Protest

Successful nonviolent protests are the celebrated theaters of musical politics; the same is true for the month of protests that brought about the legalization of the Solidarity Union, the first independent trade union in the Eastern bloc. This chapter takes the reader into the important role that sound media played both in coordinating efforts on the ground and in narrating the August 1980 strikes’ power to a broader public in Poland and abroad. Written and recorded accounts of the protest scenes show sound’s coordinating power and music’s entertainment value for this occupational strike. The charismatic workers’ representative Lech Wałęsa sang at the negotiating table, bringing music to the political stage. The chapter also critiques romantic notions of music and protest to dwell on questions of authorship and agency by tracing the rise of the opposition’s protest anthem, “Walls” (1978), by singer-songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski.