March ‘68 and Its Aftermath: in Polish Popular Music

The events of March 1968 in Poland can be viewed as four overlapping threads (i.e. lines of development): 1) factionalism in the ruling party, 2) the intellectuals’ protest against the government’s cultural policies, 3) a student revolt, 4) an anti-Semitic campaign, all in the wake of international events in 1967–68. These developments intertwined in a series of events, the most notable of which were the pacification of students by the milicja (state police) on 8 March and the forced emigration of thousands of Polish Jews as a result of the anti-Semitic political campaign. In this paper, the author examines the period’s popular music which reflects the events of March ‘68. The limited number of songs is a consequence of the prevailing conditions in Polish popular music at that time. The rock genre remained the domain of teenagers, recordings were subject to restrictions, and the recording process remained under the control of the censorship. As a result, popular songs (in the broadest sense of the term) that deal with the theme of March ‘68 are part of the independent legacy of the so-called ‘student culture’, preserved outside the mainstream, mainly in oral tradition. Maciej Zembaty’s ‘Pan Prokurator ma rację’ [‘Mr Prosecutor is Right’] is analyzed here as a case study of a March ‘68 protest song. It has been paired with Andrzej Zieliński and Agnieszka Osiecka’s song ‘W żółtych płomieniach liści’ [‘In the Yellow Flames of Leaves’], which is often referred to as a rock song reflecting the events of March ’68.