Local Fusions Folk Music Experiments in Central Europe at the Millennium

In Local Fusions, author Barbara Rose Lange explores musical life in Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria between the end of the Cold War and the world financial crisis of 2008. With case studies from Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna, the book looks at the ways that artists generated social commentary and tried new ways of working together as the political and economic atmosphere shifted during this time. Drawn from a variety of sources, the case studies illustrate how young musicians redefined a Central European history of elevating the arts by fusing poetry, local folk music, and other vernacular music with jazz, Asian music, art music, and electronic dance music. Their projects rejected exclusion based on ethnic background or gender prevalent in Central Europe's present far-right political movements, and instead embraced diverse modes of expression. Through this, the musicians asserted woman power, broadened masculinities, and declared affinity with regional minorities such as the Romani people.

Barbara Rose Lange is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston. She writes about folk and popular music in Central Europe, especially the art of the Romani (Gypsy) people. She is author of Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church (Oxford, 2003).