Pol’and’Rock Festival, or systemic corpofestival

The summertime time, which unfortunately came to an end, was an chance not only to visit interesting places, but besides to travel back into the past, which Bruce Dickinson so well put in the song Iron Maiden: “Because you know that this happened before and you know that this minute in time is real and you know that then you feel deja vu. I feel like I've been here before.”

I guess that's why I went to the Pol’and’Rock Festival after 22 years of absence to see specified distinguished bands as Napalm Death, woman Pank or Proletaryat, and to “live it again”. The naivety of believing that authenticity from years ago would happen again, faded just after crossing the threshold of the festival, erstwhile in her head 1 thought was in her head: the corpofestival! I felt like at the Dominican Fair in Gdańsk where expensive, watered beer and any food are served.

Moreover, walking around the main avenue could feel like 1 of the “bank streets” in any city. 22 years ago the only food stand, and besides a good one, was in the Hare Krishna sect, and after the remainder it was essential to go to the city, then to Żar (where I willingly ordered tomato and Russian dumplings at the railway station, but during the last time of my stay the bar was already closed after the celebrated “Kozłowski network” for the regulation of the solidaruchs in 2000). Now the full food manufacture was organized, in addition to the Lidel, there were signs of mBank, Red Bull, Coca-Cola and Allegro, identical to the LGBTQ parades in Warsaw. I've seen how the roller of capitalist materialization consumes culture.

Over more than 40 years, from the first Jarocin, the festival's population structure has changed and it has been seen from at least 3 generations of music fans, which is besides common at concerts of metallic bands with older pedigree. Not only young people come here, but besides different professions, having families, not disdaining the work of any opponents of the festival, and stories about hippies are a myth, due to the fact that they were simply not there due to the fact that they died in the literal sense of the word. However, the main focus of your presence is to “reset” and manifest your attitude of “antiPiS” without any deeper reflection.

Now a small bit about music. Proletaryat as usual played a superb concert, although he presently sings songs from the oldest albums, where they criticized the transformation at the time of course without specifying who is guilty of it, or the newer ones referring to existential themes or the last 8 years of the reign of the known party. However, the reason why the repertoire omitted the large "Made in USA", recorded in the late 20th century, which had a strong anti-imperialist speech is interesting. Vocalist Oley says they don't play it at concerts due to the fact that he's supposedly the "weakest"... Although it is simply a subjective matter, does not 1 of the songs deserve to be called a actual counterculture: “On behalf of democracy, without the right to negotiate, we treat the planet with bombs, stand in line with us”? Meanwhile, the squad now prefers to defend the "free media" i.e. American media corporations and play on a tiny phase marked with mBank logo.

An efficient scholmen and a truly good artist, Krzysztof Zalewski tried to break the barriers separating him from the spectators and to build any fictional egalitarianism at the concert. In addition, he was required to have rainbow colors and to advance a typical, "cloacic geopolitics" for the fascinated audience erstwhile he began to express himself in vulgar words about Putin. How large a deficiency of education people have erstwhile they don't know that Joseph Goebbels is already the best method of propaganda he found to smuggle it into popular entertainment!

Looking at the opportunism of the musicians present at this festival, it would be provocative to paraphrase 1 of the another about Feuerbach, that "musicians have only described the planet so far, but the aim is to change it". It's a pity they don't realize it, or they don't want to realize it more, but specified a festival is simply a strong force and specified a move, decently directed, could someway become a movement of protest against real problems, and so the 5th decade is simply a fuse in the system...

Well, with my interest in politics almost a 4th of a century ago and the awareness of the effects of further reforms besides in wellness care, I realized that the clown character in red glasses served to pacify the excluded masses of youth. 30 years ago, Kuronia and soup were given to the unemployed, and those who wanted to be treated were given Oatsiak, who, through play, appealed to them that “you actually have wellness care, but go out on the street erstwhile a year, take your children and go to the ribs to collect this 0.01% wellness budget, due to the fact that that will not solve all the problems, but you will live on in illusion.” The view of Owsiak's character was sealed over 20 years ago by seeing 1 of the finals of the erstwhile Prime Minister of the government, 1 of the destroyers of the Polish industry, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki. That was the minute I saw Oatsiak as a man of the strategy and the full schizophrenic image of this hucpa.

The festival, which competed with naive, pacifistic slogans “peace, love, music, rock’n’roll”, has unwittingly turned into a place of almost openly political agitation. The origins of the oatmeal events were innocent, of course systemic, but they were more national, spontaneous, promoting peaceful slogans, but in subsequent years there were already public promotions of neoliberal environments, urging them to join the army, which was already associated with assault wars. It ended with full submission to corporate order, whose representatives appear all year at the festival, seducing hundreds of thousands of unconscious and uncritical participants of the event. Proletaryat's vocalist threw out of the phase that "he hopes the public will vote wisely in the election". I am not surprised, of course, that schizophrenicism among artists from our country, due to the fact that unfortunately it is simply a norm and those who are more ambitious do not have the courage to make any intellectual countersystem. Well, 2 decades ago, Noam Chomsky noted that corporateism infects the hypocrisy of average people, as developed by Jacek Kardashewski in his book Neoliberalism is the schizophrenic of society.

The top success of neoliberal indoctrination was telling the masses that they should not be afraid with politics, combining music with politics, and then formatting them according to their own views by getting Globalian! For example, there have been allegations against me that I am not just focusing on music and I am starting to pay attention to political aspects. Meanwhile, a mature man should see the phenomenon of the festival as a whole. At a certain age 1 cannot see only 1 eye and not announcement that an full festival manufacture has been created, which makes you feel a bit like in a hypermarket, a bit like at the PO convention. After specified a time of absence, cognitive dissonance is something natural, and the dialectical method itself implies specified critical synthesis. Coming not only for musical purposes, but just a participating reflection confirmed to me that I became a hero of the song by Janek Borisewicz singing: “I am inactive a stranger, a alien here, like an enemy...”. It was the alienation from authentic life and values that Guy Debord had in mind, creating his society of the spectacle.

Bartłomiej Doborzyński

photo public domain

Think Poland, No. 39-40 (24.09-110.2023)