TEAM

Manuela Caiani and Enrico Padoan

WEB SITE

START YEAR 2019

END YEAR 2022

In recent years, a new form of political popular music has emerged: mainstream sounds with populist messages have gained widespread popularity beyond the confines of extremist circles. This recent phenomenon of commercially successful and widely received popular music promoting populist agendas has been instrumental in the growing success of populism in Europe. Therefore, this project identifies the negligence of music in the study of populist movements by examining popular music as one central element of the cultures of populism. It explores the ways in which popular music functions as a medium for the mainstreaming of populist ideologies in Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany, and Sweden from a comparative perspective. These countries have been identified as they (1) have seen a strong increase of populist parties and movements over the last few years, (2) played a major role in shaping the immigration policies of the EU during the so-called refugee crisis, and (3) shown strong interactions between populism and popular music. Different empirical approaches such as musicological group analysis, sociological reception analysis via focus interviews and comparative transnational contextualization are used. Songs shall be identified which are widely popular and have been released between 2015 and 2018 in the mentioned countries. Also, this project will provide a theoretical framework for enabling future cultural educators to develop methods for critical awareness of populist cultures in education programs.

Italian team: Manuela Caiani (principal investigator) and Enrico Padoan (research assistant)

Project partners: University of Oldenburg (Mario Dunkel; project coordinator; Anna Schwank); University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz (André Doehring; Kai Ginkel); Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Emilia Barna; Ágnes Patakfalvi-Czirják); University of Groningen (Melanie Schiller).

Funding: Volkswagen Foundation (Volkswagenstiftung n. of project Ref.: 94 754-1, PI University of Oldenburg)

*Tree photo created by welcomia – www.freepik.com.

FUNDING

Volkswagen Foundation