Popular Music Cultures of the 20th and 21st Centuries

In this episode of The Music Talkshow, produced by Tejaswinee Kelkar in collaboration with Oslo's Historical Museum, Tejaswinee speaks with Dr. Boro Baski about the musical heritage of the Santhal ethnic community; the instrument banam and the long process of creating, becoming, and in other ways inheriting musical heritage, such as singing folk songs, dancing practices and festivals, through the instrument; and how this inheritance is contextualised in a changing society and other kinds of musical learning.

This English language interview (with excerpts of Norwegian)  follows a thematic exhibition at the museum and comes with a list of English language references, which, together with the full version, can be found here: https://www.historiskmuseum.no/utstillinger/arv/podkast/

The Music Talkshow is back after the winter break with the first episode of a podcast series “What is musical inheritance?”, produced by Tejaswinee Kelkar in collaboration with the Oslo's Historical Museum.

Here, Tejaswinee speaks about the music of the Viking ages with Einar Selvik, also known for his band Wardruna. They discuss musical - and other - visions of the Viking era, their recreation today, and a broader shift towards the interest in neofolk and pre-Christian traditions, especially in such genres as black metal. 

This Norwegian language podcast comes together with a thematic exhibition at the museum and a list of English language references, which, together with the full version, can be found here: https://www.historiskmuseum.no/utstillinger/arv/podkast/

In this episode, Ieva Gudaitytė talks to James Tomlinson about Christmas music in late medieval England. The conversation involves aspects of medieval book production and the transmission of polyphony within England and abroad. It introduces music written for the Christmas period and contexts in which these elusive musical survivors might have been performed. They chat about the ephemerality of medieval polyphony, how popular musical settings were worked and reworked over time, and the challenges of working with the paucity of surviving sources.

References:

• Bowers, Roger. "Obligation, Agency, and Laissez-Faire: The Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England." In Iain Fenlon, ed. Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts. Cambridge University Press, 1981: 1-19.
• Harris, Max. Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools. Cornell University Press, 2011.

This episode of the Music Talkshow is on the complex theme of music-making in prisons. IMV researchers Áine Mangaoang and Lucy Cathcart Frödén share tracks written or recorded in prisons in Norway, Iceland and Ireland, and discuss connections between music-making, identity and mental health, and the role music and shared creative processes could play in alternatives to incarceration. Along the way they’ll share recorded excerpts of a public conversation earlier in 2023 with special guest, Norwegian Hip Hop artist Belizio.

References and links

Prisons of Note project (University of Oslo)

Musikk i Fengsel og Frihet (Music in Prison and Freedom, Norway)

Mary Cohen (researcher/practitioner on music in prisons in the US)

Kate Herrity (criminologist interested in sound and the sensory in prisons)

Ben Crewe (criminologist who has written about ‘the pains of imprisonment’)

Facilitators’ perspectives on music in Norwegian prisons (article by Áine)

Distant Voices (songwriting-as-research in prisons in Scotland)

The Art of Bridging (podcast on the Distant Voices project, made by Lucy)

Learning Resources from The Art of Bridging

In this episode of The Music Talkshow, our music researchers Veronika Muchitsch and Mirjana Plath are chatting about popular music cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

We’re discussing pride music, technology, and stylistic changes through time. On top of fascinating research, you can enjoy music from 1874 to 2023. Even football fans get their money's worth.

Fotocredit: Frode Larsen / Nasjonalmuseet / UiO

UiO research center RITMO's postdoctoral fellow Dr. Remy Martin and doctoral fellow Martin Pleiß took this episode as an opportunity to stroll through one of Oslo’s most prominent places for experiencing art - the national museum of Norway. They do not simply look around, but pay attention to how we use sounds to make sense of what we experience. They talk about the need for places and emotions, how our senses give us references, and why music is so great to experience these perceptual powers every day.

Sosiale medier er over alt, også i musikklivet. I den neste episoden av The Music Talkshow prater doktorgradsstipendiat Eirik Jacobsen om sin forskning på sosiale mediers påvirkning på uavhengig musikkultur. Hør hans samtale med musikerne Dionisia Fjelldalen fra bandet MÍO og Janos Andersson fra bandet Janos.

Social media is everywhere, also in musical life. Hear PhD candidate Eirik Jacobsen talk about his research on social media in independent music culture in conversation with two musicians, in the next episode of The Music Talkshow! (Conversation in Norwegian).

“The Music Talkshow” is a musicology dissemination show by our local University of Oslo early career music and sound researchers – PhD’s and postdocs. In this show, we hope to bridge the gap between those who wonder about music casually and those who do that professionally – from prospective students to lifelong music fans, fidelity nerds, and helpless cheesy romantics.

In this first show Aleksander, Tejaswinee and Ieva introduce the series and share some of their favourite and also original tunes.