Audible States

In Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania author Nicholas Tochka traces an aural history of Albania''s government through a close examination of the development and reception of light music as it has long been broadcast at an annual song competition Radio-Television Albania''s Festival of Song. Drawing on a wide range of archival resources and over forty interviews with composers lyricists singers and bureaucrats Tochka describes how popular music became integral to governmental projects to improve society-and a major concern for both state-socialist and post-socialist regimes between 1945 and the present.