Translation, Adaptation, and Intertextuality in Hungarian Popular Music

Abstract

This volume undertakes a comprehensive examination of issues of translation, adaptation, and intertextuality in Hungarian popular music. Focusing on the period of state socialism, the authors provide various examples of how musicians – professionals and amateurs alike – borrowed songs from distant times and places, reinventing them in a new political, technological, and esthetic environment. The case studies deal with a wide range of genres and styles that played an important role in Hungary, such as operetta, protest song, folk, jazz, pop, and rock. Placing the Hungarian experience in a regional context, the collection also gives insight into the music scenes of the neighboring countries through a major comparative study on the Beatles adaptations in the Eastern Bloc.