A flute-group performing in the middle of the night. This is certainly participatory music – which is what much of the traditional music culture in the Kathmandu Valley amounts to. But what does this look like in the West, in Sweden for example? And how to understand participatory music – is this folk music? Musical amateurism? A musical subsistence economy? A question of cultural democracy? Or a musical manifestation of civil society?
Questions of cultural participation in Sweden are specifically addressed in the project Music as an invisible social movement. An ethnomusicological study of informal music-making in contemporary Sweden (funded by VR, 2002-04). I employ a life course perspective on the music-making of, for instance, different generations. Key issues include musical literacy and the role of musical education versus informal ways of acquiring musical competence. The bedrock of the research is laid with help from Karl Polanyi and Férnand Braudel: Patronage, market and subistence forms combine in the economy of music to make up the totality of Sweden’s musical life, including formal as well as informal music-making.
Publications, presentations, papers
Ungdomskultur - och sen? Musikutbildning och utövande hos svenska 1900-talsgenerationer. In Johan Fornäs & Tobias Harding (eds), Kulturellt. Reflektioner i Erling Bjurströms anda p. 100-126. LInköping University Electronic Press, 2009.
Musikutbildningsformer i Sverige: en uppskattning av omfattning och kostnader. PM, 2009. Coming soon.
Musikaliskt utövande hos svenska 1900-talsgenerationer: statistiska underlag. PM, 2009. Coming soon.
Patronage and subistence in the economy of popular music. Presentation given at Creativity and Economy in Glocal Culture: Creative Industries, Musical Practices, Aesthetic Cosmopolitanisms, an international seminar at ACSIS, Norrköping, 2006
The Soundscape of the Radio. Engineering Modern Songs and Superculture in Nepal. In Paul D. Greene & Thomas Porcello (eds), Wired for Sound: Engineering and Technologies in Sonic Cultures, p. 222–44. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University press. 2005. Review 1. Review 2. Review 3. Publisher’s presentation. In Google book search.
Konst, folkrörelser, amatörer. Paper presented at Konsten, kulturpolitiken, forskningen: konstens resurser, Stockholm 2004. More.
Det musikaliska deltagandet och den musikaliska medborgaren. In Lena Johannesson & Erik Amnå (eds), Demokratins estetik p. 107 - 124. SOU 1999:129
Kirtipur, April 1987