Not about Nationalism: The Role of Folk Song in Identity Process

Nationalism has been one of the preferred topics in both academic and popular discourse within the last few years. However, its vagueness and significant emotional content often muddy the arguments surrounding it. Taking one step back and looking at national identity through the lense of folk music, particulary as it has been used in Hungary by Bartok and the Dance House movement, one can see the process by which folk music has helped to create and afterwards maintain a sense of identity. This paper looks at how Bartok and the Dance House Movement defined a Hungarian population, how the two used age or historic factors in doing this and how they reacted respectively to Hungary’s multi ethnic population in the context of categorizing and working with folk music. This discussion takes into account Hungary’s history with its triple legacy of desire for unification, a multi-ethnic character, and the role of the nobility in Hungarian life, particularly their attempt to create a national song type called “verbunkos.” Finally, it examines the actual use of folk music itself to create an identity and the consequences of this mechanism for the future.