Folklore Music on Romanian TV: From State Socialist Television to Private Channels

This article explores specific televised folklore performances of muzică populară in Romania as ‘media rituals.’ I argue that this particular kind of folklore performance can be analysed as television genre. The article follows different articulations of this genre from its televised appearances on the public television channel in the last decades of the communist period to the post-1989 niche television stations specialised in folklore. The changes in the form of the genre, and the negotiations of value and authenticity that take place through the televised performances reveal the role of television in disseminating a social poetics of the nation state.