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The ‘System of National Cooperation’ hit factory: the aesthetic of Hungarian government-commissioned songs between 2010 and 2020

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2022

Emília Barna Open the ORCID record for Emília Barna [Opens in a new window]  and
Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják Open the ORCID record for Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják [Opens in a new window]
Emília Barna
Affiliation:
Budapest University of Technology and Economics Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják
Affiliation:
Budapest University of Technology and Economics Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between popular music and populism through three government-commissioned songs, produced for occasions of national remembering during the post-2010 Orbán regime in Hungary, namely ‘Barackfa’ (2013), ‘Egy szabad országért’ (2016) and ‘Hazám, hazám’ (2020). All three songs are one-off collaborations of artists representing various music genres. We ask, firstly, what aesthetic forms make these songs potentially suitable for the performance of national unity, solidarity and the ‘people’, and secondly, how the songs’ structure, production and dissemination can be interpreted as attempts by government commissioners and creators to gain popularity. Drawing on Ostiguy's performative approach to populism, combined with the notion of collective speculation and musical affordances, we identify three main strategies of constructing the ‘people’ in the songs: singing together as sound, legacy and practice; the pop ‘mega-event’; and the use of the folk music aesthetic as ‘mother tongue’.

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Popular Music , Volume 41 , Special Issue 3: Popular Music and Populism , October 2022 , pp. 333 - 353
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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