Consequences of communist nationalism: Dacian Sanctuaries, Gods and Heroes in Romanian Music of the 1960s and 1980s

Abstract

It is about the impact of an idea promoted during the Ceaușescu regime, namely "thracology", which is the basis of the supposed antiquity of the Romanians of several thousand years. In the 1970s, an ideological offensive was launched, which among some historians and writers reached absurd, ridiculous heights because of the fabrication of hypotheses that could not be proven. All of them set up a myth of the Romanian people as a continuation of an ancient population, the Thracians, the Dacians being a branch of them. This demonstrated the uniqueness, the originality of the Romanians (the Romans who conquered Dacia were seen in a rather negative light, although they had also participated in the birth of the Romanian people). Musical compositions were aligned too, whether symphonies, operas, cantatas, chamber pieces, or rock albums and film music. Professor Valentina Sandu-Dediu will present some musical examples from the 1960s and 1980s that announce Dacian themes in their titles, in order to examine the composers' choices and their very different attitudes towards such themes.  


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