Over the past quarter-century, Celtic music has slowly declined on the global stage and been repl... more Over the past quarter-century, Celtic music has slowly declined on the global stage and been replaced as the de facto pan-European world music by a bricolage of Romani, klezmer and Balkan styles. These primarily East European musics have been adopted, adapted, fused, confused and ultimately claimed by northwestern Europeans as part of a wider project of reimagining their own identities in the post-Cold-war era. The music industry has not given a name to this trend, but the contributors to this volume have come to call it the ‘New Old Europe Sound’.
The Swedish band Räfven use the New Old Europe Sound to claim for themselves and their audiences ... more The Swedish band Räfven use the New Old Europe Sound to claim for themselves and their audiences a postnational, multicultural identity via Jewish and Romani cultural capital. The group facilitate their access to this capital by displacing their claim into a realm of magical realist theatrical fantasy, using (among other things) quasi-Aesopian animal archetypes in their imagery. They reinforce their claim by blurring the boundaries between identities—between human and animal, Romani and Jewish, Swedish and European, European and international, international and Jewish/Romani. Räfven deploy all of these mechanisms along multiple vectors, via liner notes, onstage patter, personae, and musical sound. Their claim functions primarily to promote anti-racist, pro-immigrant ideologies, by allowing both Räfven and their audiences to identify with groups known for their persecution and borderlessness. However, because Räfven is made up entirely of white ethnic Swedes with a primarily white audience, their self-fashioning as icons of multiculturalism also constructs racial homogeneity as unproblematic. Their work is thus just as likely to inspire activism (for audience members who are motivated to realise Räfven's vision of a multicultural utopia) as complacency (for audience members who imagine that they already are a part of Räfven's multicultural utopia).
Here I examine the music and discourse of two Swedish non-Jewish chamber klezmer bands, and their... more Here I examine the music and discourse of two Swedish non-Jewish chamber klezmer bands, and their strategies for claiming klezmer and distancing it from Jews. One band claims that klezmer, having always been subject to travel and outside influence, was never really Jewish. The other suggests that klezmer was inherited by European non-Jews after the Holocaust. Both arguments are predicated on the Herderian nationalist denial of cultural ownership to landless peoples. I argue that these claims are ultimately about allowing Swedes to mitigate their anxieties concerning Middle-Eastern immigration, by granting them possession of a safely domesticated form of Easternness.
In this article I present an ethnotheory of the music/dance relationship in Swedish polska, based... more In this article I present an ethnotheory of the music/dance relationship in Swedish polska, based on dance fieldwork and interviews I have conducted with polska dance musicians. I discuss three mechanisms that these musicians use to communicate movement patterns to dancers: iteration (entrainment via repetition), metaphor (timbral weight conveying motional weight), and sympathy (musicians' movements mapping dance movements). I then discuss how musicians use these mechanisms to control four motional parameters: pulsation (rate and consistency of tempo), lean (degree and direction of tilt over the dance axis) viscosity (level of perceived air resistance), and libration (degree and timing of vertical motion). The work is intended in part as a case study of how theories of both music and dance can benefit from a focused analysis of the relationship between those two domains, as well as how studies of music/dance relations can benefit from the application of ethnographic research techniques.
Abstract Today's Swedish folk music community skews generally to the political Left, thanks large... more Abstract Today's Swedish folk music community skews generally to the political Left, thanks largely to the 1970s countercultural folk revival. Previous to that revival, however, the concept of ‘folk music’ in Sweden had been shaped by predominantly conservative nationalist forces. Revivalists of the 1970s redefined the genre in their own terms. However, they allowed its core repertoire to remain regulated according to pre-revival standards, according to which modern international influence was anathema. As a consequence, the recently reinvigorated Swedish extreme Right has been able to stake a claim to folk music as part of its anti-immigrant agenda. In this article I analyze the ensuing debates between right- and left-wing claimants on Swedish folk music. I suggest that in failing to reinvest the cultural capital of ‘Swedish folk music’ in alternative forms during the 1970s revival when it had the opportunity, the Left has put itself at a possibly insurmountable disadvantage in those debates.
In the world of Swedish polska dancing, the move toward gender-neutral pedagogy has challenged th... more In the world of Swedish polska dancing, the move toward gender-neutral pedagogy has challenged the established gender hierarchies of the social dance scene. The best dancers are now trained in all possible couple configurations, and serve as models for the rest of the floor. Traditional gender relations tend to reassert themselves, however, when people use the dance to flirt. Men remain the overt agents of seduction, and women accept or reject their advances. I argue that for an egalitarian vision of the dance to become reality, everyone must have equal access to all techniques of flirtation and rejection. Gender-neutral pedagogy has given people the necessary tools, but progress has been slowed by broader social taboos on female sexual desire.
The term “National Folk Musician” bears a cultural charge and a value, both within folk music Swe... more The term “National Folk Musician” bears a cultural charge and a value, both within folk music Sweden and among the Swedish people in general. But within folk music circles it is also marked by a certain ambivalence, which can take several forms. The Zorn Jury, which distributes the silver badge designed by Anders Zorn and with it the title of National Folk Musician, stands for an old tradition of cultural conservatism among folk music enthusiasts, from which many today wish to distance themselves. At the same time, certain critics charge that musicians who have gained the silver badge tend to abandon social playing. Parallel to this, some who play for the jury feel a certain ambivalence concerning the desire to show themselves superior to others. All of these insecurities can be seen as being in some way related to the Jante Law. Certain insecurities can be interpreted as a direct effect of the Law—“thou shalt not fancy thyself better than we.” Others, especially the skepticism against the jury’s valuation of older folk music generations and traditions over younger ones, can be seen as a standard rejection of it—“The Jante Law has no bearing here.” But paradoxically, the Jury’s encouragement to excellence can also be seen as a similar rejection of the Law. The Zorn badge and Jante Law are thus interactive; they operate with and against each other in several different ways. I argue that this connection builds on these two phenomena both giving expression to a fundamental contradiction in Swedish culture, between the egalitarian ideal on the one hand and real-world hierarchies on the other. The Jante Law builds on an uneven power structure between the young and old, and demands equality by limiting the individual’s ability to express individuality; at the same time it can be inverted by being named, given that the Law was created and is often invoked as an ironic negative. The Zorn Trials, similarly, operate as an arena wherein the debate everybody-can vs. some-people-are-actually-better-than-others can be had, together with several of folk music Sweden’s other internal conflicts—between tradition and innovation, the local and the national, the folk and the popular. And the fact that the Zorn badge and the Jante Law both grant expression to these basic debates might also explain another connection between them—that both have flourished in Sweden so powerfully and for so long.
Over the past quarter-century, Celtic music has slowly declined on the global stage and been repl... more Over the past quarter-century, Celtic music has slowly declined on the global stage and been replaced as the de facto pan-European world music by a bricolage of Romani, klezmer and Balkan styles. These primarily East European musics have been adopted, adapted, fused, confused and ultimately claimed by northwestern Europeans as part of a wider project of reimagining their own identities in the post-Cold-war era. The music industry has not given a name to this trend, but the contributors to this volume have come to call it the ‘New Old Europe Sound’.
The Swedish band Räfven use the New Old Europe Sound to claim for themselves and their audiences ... more The Swedish band Räfven use the New Old Europe Sound to claim for themselves and their audiences a postnational, multicultural identity via Jewish and Romani cultural capital. The group facilitate their access to this capital by displacing their claim into a realm of magical realist theatrical fantasy, using (among other things) quasi-Aesopian animal archetypes in their imagery. They reinforce their claim by blurring the boundaries between identities—between human and animal, Romani and Jewish, Swedish and European, European and international, international and Jewish/Romani. Räfven deploy all of these mechanisms along multiple vectors, via liner notes, onstage patter, personae, and musical sound. Their claim functions primarily to promote anti-racist, pro-immigrant ideologies, by allowing both Räfven and their audiences to identify with groups known for their persecution and borderlessness. However, because Räfven is made up entirely of white ethnic Swedes with a primarily white audience, their self-fashioning as icons of multiculturalism also constructs racial homogeneity as unproblematic. Their work is thus just as likely to inspire activism (for audience members who are motivated to realise Räfven's vision of a multicultural utopia) as complacency (for audience members who imagine that they already are a part of Räfven's multicultural utopia).
Here I examine the music and discourse of two Swedish non-Jewish chamber klezmer bands, and their... more Here I examine the music and discourse of two Swedish non-Jewish chamber klezmer bands, and their strategies for claiming klezmer and distancing it from Jews. One band claims that klezmer, having always been subject to travel and outside influence, was never really Jewish. The other suggests that klezmer was inherited by European non-Jews after the Holocaust. Both arguments are predicated on the Herderian nationalist denial of cultural ownership to landless peoples. I argue that these claims are ultimately about allowing Swedes to mitigate their anxieties concerning Middle-Eastern immigration, by granting them possession of a safely domesticated form of Easternness.
In this article I present an ethnotheory of the music/dance relationship in Swedish polska, based... more In this article I present an ethnotheory of the music/dance relationship in Swedish polska, based on dance fieldwork and interviews I have conducted with polska dance musicians. I discuss three mechanisms that these musicians use to communicate movement patterns to dancers: iteration (entrainment via repetition), metaphor (timbral weight conveying motional weight), and sympathy (musicians' movements mapping dance movements). I then discuss how musicians use these mechanisms to control four motional parameters: pulsation (rate and consistency of tempo), lean (degree and direction of tilt over the dance axis) viscosity (level of perceived air resistance), and libration (degree and timing of vertical motion). The work is intended in part as a case study of how theories of both music and dance can benefit from a focused analysis of the relationship between those two domains, as well as how studies of music/dance relations can benefit from the application of ethnographic research techniques.
Abstract Today's Swedish folk music community skews generally to the political Left, thanks large... more Abstract Today's Swedish folk music community skews generally to the political Left, thanks largely to the 1970s countercultural folk revival. Previous to that revival, however, the concept of ‘folk music’ in Sweden had been shaped by predominantly conservative nationalist forces. Revivalists of the 1970s redefined the genre in their own terms. However, they allowed its core repertoire to remain regulated according to pre-revival standards, according to which modern international influence was anathema. As a consequence, the recently reinvigorated Swedish extreme Right has been able to stake a claim to folk music as part of its anti-immigrant agenda. In this article I analyze the ensuing debates between right- and left-wing claimants on Swedish folk music. I suggest that in failing to reinvest the cultural capital of ‘Swedish folk music’ in alternative forms during the 1970s revival when it had the opportunity, the Left has put itself at a possibly insurmountable disadvantage in those debates.
In the world of Swedish polska dancing, the move toward gender-neutral pedagogy has challenged th... more In the world of Swedish polska dancing, the move toward gender-neutral pedagogy has challenged the established gender hierarchies of the social dance scene. The best dancers are now trained in all possible couple configurations, and serve as models for the rest of the floor. Traditional gender relations tend to reassert themselves, however, when people use the dance to flirt. Men remain the overt agents of seduction, and women accept or reject their advances. I argue that for an egalitarian vision of the dance to become reality, everyone must have equal access to all techniques of flirtation and rejection. Gender-neutral pedagogy has given people the necessary tools, but progress has been slowed by broader social taboos on female sexual desire.
The term “National Folk Musician” bears a cultural charge and a value, both within folk music Swe... more The term “National Folk Musician” bears a cultural charge and a value, both within folk music Sweden and among the Swedish people in general. But within folk music circles it is also marked by a certain ambivalence, which can take several forms. The Zorn Jury, which distributes the silver badge designed by Anders Zorn and with it the title of National Folk Musician, stands for an old tradition of cultural conservatism among folk music enthusiasts, from which many today wish to distance themselves. At the same time, certain critics charge that musicians who have gained the silver badge tend to abandon social playing. Parallel to this, some who play for the jury feel a certain ambivalence concerning the desire to show themselves superior to others. All of these insecurities can be seen as being in some way related to the Jante Law. Certain insecurities can be interpreted as a direct effect of the Law—“thou shalt not fancy thyself better than we.” Others, especially the skepticism against the jury’s valuation of older folk music generations and traditions over younger ones, can be seen as a standard rejection of it—“The Jante Law has no bearing here.” But paradoxically, the Jury’s encouragement to excellence can also be seen as a similar rejection of the Law. The Zorn badge and Jante Law are thus interactive; they operate with and against each other in several different ways. I argue that this connection builds on these two phenomena both giving expression to a fundamental contradiction in Swedish culture, between the egalitarian ideal on the one hand and real-world hierarchies on the other. The Jante Law builds on an uneven power structure between the young and old, and demands equality by limiting the individual’s ability to express individuality; at the same time it can be inverted by being named, given that the Law was created and is often invoked as an ironic negative. The Zorn Trials, similarly, operate as an arena wherein the debate everybody-can vs. some-people-are-actually-better-than-others can be had, together with several of folk music Sweden’s other internal conflicts—between tradition and innovation, the local and the national, the folk and the popular. And the fact that the Zorn badge and the Jante Law both grant expression to these basic debates might also explain another connection between them—that both have flourished in Sweden so powerfully and for so long.
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