Twenty Years After: Rock Music and National Rock in Hungary

This article explores an underresearched topic in popular musical studies, the changes in the Hungarian popular music scene since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and situates that research in a comparative perspective. It highlights some of the more obvious and less recognized developments: in particular, special attention is given to the ways in which the new "national rock" developed and was ideologized in the past two decades. The relationship of this new music and the socioeconomic and political changes that have taken place since the establishment of democracy and multi-party politics is also considered.