The Ethics of Folklore in TV Performances

Since 1989, television has become extremely popular in Romania, with a large number of TV stations, both local and national, dedicating themselves to folk music and folklore. TV Stations such as Etno, Favorit and Hora broadcast a standardized form of folklore called muzica populara, which tends to follow a set template based around folk dress, formalized body posture and movements, and recurrent lyrical themes. Academic writing and ethnographic museums often reject these performers as being ‘inauthentic’, and thus, see their performance as lacking in value. This, I argue, is due to the fact that folklore is treated as national heritage, which makes debates about the value of folk performance particularly tense. The museum-based understanding of folklore excludes popular (low) forms of entertainment.  Evaluating the genre of muzica populara is therefore not only a question of national heritage, but one of class distinction. The evolution of the music and performance genre is closely linked to Romania’s modernization and industrialization during the communist period and to the evolution of mass media, but also to understandings of class distinction in the post-communist period. .In my paper I discuss the boundaries of muzica populara, and its evolution through the communist period, from the stage of the house of culture, to the studios of TVR during the Song to Romania festival. I will then look at how these boundaries are negotiated by the performers themselves today.