‘Welcome to Räfven Village’: On Musical Claims to Multicultural Identity

Abstract

The Swedish band Räfven use the New Old Europe Sound to claim for themselves and their audiences a postnational, multicultural identity via Jewish and Romani cultural capital. The group facilitate their access to this capital by displacing their claim into a realm of magical realist theatrical fantasy, using (among other things) quasi-Aesopian animal archetypes in their imagery. They reinforce their claim by blurring the boundaries between identities—between human and animal, Romani and Jewish, Swedish and European, European and international, international and Jewish/Romani. Räfven deploy all of these mechanisms along multiple vectors, via liner notes, onstage patter, personae, and musical sound. Their claim functions primarily to promote anti-racist, pro-immigrant ideologies, by allowing both Räfven and their audiences to identify with groups known for their persecution and borderlessness. However, because Räfven is made up entirely of white ethnic Swedes with a primarily white audience, their self-fashioning as icons of multiculturalism also constructs racial homogeneity as unproblematic. Their work is thus just as likely to inspire activism (for audience members who are motivated to realise Räfven's vision of a multicultural utopia) as complacency (for audience members who imagine that they already are a part of Räfven's multicultural utopia).

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