(video source whatiship73)
It was my birth today and I am 58 now. I cannot however forget another June 27, 41 years ago. In 1970 in Bucharest, Romania, Blood, Sweat & Tears were on a ‘good will’ tour during the short period of relative freedom during the Communist rule. The concert took place in a skating ring arena which was not used during the summer, and we hear many of the hits of the band that were familiar to us from Cornel Chiriac‘s Metronon broadcasts at Radio Free Europe – Spinning Wheel, And When I Die, Sometimes in Winter. At the end of the concert after a few encores the band left, but we, part of the young folks in the audience stayed shouting ‘we want more’ and then ‘USA’. The police entered with police dogs and dragged us out. That was my first taste of police brutality and repression under Communist dictatorship, a great lesson on my 17th birthday, a lesson that I never forgot.
(video source whatiship73)
Happy birthday! I will never forget the image USA had in the Socialist Republic of Romania. It was the absolute El-Dorado, the Land of the free, the promissed- land. For us, the kids, it was hard to imagine the quality and quantity of life. And the colours of America puzzeled us. We lived in a coulorless country dominated by the grey…
Thanks, Codrut. You are so right. BTW – I appreciate your cycle of articles on filme-carti.ro about the ‘road-companion’ writers and their awakening at the contact with the Communist paradise. I hope that one day these chronicles will be gathered in a book – it’s a territory little explored by historians and literary critics.
Happy birthday, Dan!
Have you seen Time Stands Still, about a similar coming of age in 1950s Hungary?
That story, and yours, makes me hopeful when I hear about kids with garage bands in Iran…
Thanks, David! Yes, music can bring people together, music can be subversive for repressive rulers, and no wonder that dictatorships fear it and try to block access of their young people to the music of their time. You may want to read also my post on a great documentary about the role of music in the fall of Communism – https://romascanu.net//documentary/documentary-how-the-beatles-rocked-the-kremlin-2009/