roots, encompassing the whole of eastern Europe and Russia where (neo)avant garde and conceptual art often allied with (‘serious’) rock culture.
Almost all the musicians studied in this book had close ties to autonomous art forms. Bratislava's chamber ensemble Požoň sentimentál engaging in American minimalism, the all-female Viennese quartet Netnakisum using their art musical capital to reinvent Alpine folk music with elements of punk and the Hungarian Bea Palya, the singer-songwriter along with her producer Samu Gryllus joining a line of prominent local folk revivalists in setting music to poetry represent but a few examples. In particular, the Hungarian scene may have inspired the author to brand this kind of ‘serious’ popular music as poetic nationalist, a term coined by media theorist Anikó Imre (Imre, Reference Imre2009, pp. 170–5). Intended to capture a specific feature of Central Europe's expressive culture as a whole, poetic nationalism refers to characteristics such as high cultural competence, counterhegemonic sensibilities, the free and playful incorporation of popular and folk idioms, and significantly, the critique of ‘monoethnic nationalism’. Even though hidden in Lange's text are some sporadic references to the feminist critique of poetic nationalism for its exclusion of women's and minority’ voices, neither the explication nor the application of the concept in her case studies is entirely persuasive. Being a highly charged signifier, ‘nationalism’ sits poorly both with the multiculturalist and the gender-critical facets which she so finely highlighted in the musicians’ practices.
If poetic nationalism may be viewed as an inherently problematic concept, the artefacts thus classified pose special difficulties for the analyst not intimately familiar with the broader aesthetic tradition they are embedded in. While Lange excels in unpacking the multiple layers of the musical interpretation by Palya and Gryllus of the late 20th century literary work Psyché by Sándor Weöres, her readings of Kiss's musico-lyrical compositions evoking other icons like Endre Ady and Gyula Krúdy are less successful. Part of the problem is that some of the quoted lines have lost their bite in translation. In the song ‘Good Old Days’ (Outlaws of the City) the phrase ‘our abandoned lovers, our pretty wives’ was mistranslated as ‘our dear, pretty and neglected wives’; in the next stanza one reads: ‘If we fell down we got up and started again/Drinking wine, hugging again’, whereas the original version is far more scathing: ‘Drinking wine, hugging, and killing again’ (italics by me, A.S.).
These flaws are amply redeemed by the wealth of insight and rich compendium of ethnographic data that Local Fusions offers. Lange's detailed and superbly contextualised musical portrayals include fine-grained textual readings and depictions of musicians’ projects and trajectories, their entrepreneurial and aesthetic choices, and the manner in which their gender and ethnic identities shaped their opportunities, accomplishments and reception by local audiences. Some analyses stand out with their vividness such as where she addresses the gender dynamics at play in the ‘buffet’ of folk music venues treated as the Goffmanian ‘backstage’ where male musicians kept drinking and networking long into the night, while the women left to take care of children at home. Also, the chapter about Bratislava feeding the group Požoň sentimentál's imagination, dialogic humour and respect for an erased past is a forceful argument about the reparative uses of nostalgia. Of special value are the last two chapters dedicated to electronic folk musical experiments and the networked music business as well as to the locally specific responses to cultural appropriation. Overall, Local Fusions is an important and valuable contribution to the post-Cold War sociological study of music and the ethnomusicology of a rapidly changing Europe.
