After Zhdanov: Jazz, Bartók, and Musical Modernism in János Maróthy’s Work

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
My talk forms part of the sociobiography being written of the music historian, critic, and sociologist János Maróthy (1925-2001). I will address the ideological and aesthetic turn in Hungarian musical life associated with de-Stalinization in the decade following the 1956 revolution, with an emphasis on the revalorization of jazz drawing on Maróthy’s key publications of the era. A former advocate of Zhdanovism arguing against jazz as degenerate, Maróthy adopted a new lens to view it as the folklore of the American proletariat. His argument competed with other approaches such as by János Gonda and András Pernye. Historically, jazz had faced significant resistance in a music culture holding fast onto its Hungarian and European roots and identity. (Think of the immense authority of Kodaly’s choral movement based in Hungarian folk and European art music.) How did a uniquely American genre recapture its niche as a site of cultural de-Stalinization? How was this struggle related to the reclaiming of Béla Bartók into the canon, whose early involvement with modernism had been condemned by the ideologues of socialist realism? And how, furthermore, was the promotion of jazz seen as a tool of self-expression for a potentially rebellious youth? Maróthy, without giving up entirely his adherence to the Soviet model of art and mass music played an outsize role in mediating between policy makers, academics, musicians and the larger public in this multifaceted shift away from socialist realism.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Anna Szemere obtained her PhD in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Her research and teaching interests are popular culture, the sociology of music, gender, and communist and postcommunist societies. Besides journal articles and book chapters, she is author of book Up from the Underground. The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary (Penn State 2001) and (with Andras Rónai) Bea Palya's I'll Be Your Plaything (Bloomsbury, 2022) She has taught university courses in the United States, Canada, and Hungary. Currently she works as a consultant for Bloomsbury Music and Sound Studies.