Project Details
Projekt
From 'popular‘ to ‚populär‘ and back - the European folk revival from the 1950s to the 1970s from a transnational and transregional perspective
Applicant
Professor Dr. Clemens Zimmermann
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 285228642
The project aims to analyze the processes of cultural transfers and entanglements in the Western European folk music movement between the mid 1950s and the late 1970s. It will focus on the developments stimulated by the US-folkrevival as well as on the inter-european processes of exchange and appropriation, especially on the regional level.More than in other genres of popular music these processes differ in the case of folk music on national and regional level after a period of imitation of the American model. That is the result of a very different approach in the European countries and regions to their own popular musical culture but also of the differences in the social, cultural and media history.Researching the musical practice, the medial aspects, the interpersonal relationships, the spatial localizations, the economic importance, which include also structures of alternative economies resulting from the critical attitude towards consumption, can give insights in the history of the appropriation of a global historical process and in ways of European cultural cooperations and convergences in regional different manners.Like all revivals of folk music traditions in the past the folk revival of the 50s, 60s and 70s was related to social and political movements: from the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the beginning to the regionalist and ecological movements of the 70s. That implies not only the question how these political ambitions are reflected in the musical and social practice of the folk revival but leads also to a lot of differentiation in the „folk scene“ which often was the consequence of debates about the „right way“ and about positioning folk music in the development of mainstream pop.
DFG Programme
Research Units
