Music and Environmentalism in Iceland

This chapter is a scholarly response to environmental degradation in Iceland. In recognizing the scope of the crisis, the chapter questions conventional wisdom in musical geography and offers a new vision for music’s potential in transnational futures. The chapter offers an argument for eco-cosmopol...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dibben, Nicola
Other Authors: Holt, Fabian, Kärjä, Antti-Ville
Format: Book
Language:unknown
Published: Oxford University Press 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190603908.013.9
Description
Summary:This chapter is a scholarly response to environmental degradation in Iceland. In recognizing the scope of the crisis, the chapter questions conventional wisdom in musical geography and offers a new vision for music’s potential in transnational futures. The chapter offers an argument for eco-cosmopolitanism as an alternative to place-centered approaches to the analysis of contemporary spatial experiences, suggesting that recorded music might help people see themselves as part of a global biosphere. The analysis includes a discussion of musical activism in response to the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project and offers two case studies, illustrating a topophilic and a biophilic conception of the national environment. The first case study is the 2007 documentary Heima (Homeland) about a free, unannounced concert tour by Sigur Rós and the second is Björk’s 2011 album Biophilia.