Retromania

With the bloom of retro representations in the popular modern culture, this paper examines three Polish music magazines in regards to their attention towards the phenomenon of retromania and their way of musical past framing. Machina, Teraz Rock and K MAG were chosen to provide with a clear cross-picture of the modern music/pop cultural Polish press. Both covers and articles are taken under consideration. The research reveals that the presence of the musical past representations in the Polish music magazines is rather systematic, however occurs mostly within the content of the articles, rather than on the covers. The paper shows four main ways of retro-framing content wise but also answers the deeper question of how the musical past is displayed and what differences occur within the framing for each of the magazines (due to the differences in their profiles). Therefore, the first category of musical past’s influence on the modern music and culture is revealed. It reinforces the theories about legends and icons of yesterday who highly inspire the present day, but also relates to the concepts of idealized past. Then, the category of a clash between the present and the past day is presented. It appears to be strongly connected to some of the nostalgia’s modalities (yearning and longing for the better past) but also highlights the idea of technologic retro. Another way of framing retro on the columns of Teraz Rock, Machina and K MAG sheds some light on the use that music industry can make of golden music ages and by that reveals the differences in the display of that phenomenon for each of the magazines in regards to their profiles. While Teraz Rock frames past as pure and present as greedy, Machina paints way more positive picture of the relation between those two decades. The paper analyzes also the different way of serving the information for each of the magazines, since conservative Teraz Rock carries more of a pedagogic value, while hip and pop cultural Machina or K MAG tend t amuse and mesmerize the audience with magical and relatable past. While the conducted in the paper study reinforces some of the theories (icons influencing today, idealized past, objects of the best triggering nostalgia) it also discards some others (lack of continuity of the cultural timeline, attraction to the past as negative phenomenon), by proving otherwise. Moreover, the paper provides with the figures and numbers making the display of retro in the Polish magazines less abstract, but also provides the insights on the matter from the people who contribute to the content of the magazines professionally.