The Vinyl Exchanges
If rock and roll played any role in sparking the Romanian Revolution of 1989, its roots can be traced to the circulation of vinyl records and, later, pirated cassette tapes on Romania’s black market.
When Nicolae Ceaușescu took power in 1965, he ruled with a relatively light hand. But after visiting North Korea and China in 1971, he came home changed. He’d seen how tightly those regimes controlled their people, and he wanted the same for Romania.
Over the next decade, he built a cult of personality using every tool available including schools, the media and even daily life itself. His image was everywhere: in classrooms, offices, public squares, and every state-run television broadcast.
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At the same time, Ceaușescu took control of the economy. Seeking favor with Western nations, he aimed to pay down Romania’s massive national debt. In theory, it was a sound economic move; in practice, it crushed the Romanian people. He exported much of the nation’s natural resources and industrial output, enforcing brutal austerity at home. The result was widespread rationing and chronic shortages of food, energy, clothing, and other essentials.
By the 1980s, daily life in Romania had become a struggle. Grocery stores were nearly empty. Ordinary citizens worked long hours in factories or other state-run industries, only to spend their evenings and early mornings queuing for bread, milk, and other necessities. Gasoline was rationed to two liters per month per family. Heat and electricity shut off without warning, even in the dead of the harsh Romanian winters.
Here is Tibi Gajdo, founding member of the Timisoara rock band, Metamorf, and Emil Biebel talking about the deprivations of the 1980s.
Like other Cold War dictators, Ceaușescu viewed Western culture as a threat. American films, fashion, and especially rock and roll celebrated freedom, individuality, and sexual expression and thereby encouraged Romanians to question authority. Anything that offered pleasure or escape from the regime’s hardships was considered subversive.
Like rock and roll.
Timisoara resident, Silviu Genescu, organized an electronic music club at Casa Studentilor in the 1980s. Here is Silviu talking about the promise of freedom and rock and roll.
But totalitarian regimes always face one problem: ideas are hard to contain. Even in the analog 1980s, information and culture found ways to cross borders. Despite official bans, Romanians continued to access, share, and trade Western music. For instance, in the 1980s, homemade antennas dotted the rooftops of homes across Timisoara. The antennas, illegal in the eyes of the regime, picked up radio stations from Western Europe that broadcast anti-communist propaganda as well as American, British, and even Yugoslavian rock and roll.
Here is a photo of an existing antenna still mounted on the rooftop outside my friends’ house, Levi and Lili Molnar.
In the video below, long-time vinyl collector and rock and roll smuggler, Emil Biebel, explains exactly why the Ceausescu regime was afraid of western cultural expression and how resident of Timisoara resisted the clampdown on western art and expression.
Because vinyl records—and later, cassettes—were largely prohibited imports, Romanians developed creative smuggling networks and secret exchange markets. Ordinary citizens, forbidden to travel abroad, relied on intermediaries to bring Western goods into the country. One method involved Tarom Air pilots, who smuggled records back from international flights. Here, Mimo Obrodov describes how these records circulated through Romania.
Due to its proximity to Yugoslavia and the large number of emigrants from Timișoara who sent Western goods back to family and friends, the city became a hub for black-market music trading throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A thriving network of vinyl—and later cassette—exchanges emerged.
One of the first such exchanges was located at the Sunday flea market in Timișoara’s Josefin neighborhood. Here is Emil Biebel recalling the Josefin exchange.
And here is recent footage of the area in the flea market where people exchanged vinyl records. It’s a parking lot now.
In the 1980s, another vinyl exchange developed on the northeast corner of the botanical gardens. Kids in parkas and blue jeans milled around the grounds, smoking cigarettes, talking about music and hoping and dreaming about better days.