Music life in general is imbued with power structures, inequalities and hierarchies – Swedishfolk music being no exception. The genre is constructed around established truths andconditions for inclusion and exclusion, supported by long-standing ideas and institutions.Questions of power relations within music life is the foundation of the research program Music,Power, and Inequity (MPI), which is conducted in the musicological research environment atÖrebro University, in which this project is a part.
In this paper I will present an ongoing study as part of my PhD project, with the aim to examinehow and which ideas are conveyed about the music, through texts and visuals used in marketingof concerts and music albums. This is done through multimodal discourse analysis. In the thesisI have a particular focus on the role of the musician as a position of power, and how themusician legitimizes this position in relation to the norms and values within the genre. Theoverarching aim of the thesis is thus to examine how norms and ideals that characterize theSwedish folk music genre are reproduced and/or transformed through concert practices, suchas promotion and stage talk.
How we talk about music affects how music is practiced and experienced. What is writtenabout concerts and how musicians talk on stage shapes how the audience, as well as themusicians themselves, perceives the performed music – what values are imbued in the musicand how it is experienced and interpreted. The musician has the right to speak during theconcert event and to directly describe their music in text, visuals and audio before the concertsand in music albums. Consequently, the role of the musician has precedence – i.e. the power –to actively shape how the music is perceived, and these processes constitutes the maininterest for this thesis.