Here are some excerpts:
Guitars, keyboards and drums did not topple the Berlin Wall. But for the young people who helped bring down Communist regimes across Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989, pop music was a profoundly subversive force, inspiration and vital tool of protest for challenging and undermining a totalitarian state stricter than any parent.
"There was a cultural opposition, a movement all over Eastern Europe, an underground network," said Peter Sziami Müller, one of three lead singers of Kontroll Csoport, which was founded in 1980. "We all wanted to bring together those who belonged together, and to liberate the soul." The reward, said the saxophonist Arpad Hajnoczy, was to be officially labeled an "ultra-right-wing group" and "always have a white Lada at the corner, watching and following us."
When change finally came late in 1989, it was swift and full of surprises. "In the course of a single day, Dec. 22, 1989, we went from being underground to mainstream," said Adrian Plesca, lead singer of the new-wave Romanian band Timpuri Noi, referring to the day the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu collapsed. "The same guys remained in charge of the state cultural apparatus," Mr. Plesca said, so to prove their democratic bona fides in the new political context, "they asked, 'Who do we have around here who is anti-Communist?,' which turned out to be us."
But those euphoric new times, which is what Timpuri Noi means in Romanian, eventually faded. One of Timpuri Noi's biggest post-1989 hits, "Victory," contains these lyrics: "I ask myself if I see any change/ I'm asking you if there's any change/ in the people around." Dezerter continues to perform a 1987 song called "Swindle," which rages that "A new swindle is prepared/ Again they want to get into your head."
In a way, some of the musicians said, the situation has come full circle. As in the 1980s, they can no longer get their music played on the air, not because of government censors but because their countries are now so fully integrated into the global pop machine that stations prefer to play the same Britney Spears and Beyoncé songs and MTV videos as everyone else.
Yet the musicians and their fans continue to believe in the transformative power of music. At the New School event audience members from countries still under oppressive rule, like Iran and Cuba, asked the Eastern Europeans what they learned from the 1980s and what strategies they would recommend.
"I continue to say that 1989 was a miracle," Mr. Kascak said. "I fully expected to have to live the rest of my life under Communism, unable to travel or play as a professional. I don't care about the radio. I feel free now. If you were to have told me 20 years ago that in 2009 I would be playing in New York, I would have told you that you needed a psychiatrist."
Ever heard of Gorki Aguila?
If not, you should.
By the way, Happy Birthday Gorki!
