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The year 1968 is a symbol of social and protest movements with global reverberations, centered, primarily, in the United States and western Europe. No less importantly, 1968 has been linked to the Prague Spring's promise of a renewal of socialism “with a human face.” “1968” witnessed the climax of revolutionary upheaval and societal reform efforts. In this paper, I will focus on some salient and unique features of the “sixties” through the rear-view mirror of a Hungarian popular musical album that memorialized it. The choice of addressing a time and place via popular music rests on the assumption that in the memory work of the “imagined community” of a generation, the experiences and “truths” of an era are constructed in and through significant cultural texts. These texts may carry extraordinary significance because they capture essential experiences and sentiments associated with a specific place, historical time, and the identity of the community that inhabited and shaped them. The music listeners’ perceptions of the time/place referenced in the text become amalgamated with their own unique memories and impressions that were formed by a set of other texts as well. For the following generations, the time/space tends to be imagined and appreciated, primarily, through these significant texts.
The album “A Letter to My Sister” (1977) by the composer-performer Tamás Cseh with János Másik (singer, instrumentalist, composer), János Novák (composer, musician), and Géza Bereményi (lyricist), has been enjoying an enduring cult status in Hungarian popular music and youth culture.1 In 2014, the “Letter” was listed as the second of the “Thirty Best Hungarian Albums of All Time” by the weekly Heti Világgazdaság, which represents an older educated demographic; the third of the outstanding twenty-five albums on the list of the youth-oriented online lifestyle journal Nullahategy, and included in its top fifty by the mainstream national Pop Music Station “Radio Petőfi.”
Tamás Cseh (1943–2007) is one of Hungary's most lionized popular musicians. His career spanned close to four decades. A multi-talented artist, he acted on film and in theater, as well as released sixty-two short and long-playing records in collaboration with a range of fellow musicians and actors. His prominence is most closely linked with Bereményi, a co-author of most of his works. While Cseh's voice and...