Cultural alternatives, youth and grassroots resistance in socialist Hungary — The folk dance and music revival

Abstract

The paper aims to look at those community-organizing phenomena that provided alternatives to officially supported, mandatory youth activities and played a vital role in the everyday life of young people in socialist Hungary in the 1970s and 80s. The urban folk dance and music revival, the so-called tanchaz (dance house) movement, is highlighted. The authors argue that the dance house as a subculture with its concept of “authenticity” was able to create common identity with the intrinsic notion of oppositional stance. Parallels are drawn between sports, rock music, literature and the dance house. The process of disintegration and folkloristic discovery of traditional peasant culture in Hungary and in Transylvania, communist peasant policy, and the connections between cities and villages are discussed alongside the phenomena of revival and issues of identity.