A Look Back on Music Long Ago and Far Away

We may be used to our style of pop music, but the entire genre caused
controversy in a place you probably haven’t thought a lot about - Socialist Poland.
By Edward Vaughn
Jan. 19, 2021

In the 1940s and 50s, Poland was probably not the first place stars like Elvis and Chuck Berry
thought of as they wrote their music. Nevertheless, pop music found its way into Poland during
the peak of the communist state, where it was treated with uncertainty and caution. Many
musicologists were unwilling to have anything to do with the ‘ruling system’ (which was of
course, at the time, communist) and instead focused on music that didn’t represent as many
ideological values as the new Rock n’ Roll. In fact, many polish musicologists avoided writing
their papers on pop music almost until the 21st century. Surprisingly, all this is likely due to one
person - prominent polish musicologist Zofia Lissa.

Lissa was a particularly prolific author, and was by all

means a Marxist, titling her works things like ‘Some
aspects of musical aesthetics in light of articles by
Joseph Stalin on Marxism in linguistics’ - not a very 1

subtle approach. These two facts combined, and - in the

minds of polish musicologists - connected the ideas of
communism and popular music. Not wanting to be
accused of supporting a communist government, many
simply avoided the subject altogether. However, if we
take a look at Lissa’s actual writings, it appears that this
wasn’t her goal. Instead, it looks like she was truly fascinated with the emergence of this new
musical genre. Throughout her works, Lissa defends popular music from many of the criticisms
it had at the time (such as being banal and primitive), and describes it as being easier and more
enjoyable to listen to than artistic music. She was also a proponent of using pop music as an
educational tool, in order to introduce music to those in the working class and uplift them to
higher levels of music.

Lissa’s influence spread far throughout academic texts, even reaching some western authors.
Though many have relegated her to the confines of her era, her contributions (at least to Polish
musicology) are still considered by many academics to be invaluable.

1
Piotrowska, Anna G. “Zofia Lissa on Popular Music or How the Influence of Marxist Ideology Impacted the Research on Pop Music in Socialist
Poland.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol. 51, no. 1, 2020, pp. 101–120. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26932568.
Accessed 20 Jan. 2021.