National Identity And Music

Abstract

Abstract Arriving at the hotel abroad, my children notice with delight that ‘they’re playing Swedish music in the elevator’. This music was cover versions of hit songs by Abba. At the opening of the Olympics 2000 in Sydney, the Swedish team marched in to the tune of The Winner Takes It All, once again by Abba. Another feature of the Sydney Olympics was that the official music that accompanied every broadcast from the games included the didjeridoo and other Aboriginal cultural markers. What questions regarding the relationship between national identity and music do these examples raise? Throughout time, people have used music as a means of expression and identification. Although the purposes and functions of music can vary within as well as between cultures, they have many common features; from the Stone Age to modern times, and from the jungles of Africa and Borneo to the suburbs of the big cities (Malinowski, 1922; Malm, 1967; Nettl, 1983).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 144 citations exist upstream.