Utopianism, activism and networks: insights into the early work of János Maróthy

Abstract This article explores the relationships between utopianism, activism and networks in the early career of the Hungarian musicologist János Maróthy (1925–2001). A prolific author of pioneering work on the social history of European peasant and urban folk songs from the antiquity to the modern era, Maróthy is noteworthy for establishing academic research of popular music in Hungary, both preceding and contributing to the emergence of new musicology and popular music studies in European and Anglo-American academia at the turn of the 1980s. Maróthy mediated between various grassroots movements and the party state's institutions and was a participant observer of various off-the-mainstream music-related scenes formed in Romani workers’ hostels and jazz clubs. His Department of Music Sociology (at the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) conducted and commissioned research on the local history of workers’ songs, urban folklore, empirical studies of musical taste, and the social life and institutions of youth music. This article offers a critical overview of Maróthy's career from its onset in 1948 up to the mid-1960s. This turbulent period witnessed the most repressive years of Stalinism, the anti-Soviet revolution of 1956, its defeat, and the gradual consolidation of a more liberal Kádár-led regime. It examines how changing political and intellectual trends, ideologies and national and supranational realignments within the Soviet Bloc (and beyond) shaped the forms and meanings of Maróthy's multi-faceted activism, along with his shifting ideas about the relationships between music, political movements and entertainment.