Polish Rock Granary in Jarocin, a branch of the Regional Museum, possesses a unique collection of photographs, documents, and films related to the history of Polish rock music, dated from 1959 until today. The most interesting exhibits are presented at a permanent exhibition, available also on-line. The history of Polish rock is not only the evolution of the genre and styles, bands, albums, concerts, and festivals; it is also the dissent against the dominant culture and the search for an alternative. The location of Polish Rock Granary is by no means coincidental. In the 1980s the small town of Jarocin hosted the Rock Musicians’ Festival that attracted rock music fans and alternative culture participants from all over Poland, and even from Czechoslovakia and GDR.
Polja magazine [Fields in English], is one of the longest running periodicals in the former Yugoslavia, and was first published in 1955 in Novi Sad. Throughout 506 issues, Polja has covered important periods in Yugoslav cultural history and has featured young authors in the fields of literature, cultural theory, and literary and film criticism. The magazine has a history of providing a platform for social criticism, as it became inseparable from the youth-led organization Tribina mladih [Tribune of Youth] which criticized the social and political situation in the country and the culture of its time.
The collection at the Popmuseum includes both written and audiovisual archive materials and other tangible artefacts that relate to Czech and Slovak pop music. The institution, besides running the museum and holding popular activities, also manages a large archive. The collection is the biggest of its kind in the Czech Republic. Pop music, not only rock, is seen by the museum in a complex context but the collection and the exposition describe opposition activities connected with the phenomenon of “West” and “undesirable” music genres from 1950s until 1980s in Czechoslovakia as well.
