The multi-layered transnationalism of Fran Palermo
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.35325Keywords:
Fran Palermo, Hungarian music, transnationalism, world music, Spain, OrientAbstract
Fran Palermo is an indie band based in Budapest which started performing in 2011, initially as a cover band, and has produced over 30 original songs and 2 LPs, Fran Palermo and Razzle Dazzle, in 2015 and 2016 respectively, to significant critical acclaim. Its current line-up includes eight musicians, with Henri Gonzalez, a musician of Cuban and Spanish descent, being its leader. This article considers the transnational character of Fran Palermo’s work in the context of the history of pop-rock in Hungary and Eastern Europe at large, arguing that it does not fit the prevailing narrative of Eastern European music as imitator of a Western idiom. The lyrics often engage with exotic landscapes, and are populated by tourist-like clichés, yet the way they are juxtaposed suggests that the band does not try to recreate realistically an experience of travelling to the South, but rather plays with its representations. The large number of instruments, including a trumpet, two saxophones and a conga, allows for the creation of a rich, eclectic sound. The music betrays a multitude of influences, from Anglo-American rock to South American and African music. The study draws on the idea of ‘world music’, understood as a music produced in the periphery and offered for Western consumption. Our argument is that Fran Palermo’s music complicates this idea, as it originates from the place which is neither West nor a typical East, and it is produced by neither Westerners nor ‘proper’ Easterners, neither outsiders nor insiders. We also use the concept of heterotopia to explain the textual characteristics of Fran Palermo’s music.References
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Barton, Laura. 2013. ‘Burberry’s Christopher Bailey on his Obsession with Music’. The Guardian, 4 September. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2013/sep/04/christopher-bailey-music-burberry-fashion (accessed 12 August 2016).
Beaujour, Elizabeth Klosty. 1995. ‘Bilingualism’. In The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 37–43. New York and London: Garland.
Bohlman, Philip V. 2002. World Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780192854292.001.0001
Broman, Per F. 2005. ‘“When all is said and done”: Swedish ABBA Reception during the 1970s and the Ideology of Pop’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1: 45–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1524-2226.2005.00033.x
Connell, John, and Chris Gibson. 2003. Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203448397
Csatári, Bence, and Béla Szilárd Jávorszky. 2016. ‘Omega: Red Star from Hungary’. In Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold War Paradigm, ed. Ewa Mazierska, 265–82. London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59273-6_13
Di Stefano, John. 2002. ‘Moving Images of Home’. Art Journal 61/4: 38–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2002.10792135
Erlmann, Veit. 1996. ‘The Aesthetics of the Global Imagination: Reflections on World Music in the 1990s’. Public Culture 8: 467–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-8-3-467
Fairley, Jan. 2001. ‘The “Local” and “Global” in Popular Music’. In The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street, 272–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521553698.017
Foucault, Michel. 1998 [1986]. ‘Of Other Spaces’, trans. Jay Miskowiec. In The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd edn, ed. Nicholas Mirzoff, 229–36. London: Routledge.
Gorbachev, Aleksandr. 2015. ‘How to Make it in America, Russian Indie Band-Style’. Newsweek, 6 June. http://europe.newsweek.com/russian-indie-bands-take-america-328349?rm=eu (accessed 19 July 2016).
Guilbault, Jocelyne. 2001. ‘World Music’. In The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street, 176–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521553698.011
House, Juliane. 2003. ‘English as a Lingua Franca: A Threat to Multilingualism’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/4: 556–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2003.00242.x
Klág, Dávid. 2016. ‘Azt hiszik, hogy a Szovjetunióból kikászálódó barmok vagyunk’. 8 April. http://index.hu/kultur/zene/2016/06/25/s_olbricht_farbwechsel_mikolai_martin_interju/ (accessed 20 July 2016).
MacCannell, Dean. 1999. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Mazierska, Ewa. 2015. ‘Tourism and Heterotopia in Falco’s Songs’. In Relocating Popular Music, ed. Ewa Mazierska and Georgina Gregory, 167–85. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463388_9
Mills, Jane. 2014. ‘Sojourner Cinema: Seeking and Researching a New Cinematic Category’. Framework 55/1: 140–64. https://doi.org/10.13110/framework.55.1.0140
Mitchell, Tony. 1996. Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press.
Ramet, Sabrina Petra. 1994. ‘Rock: The Music of Revolution (and Political Conformity)’. In Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia, ed. Sabrina Petra Ramet, 1–14. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Recorder.blog.hu. 2011. ‘Magyar hálószobapop – Kis színtértörténet’. Recorder, 24 September. http://recorder.blog.hu/2011/09/24/magyar_haloszobapop (accessed 4 August 2016).
Regev, Motti. 2013. Pop-rock Music: Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Ryback, Timothy W. 1990. Rock around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Said, Edward W. 2003 [1978]. Orientalism. London: Penguin.
Siposs, Zoltán, and Szabolcs Szerényi. 2015. ‘Az els? igazi fesztivál megvágott, mint a sújtólég: Interjú Presser Gábor énekes-dalszerz?vel’ (The First Real Festival Hit Me Like Firedamp: Interview with Gábor Presser, singer-songwriter’). Kreatív 7–8: 17–25.
Szemere, Anna. 2001. Up from the Underground: The Culture of Rock Music in Postsocialist Hungary. University Park: University State University Press.
Taylor, Timothy, D. 1997. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets. London: Routledge.
Virginás, Andrea. 2017. ‘Hungarian and Romanian Film Production in Transnational Frameworks: Small Domestic Taste’. In Transformation Processes in Post-Socialist Screen Media, ed. Jana Dudkova and Katarina Misikova, 77–98. Bratislava: Academy of Performing Arts.
Zene.ro. 2012. ‘Fran Palermo: Kislemez, és turné!’ Zene.ro, 25 February. https://www.zene.ro/zenei-hirek/fran-palermo-kislemez-es-turne/ (accessed 17 July 2016).
Žižek, Slavoj. 2000. The Fragile Absolute. London: Verso.
Published
2017-12-21
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Mazierska, E., & Kránicz, B. (2017). The multi-layered transnationalism of Fran Palermo. Popular Music History, 10(3), 241-261. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.35325
