In Poland during the Communist times, How did you get western music?

Question

In Poland during the Communist times, How did you get western music?

Answer 1

RFE and Stars and Stripes, both of these were all over Europe and Asia in the 1960s.

Answer 2

They got it from Radio Europa but not that much - it was a mostly talk radio.  But the regular radio stations did have some english music and what theyu didn't hear that way their family and freinds sent them the tapes from other countries.

Answer 3

Some people can't take "no" for an answer...

Yes, if you MUST know, getting access to Western pop and rock ('cos I don't think you mean C&W) was a problem during the 1960s to 1980s. Music stores sold only Polish and East European records; sometimes an occasional reprint of a British or American artist's album could be found. There were so-called "cultural centers" in Warsaw: of Czechoslovakia, USSR, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria: they sold their own vinyl records and lines formed to buy them. When CDs appeared on the market, a few so called "rentals" appeared, and you could rent a CD and copy it to a cassette at home.

People who have said here that one could listen to music on Radio Free Europe are wrong: RFE was so heavily jammed that trying to hear any music was a torture. Some music was played on Voice of America or BBC Polish service, but with most of it broadcast on short waves, the quality was very poor.

No, the real source of western pop and rock were actually Polish radio stations. Western music was never banned in Poland, maybe except for a few tracks. On Radio Three there was even a feature called "My Recorder" which played full albums, with enough silence before and after to manage to start and stop recording (remember that it was all mechanical at that time). The DJs used their own sources in the West, to obtain the recordings, often delivered by "sky captain's courier" right after release.

Oh yes, there were some stores selling second-hand vinyls, but most people avoided that, fearing poor quality.

Answer 4

well there was RFE but a lot of it was censored or omitted, I'm sure.

And then there was the smuggling, which of course was quite difficult during those times and so not that widespread

Movies were another matter...Communist Poland wasn't even allowed James Bond!

Answer 5

Probably picked up Radio Free Europe or some of the Stars and Stripes stations.

We used to pick up a station in Belgium late at night with current music of the day.