Goldsmiths Popular Music Research Units presents
An Altered State: Terror, Music and War Games – Oslo, 22 July 2011
Professor Stan Hawkins, Birgitte Sandve and Karl-Magnus Bjorøy, University of Oslo, Norway
Small Hall Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building
Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross SE14 6NW
Thursday 26 April 2.30pm

Prior to the bombing of the government quarter in Oslo and the massacre on the island of Utøya on 22 July 2011, a YouTube video was released by Anders Behring Breivik. He used this to present his detailed manifesto. Music contributed to the chilling message. This lecture considers the role of music in motivating the Norwegian terrorist, as part of a project on music and transculturalism in Norway. Gender forms a main focal point of this presentation, with particular emphasis on the links between music, masculinity and ethnicity. The lecture will also deal with responses to the terror attacks on Oslo by discussing how music contributed to the process of re-establishing a sense of shared community. At the Memorial Concert in Oslo’s Cathedral, the Norwegian rap group, Karpe Diem, performed their 2010 hit ‘Byduer i Dur’, which soon became an anthem for Norway’s capital. This song and its performance are used to explore how notions of cultural belonging underpin the complex identity politics of a nation-state, not only in the outpouring of unprecedented grief, but also in the process of transformation.

Link to Norway research group – http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/english/research/projects/musicandgender/

Link to Popular Music Research Unit – http://www.gold.ac.uk/music/research/popularmusicresearchunit/

Directions here – http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/