ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the workings and internal contradictions of East German popular culture in the 1980s through a discussion of three songs, “Werkstattsong” (1981), “Die Gräfin” (1983), and “Halb und Halb” (1987), by the rock bands Pankow, Silly, and City, respectively. These East German bands negotiated and renegotiated their positions within the constraints imposed by the Communist Party while responding, at the same time, to pressure from the international entertainment and recording industries to project a clearly defined public identity. The bands’ strategies both reflected and influenced the identity strategies of the individuals and groups that made up their audience in East Germany. By examining this parallel, I hope to add to our knowledge of popular music’s role in constituting sociocultural groupings among those with contingent and transient sociopolitical identities. This interaction of band and audience occurred against a backdrop of the culture industries’ globalization on the one hand, and increased state suppression of potentially subversive cultural products on the other; in the course of this chapter, I bring to light the local resistance, accommodations, and adaptations that emerged in response to the pressures of globalization and question the state’s capacity to regulate the flow of cultural goods across borders.
