In the 1980s Jarocin a small town in Greater Poland earned the status of the capital of Polish rock music thanks to the famous Rock Musicians’ Festival. There are two legends related to the festival: a golden one, according to which the festival was an oasis of freedom amidst the hostile communist regime, and the black one, which denounces the festival as a vent directing youth’s energy into harmless festival enjoyment that secured communists’ stable hold of power.
The controversies over the role of the festival cause the emotions to run high even today, while the event still continues to attract thousands of rock fans, even in spite of its collapse and suspension in the 1990s, and numerous setbacks during attempts to reactivate it in the new millennium. The prevailing legend of Jarocin motived local officials and social activists to create an institution that would tell the story of rock music in Poland, and answer to the demands of fans visiting the city. The Polish Rock Granary, established on the 17th July 2014 as a branch of the Regional Museum in Jarocin, became such an institution.
The name takes after the function of the building, in which the institution is located, i.e. an old granary set in the historical centre of the city. The historical building, which used to hold a furniture shop, was thoroughly renovated – with its architectural values restored and its interior adapted to museum purposes The name also has a metaphorical meaning: Polish Rock Granary collects and stores archive materials related to rock music and presents the history of this music genre.The Granary is not supposed to be a hall of memory, but a site, i.e. meetings, discussions, and concerts in the café on the ground floor. Apart from the permanent exhibition, the Granary hosts temporary exhibitions, and as an institution, is highly involved in educational activities, especially aimed at school pupils.
The exhibition, developed by Robert Jarosz and Leszek Gnoiński, tells the story of Polish rock since the foundation of the Rythm and Blues band in 1959 until today. The narrative of the exhibition is set both chronologically and by subjects; there are separate sections dedicated to the contribution of women to rock music, music underground of the 1960s, the 1980s phenomenon of Tricity Alternative Scene (Trójmiejska Scena Alternatywna), and song lyrics. Significant part of the exhibition is dedicated to the history of rock in Jarocin: starting with the Greater Poland’s Rhythms of the Youth, a regional music event that started in 1970, and was replaced in the 1980 by the All-Polish Festival of Music of Young Generation in Jarocin, which after several years was renamed to Rock Musicians’ Festival – a name under which it functioned until the end of communist rule.
The exhibition relies on multimedia, offering hundreds of photographs and audio recordings. It also presents documentaries on Polish rock prepared especially for the Granary. The collection also features dozens of items donated by musicians and citizens of Jarocin, from musical instruments, stage clothes, and diplomas to badges, tickets, posters, festival id cards, and photographs. Moreover, while preparing the collection the workers of the Regional Museum found several dozens of boxes with the documentation of Jarocin festivals from the 1980s and early 1990s, stored at the Jarocin Culture Centre. As it turned out, the documents included original lyrics of i.a. T. Love, Siekiera, Madame, Made in Poland, Izrael, Moskwa from the 1984 edition of the festival with stamps issued by the Main Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Public Performances and, in some cases, with censors’ handwritten alterations (e.g. some parts of the song titled Wychowanie (the Upbringing) by T. Love were crossed out). These documents were also added to the exhibition.
The exhibition at the Granary is merely a fraction of the constantly expanding collection of the Polish Rock Granary. Its storage holds thousands of documents, photographs, memorabilia and other items donated by rock fans from all across the country.
The opening of the Granary was preceded by an open air exhibition focused on the 30 years of festivals in Jarocin, presented in 2010 in Jarocin and subsequently in other cities. It featured i.a. archive photographs by Michał Wasążnik and Jacek Awakumowski.
Rock music of the socialist era can hardly be considered an opposition or anti-state act, simply by the fact that it functioned within the music industry and according to the same rules as any other music genre. Greater Poland’s Rhythms of the Youth were one of many regional music events of the 1970s, while the Festival of Music of Young Generation was conceived as a marketing stunt of industrious managers and music journalists. Rock was subjected to censorship and cultural policy constraints. In the days of secretary Gomułka, rock music was permitted in an attempt to draw the young away from the Church, whilst in the first half of the 1980s – to introduce normalisation after the martial law. As in the case of the entire entertainment sector, rock was expected to be profitable; rock music of the 1980s perfectly reflects the increasingly neoliberal, free-market trends in Polish music industry.
Nonetheless, since the very beginning of its existence, rock music served as a vehicle for dissent and rebellion against the authorities. This is especially true for punk music – a famous element of the Rock Musicians’ Festival in Jarocin. In the 1960s rock'n'roll bands faced with heavy criticism and even such legendary performers as Czesław Niemen came under attack. The music was reproached as “noisy”, same as having long hair, and adopting American, capitalist patterns of behaviour. The music underground, with such bands as Romuald i Roman, Zdrój Jana (Jan’s Source), Nurt (The Current), 74 Grupa Biednych (74 The Poors’ Group) and Grupa w Składzie (The Group Featuring), constituted a completely marginalised phenomenon, appreciated only by music connoisseurs, young avant-garde artist and hippies. In the following decade rock music was pushed even further away from the mainstream by disco and popular music, which better fitted the governmental propaganda of progress and prosperity.
In the 1980s, in the background of the mainstream rock, represented i.a. by Maanam, Perfect, Oddział Zamknięty, Lady Pank, and TSA, the alternative music landscape flourished, with bands playing punk, new wave, cold wave, reggae and ska. Among them were: Brygada Kryzys, WC, Dzieci Kapitana Klossa (The Children of Captain Kloss), Wielkanoc, One Million Bulgarians, Klaus Mitffoch, Miki Mousoleum, Dezerter, Izrael, Siekiera (The Axe), 1984 and dozens more. These bands functioned in the third circuit and rarely saw official releases. Much more frequently their works were published on home-made cassettes, and were discussed in fanzines rather than in music magazines. The unique status of Jarocin festival stemmed from the fact that it featured numerous of these representatives of the third circuit, and even if they had their lyrics reviewed by the censorship office before the gig, they would still sing the uncensored versions on stage – usually without any negative consequences. On the other hand, more critical alternative musicians distanced themselves from Jarocin festival, arguing that it served as a tool for the authorities to exercise control over the rebelling youth. The paradox of rock music in Polish People's Republic is well reflected in the case of the famous “black album” of the punk band Brygada Kryzys, which was published in 1982, i.e. during the martial law, by Tonpress, a company owned by the Polish United Workers’ Party. Tonpress specialised in entertainment music and published large part of rock albums recorded under the communist rule.
Sources:
Wasążnik Michał, Jarosz Robert, Generacja, Korporacja ha!art, Trasa W-Z, Warszawa 2010.
Mazierska Ewa (red.), Popular Music in Eastern Europe. Breaking the Cold War Paradigm, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016.
Makowski Mirosław, Szymański Michał, Obok albo ile procent Babilonu?, Manufaktura Legenda, Katowice 2010.
Lesiakowski Krzysztof, Perzyna Paweł, Toborek Tomasz, Jarocin w obiektywie bezpieki, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2004.
Idzikowska-Czubaj Anna, Rock w PRL-u. O paradoksach współistnienia, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań 2011.
Bittner Karolina, Partia z piosenką, piosenka z partią. PZPR wobec muzyki rozrywkowej, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2017.
