COURAGE

connecting collections

This photograph, selected to demonstrate the photographic dimension of the Andrei Partoş–Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti Private Collection, shows the soloist Alexandru Andrieş during a live broadcast, alongside Andrei Partoş and one of his radio colleagues, Lilian Zamfiroiu, director of the Romanian Cultural Institute from 2013 to 2015 and currently Romanian ambassador in Luxembourg. Together with the discussions held in real time, it was mainly the music played on Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti that marked out the coordinates of a youth culture that did not align itself with the rigid demands of the age. This is emphasised by Andrei Partoş: “When I was talking to the microphone, live, I tried to be as free as I could. Of course, self-censorship operated. But I said many things in a two-edged way. And above all, I let the music speak instead of me. Music seemed to me the best way to transmit subliminal messages and, basically, to be subversive.”

The image in the photograph epitomises the live and implicitly uncensored concertos, which Radio Vacanța Costinești used to broadcast during the entire summer holiday season. Taking into account that the young people represented the exclusive audience in this resort of the Union of the Communist Youth in Romania, these concerts featured those pop singers who were the most popular among people with ages between fourteen and thirty. From among the recurrently invited guests at Radio Vacanța Costinești before 1989, Alexandru Andrieş was one of the most pleasing presences on Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti. He used to sing a genre of music which was improperly called muzică folk (in verbatim translation – folk music) and usually promoted as a phoney alternative music through the so-called Cenaclul Flacăra (in verbatim translation – The Flame Literary Circle). It is worth noting that Cenaclul Flacăra, which court poet Adrian Păunescu initiated as a non-conformist literary circle, had become by the late 1970s a frame for organising, under the disguised tutelage of the party, allegedly subversive song-and-poetry performances for young people, which were in fact meant to manipulate their rebellious nature (Petrescu 2010, 304–307). Unlike other soloists of muzică folk who used to perform during the Cenaclul Flacăra shows, Andrieş was not favoured in official circles, due to the really subversive political message of his songs (which he wrote and sang himself). He sang live for hours on Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti, although many of the pieces he composed and performed were banned. Among other songs, he performed live the famous “Today again, on the News,” a satirical song about those times of severe shortages: “Today again / On the News / I saw cheese. / I watched / The programme too / But it didn’t appear again / Although I waited / Till the end. / But no matter, / Tomorrow again / On the News / I’m going to see cheese.” This was a harsh satire directed at the pre-1989 regime, in a period when Romania faced serious economic problems and basic foodstuffs were rationed.

The photograph shows another dimension of “alternative” musical culture. Like the group Phoenix, which was also very popular among young people because of their ethno-rock with subversive messages, Alexandru Andrieş illustrates the “unofficial,” alternative element of Romanian musical production before 1989. Especially urban educated young people, who were capable to grasp the encrypted critical messages of the verses, preferred this type of music, alongside clandestinely recorded Western music. 

The “Festivals of the Sea” were the quintessence of the artistic and sporting programmes organised in the Costineşti resort before 1989. They represented a sort of festival of festivals and competitions that lasted continuously for forty-eight hours. Without exception, they took place in the last weekend of August, in order to mark the end of the summer holiday and the inevitable return to “real” life until the next season of “alternative” events. The Andrei Partoș – Radio Vacanța-Costinești Private Collection includes a consistent corpus of photographs taken during the extremely popular “Festivals of the Sea,” from among which several samples can be seen on this registry.

One of the most appreciated moments of the programme consisted of the Rock Galas, a marathon rock concert (quite an uncommon event in those times) in which the most famous groups of the day took part. Rock music had a marginal status in communist society, being perceived as a substratum that was subversive towards the regime. The “Book of Records,” which is another featured item of this collection, also played a role in these festivals. This document was continually being added to during the summer season, but the “Festivals of the Sea” marked the culminating moments of these unconventional competitions. Both the competitions themselves – which were unusual and very engaging – and their presentation on Radio Vacanţa-Costineşti enjoyed a high level of interest on the part of young people in the Costineşti resort.

Nevertheless, the star element of the “Festivals of the Sea” was the comedy troupe Divertis, led by Toni Grecu. This group made a name for itself with humorous sketches at the limits of what could be accepted by the communist regime. The memory of their performances of that time still endures today. They were also the organisers of a parade in which the god Neptune, with features and speech that were explicitly ironic and modernist, arrived in the resort and directed the proceedings.

In 1989, there was even a very serious Securitate investigating in connection with certain aspects of the programme of the “Festivals of the Sea.” Silviu Petcu, a member of the Divertis troupe, who played the role of the god Neptune every year, recalled this episode in a public intervention after 1989: “We were putting on the ‘Festivals of the Sea’ at Costineşti. There was a tour by Neptune that was broadcast from the beach. Mr Andrei Partoş was witness to this event; he made programmes on Radio Vacanţa. And an hour or two before Neptune arrived, we presented the journey of Neptune by sea. Some short texts, of four or five minutes, had to be written. It happened that that summer Ceauşescu was away abroad, and we chose to transmit precisely from the countries where he had gone, countries in Asia and Africa. Neptune was a sort of Ceauşescu. We talked about African rituals, etc. And someone let on about it. The Securitate people came the next morning to take the tapes. But Partoş got a tip-off by phone and he recorded folk music over the sketches. We always had someone protecting our backs. The people from the UTC [Uniunea Tineretului Comunist – Union of Communist Youth], the police, and even the Securitate, who were more open, realised it was stupid to be heavy-handed with us, because we were just making some jokes.” The episode is confirmed by Andrei Partoş: “That’s how it was. We had to destroy some cassettes. Something very nasty could have come out of that episode.”

There was also a winter version of these cultural-artistic programmes: the “Festivals of the Snow” in Izvorul Mureșului/ Marosfő resort in Harghita county. Their format was largely inspired by that of the “Festivals of the Sea.” At several of them, the star presenter was also Andrei Partoş.

The poster gives details of two extraordinary concerts held on 10 and 11 May 1985 by some of the most appreciated rebel artists and rock groups of that period. Among the participants were the bands Roșu și Negru (“Red and Black”), Hardton, Post Scriptum, Celelalte cuvinte (“The Other Words”), Compact, Progresiv TM, Vali Sterian și Compania de Sunet, (“Vali Sterian and the Sound Company”), and the soloists Florian Pittiș and Alexandru Andrieș. All these participants were in the grey zone of tolerance admitted by the communist regime in Romania, and numbered among those that the younger generation considered nonconformist in comparison with the musical landscape of the period. The poster is not spectacular: on a white background, the text is printed in two colours, red and blue. The rock concerts announced by this poster were held in the Polyvalent Hall. Completed in 1974 and inaugurated under the name of “Palace of Sport and of Culture,” this hall was the largest performance space in Romania at the time, with a capacity of over 5,000 places. At both concerts, the auditorium was completely packed, due to the fact that they brought together an unusually large number of stars of nonconformist music. Such concerts with a very large audience posed a particular problem for the communist authorities, who were afraid that any crowd gathered at a performance might turn into a collective protest against the economic crisis, which was weighing more and more heavily on the population of Romania. The moment at which the concerts took place is also significant, because 1985 marked a turning point. On the one hand, for fear of revolt, such shows with large numbers of stars were not organised again after this event. On the other, the years that followed up until 1989 were the most difficult for the majority of people in communist Romania, who saw the growing discrepancy between their daily lives and those of people not only in the West but also in all the other communist countries.

The concert poster giving details of the concerts that were to be held as part of the first Jazz Festival in communist Romania is one of the earliest in the Mihai Manea collection. It is almost half a century old; it dates from 1969 and is preserved in very good condition. The poster provides concert information for the days of 4, 5, and 6 April 1969, when a series of jazz performances took place in the Philharmonic Hall in Ploieşti. Among the participants were a number of prestigious groups and artists in the genre from various places in Romania, who gathered for an exceptional show at a jazz festival that was very well-known and appreciated in communist Romania. Among them were the Richard Oschanitzki quartet and the Ștefan Berindei sextet, both from Bucharest, Jazz Club from Roman, Big Band from Cluj-Napoca (at the time simply named Cluj), the Choralys octet from Constanţa, the Robert Kovacs trio and the Robert Movsessian trio, both from Ploiești, the Free Jazz trio from Timișoara, and the soloists Elena Constantinescu and Aura Urziceanu. The concert poster is printed on thick paper and has a white background on which horizontal yellow lines are discretely traced. The text is placed within a well marked frame and is in the two colours that are most common in the Mihai Manea collection: red and blue. The quality of the poster, even if it is not extraordinary, contrasts with that of those from later years, which were printed on paper of worse and worse quality and became less and less elaborate from an aesthetic point of view.