LAUSR

Europe, respectively, Stańczyk’s chapter on the appropriation of reggae in Poland and Mazierska’s chapter on the use of Balkan sounds and imagery to penetrate the Polish music market adapt the classic framework of orientalism to the complex, multidirectional dynamics of eastern Europe. Looking from eastern Europe to the west, however, the answer is more pessimistic and one-sided. At best, eastern Europe is a frontier—as in Aimar Ventsel’s chapter examining the region as the “punk frontier” (a fruitful concept meriting additional exploration). Seen from the west, it is eastern Europe that is orientalized—or even postcolonial (for instance, in Mariusz Gradowski’s postcolonial reading of Polish singer Czesław Niemen’s later career). Asymmetry between eastern and western Europe merits analysis, particularly given the resurgence of populist nationalism in the region. Zsolt Győri’s chapter offers a compelling case study, showing how the collision of west European capital, tourism, and mass marketing with local bands and audiences at the Sziget festival has increased tension between European liberalism and Hungarian nationalism. Slobodan Karamanić’s and Manuela Unverdorben’s analysis of “high” and “low” Balkan folk genres (also invoking orientalism) is more provocative, arguing that critiques of excessive nationalism in Balkan pop-folk stem from the class privilege of west European liberal elites. Examining eastern Europe’s peripherality with respect to western Europe is a productive but risky undertaking. If lenses like orientalism, postcolonial studies, or cultural imperialism are applied unidirectionally, they can feed into familiar narratives of east European victimization, with western Europe replacing the Soviet Union as the perpetrator. For the most part, however, Mazierska and Győri keep the politics of resurging nationalism from dominating the book’s subtler musicological contributions. Paradoxically for a book on transnational connections, perhaps its greatest strength is its authors’ ties to the scholarly conversations of their respective regions, bringing new debates, information, and approaches to the English language reader. As such, it is a useful resource for scholars of eastern European and of transnational popular music and culture.