From discotheques to clubs: the transformation of dance venues and night life between late socialism and early capitalism in the Czechoslovakia

ABSTRACT

Discotheques and later the club scene were the means by which several generations of young people met their entertainment and social needs in the Czech lands beginning in the late 1960s. While the late socialist dictatorship insisted that culture be a vehicle for education and enlightenment, the new market-oriented, post-socialist society focused on rapid profits over the quality of young people’s entertainment. Nevertheless, young people managed to create spaces for their own preferred forms of entertainment under these different conditions with the help of various strategies. Drawing on interviews with DJs and regular scene participants, this study explores Czech(oslovak) dance venues and night life from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

KEYWORDS:

• Discotheques
• clubs
• late socialism
• post-socialism
• the 1980s
• the 1990s
• social life
• night life
• dancing
• youth
• oral history
• popular music
• Prague

Acknowledgments

This study is the result of research funded by the Czech Science Foundation as part of project GA ČR P410/20-24091S “Brave New World: Youth, Music and Class in the Czech Post-Socialism.”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This idea of the discotheque as a heterotopia is inspired by the work of Marko Zubak and Flora Pitrolo (2022).

2. I would like to thank the students of the Philosophy and History of Media Studies course in the Media Studies Department at Metropolitan University Prague (2018–2020) for all their assistance with this research.

3. The recollections of discotheque patrons are quoted anonymously. I use the names or nicknames of only those DJs who agreed to be identified.

4. For more details, see Vaněk, Mücke, and Pelikánová (2007, 62–74) and Ferencová and Nosková (2009, 11–31).

5. While technically this quota might have included music from other socialist countries, this possibility was seldom mentioned by commentators.

6. Houses of culture were official community centres in this era. They were especially prominent in smaller towns and villages.

7. Respondents are identified by their gender, the location where they visited discotheques and period of their life related to the memory mentioned.

8. The Pioneer Organization of the Socialist Youth Union was a Marxist-Leninist organization for young people in socialist Czechoslovakia.

9. Restaurant and bar services were one sphere in which these rules might be evaded. While officially these businesses were run by state or cooperative enterprises, their managers might generate “unofficial” profits. Pub and hotel work was one of the occupations most associated with this kind of profiteering.

10. For an analysis of this framework, see Janáček (2004). For its applications to music, see Machek (2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jakub Machek

Jakub Machek, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the Media Studies Department, Metropolitan University Prague. He is a founding member of the Centre for the Study of Popular Culture. He is the author of the monograph The Emergence of Popular Culture in the Czech Lands (2017) and he has co-edited several collections of essays. He is also author of several book chapters and journal articles. His latest research is focused on the function of music in Czech society, from brass band music to disco.