Radio Liturgies: Radio Free Europe and the Mobilization of the Romanian Faithful during the Cold War

• In Event: Global Dialogues in Music and Food: Nation-Building and the International in Romania and Moldova

Abstract

During the early days of the Cold War, the United States employed religious broadcasting to challenge Soviet political and cultural conventions prevalent in satellite states, including the Socialist Republic of Romania. Radio Free Europe (RFE) and its Romanian service department proved to be no exception. Recordings of vernacular religious services from 1950-1961 featuring liturgical music and responsories comprised a substantial portion of the organization’s broadcast output.
This paper examines the significance of exiled Romanian Orthodox and Greek Catholic congregations from Munich, Paris, and Bologna as musical contributors to Radio Free Europe. Selections primarily featured acapella choral arrangements of monodic Byzantine chants and Psaltic music translated from Greek and Slavonic languages dating from the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. By including Romanian sacred music in harmonized settings, RFE reflected a Romanian identity rooted in national religiosity that was both autochthonous and Western facing. Thus, the station reflected the country’s former national aspirations and desire for inclusion in Western Europe and Christendom during and predating the interwar period.
This essay investigates the role of Romanian exile networks and Radio Free Europe in aurally re-uniting and mobilizing politically fractured national and religious communities. Employing Martin Heidegger’s ontology of distance, I argue that RFE’s religious music broadcasts created a retrospective, inclusive, and participatory virtual space that offered listeners within and outside of Romanian borders the possibility of “de-severance.”

Author

• Grace Elizabeth Pechianu, Indiana U Bloomington