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Revisiting State Socialism VI. Dance music as a metaphor for socialist acceleration in Romania in the 1960s and 1980s.

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On 15 March, at 19:00, the sixth edition of the project "Revisiting State Socialism" took place with the title "Dance music as a metaphor for socialist acceleration in Romania in the 60s and 80s". The guests were Paul Breazu and Mihai Lukács, and the meeting was moderated by Ștefan Baghiu.

Socialist time was perceived in the late 1960s as accelerated, no longer corresponding to a linear flow, the sound of factory production being associated with new music that was beginning to incorporate electronic sound. In the following decades, Romanian pop, light and electronic music grew in parallel with the new industrialization and development at speed, becoming a soundtrack of the new material conditions of late socialism. Romanian pop ("light") music branched out in new directions in the early 1970s, and its social character gained momentum for creators and the general public. Composer and music historian Laurențiu Profeta noted in 1976 the emergence of militant light music songs in the later years, many of which became slams, reaching a much wider audience. Seen as a result of the party's ideological programme, which left no artistic sector untouched, social-political light music songs became imposed themselves authoritatively. Socialism was not just an economic project, but a complex that encompassed political, social, cultural and artistic dimensions, so the systemic projection onto a pop sub-genre like dance music was not left to chance.

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