At the moment I am preparing a lecture on
Swedish folk music revival, tradition and heritage, for the undergraduate
course in World Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The idea is that throughout the course the
students should meet different musics around the world, beyond the genres and
styles which they may already be familiar with, in addition to getting an
understanding of key concepts in ethnomusicology and music research.
It will be interesting to see how the
students react to the various takes on three-beat rhythm in Scandinavian dance music, but
also I hope to get them to critically engage with ambivalent concepts such as
tradition and heritage in relation to music.
I am planning to use my own work as a
musician as the subject for the lecture to, in a way, give a face to the real
musicians who often hides behind ethnographic descriptions in journals and
books. As such it will be a kind of
autoethnographic account on Swedish traditional music; which I think will be
interesting for me as well as the students.
The main reading will be an article by Owe
Ronström on Swedish fiddle music, tradition and heritage, and the additional reading
is David Kaminsky’s article on dancing, gender and eroticism. It is difficult to find English language academic
writings on Swedish traditional music, but I think Ronström’s and Kaminsky’s
very different texts will provide some interesting discussion in the seminars
after the lecture. In general I find it easier to engage groups if they get to
do something else in addition to listing so there will definitely be some student
participation in the lecture, maybe singing or dancing, and some live music on
clarinet and melodeon from me.
