Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a “musi-linguistic” continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.

Through the design process of a cooperative audiovisual musical instrument, the Evangistrum, we explored users’ sense of resonance and agency in relation to technology. The instrument’s aim was to promote collaboration, have strong audiovisual congruence and to be intuitive to use while allowing for more complex levels of expression. Using Hartmut Rosa’s theory on resonance as a philosophical framework, we explored how cooperation and a sense of agency can be encouraged within an audiovisual musical instrument, and how the interplay between audible, visual and tactile aspects of the instrument influenced users’ cooperation and sense of agency. The design was built using Unreal Engine, controlled with commercially available midi controllers, and requires two users to operate. We tested consecutive instrument prototypes through three workshops and a concert. Through this process we gained valuable insight into the role of agency within successful creative collaboration, the complex interplay between the auditory and visual modes, the importance of mindset within collaboration and technology’s potential for encouraging resonance.

In the Facebook group The Folk Metal Grove, its members manifest, explore and celebrate the musical genre called Folk Metal. The ‘Grovers’ come together in a playful performance and celebration of an idealized past, emically labelled folkyness. In this article, a ‘netnographic’ approach is used to explore how Folk Metal is constructed, negotiated and made meaningful through musicking in this community with the aim to discuss aspects of Folk Metal, ideology, genre and online culture. The group can be understood as a living space involving not only the circulation of music but also the development of meaning, collective memory and norms as well as real-life, often intercultural, connections. Earlier research has shown how Folk Metal in some ways can be seen as accentuating central aspects of heavy metal, but some ways in which Folk Metal is made meaningful within the Grove seem rather to connect to a will to transgress the sonic and cultural boundaries of metal. For the group members the music seems to serve as a space to go beyond metal when it comes to which instruments to play, which languages to sing in, which stories to tell and which emotions to feel.

I den här artikeln beskrivs arbetet med en regional teateruppsättning som producerades och spelades under pandemivåren och -sommaren 2020. Syftet med undersökningen är att exemplifiera och synliggöra de komplexa sätt som coronapandemin och restriktionerna påverkat kreativa verksamheter och institutioner, samt att diskutera hur pandemin kan påverka teaterinstitutioners förändringsarbete. Artikelns övergripande frågeställning är: Vilka konsekvenser hade covid-19-pandemin för de olika produktionsprocesser som ingick i Dalateaterns uppsättning Andra sidan? Pandemin och restriktionerna kan paradoxalt nog sägas ha fungerat både som strategiska försvarare av status quo och taktiska utmanare av detsamma. Samtidigt som pandemin kunde användas för att legitimera stabila strukturer och arbetsmetoder, tvingade den fram avsteg från vissa av arbetets normer och rutiner. Pandemin försatte medarbetarna i ett slags pågående taktiskt läge, som av vissa medarbetare upplevdes som framför allt negativt och stressande, men av andra som en positiv, lustfylld upplevelse, som en konstnärlig och kreativ möjlighetshorisont.

The Swedish/Finnish folk- and world music group Hedningarna combined traditional music with an energetic, drone-based “mystical” sound. Throughout the band’s career, they would consistently use traditional acoustic “folk” instruments, with the acoustic sound typically amplified and modified. In this article we discuss the inception and development of one of their custom instruments, the mora-oud, which combined the body of a medieval style keyed fiddle (a mora-harp) with a fretless lute neck. The material (mainly interviews, auto-ethnographic descriptions and social media discussions) suggests that some of the mora-harps meaning potential, such as a sense of ancientness and “Nordic-ness”, followed into the mora-oud. This was combined with certain sonic and tonal resemblances with the Arabic oud, as well as its visual qualities and ease of amplification, to afford an instrument that fitted congenially with the global world music scene in which Hedningarna was a major player, especially during the 1990s. The instrument became an important part of the band’s sound as well as of their strategies to handle and sometimes link together their musical, cultural and political contexts, both on stage and in the studio. In the conclusion we discuss how serendipity and fantasy were important aspects in how the instrument was conceived and developed.

Through the Swedish voluntary education organisations called studieforbund bands get access to musical education, rehearsal space, gear and gigs. It is a modest but long time funding without any demands on return. Studieforbund are considered to be one of the most important factors for the success of the Swedish music industry due to the educational role they plays for amateur musicians.As musicians gain experience they tend to "outgrow" the studieforbund. There are often no institutional aids to continue their progress, since arts policy regards pop genres to be commercial by default. Recently, former musicians and festival arrangers have developed regional coaching programs for pop bands, leaning on policies of "cultural and creative industries" instead of arts policies.Drawing on Michel de Certeau's concept of tactic and strategies (1984), as well as Ruth Finnegan's pathways (Finnegan 1989), this paper discusses these efforts as tactical manoeuvres by music creators as they navigate regional spaces of education, arts policies and industry strategies.

This article discusses the Swedish festival Falun Folk Music Festival (FFF) and makes use of interviews with key organisers, readings of festival brochures, and other material. I begin with a look at the intentions, motivations and negotiations of the organisers leading up to the first festival in 1986, and from there I discuss the way FFF contributed to a change in Swedish folk music discourse towards logics of professionalisation and cosmopolitanism. FFF negotiated between professionals and amateurs, traditionalists and experimentalists. This paved the way for a vast palette of musical traditions, soon to be called “world music”, to reach a Swedish audience. I argue that the cosmopolitanism of FFF, rather than being the main ideological goal of the organisers, worked as a means to an end, namely the professionalisation and artistic recognition of Swedish folk traditions. It also seems to have made the festival relevant in the cultural policy climate of the time.