The document discusses how music relates to national and cultural identity. It explores how national identity is complex and imagined rather than fixed, and how music both expresses existing identities and allows for new identities to form. Globalization and online music consumption have made cultural influences borderless, so music no longer solely shapes local or national identity as it once did.

1. Analysing Music Media
Music and National Identity
Iain Muego

2. Music and national Identity
• Defining National Identity
• The Music of your country
• National Anthems
• National Composers
• Music is not bound by borders
• The Borderless MP3
• Who do we think we are

3. Quick Task – National Identity
1) Quick task – National Identity Where were you born?
2) Where were your parents/grandparents born?
3) Where did you go to school?
4) List at least 5 things you think of as ‘(your nationality)’.
5) What do you think of when you think of your ‘Nation’?
6) (Flags, places, people?)
7) What do you think of when you think of Scottish music?
National Identity is hard to define! It may have something to do
with borders, history, culture, legal status and the economy.
It may be largely imagined.

5. The Problem with identity
‘The problem starts when one expects to find ‘identity’ within the
body or mind of the individual. This is to look in the wrong place for
the operation of identity. … To have a national identity is to have a
way of talking about nationhood. … only if people believe that they
have national identities, will such homelands, and the world of
national homelands, be reproduced. … Nor is national identity to be
explored by taking a scale from the psychological library of tests and
administering it to a suitable populations. … National identities are
forms of social life, rather than internal psychological states; as such,
they are ideological creations, caught up in the historical processes of
nationhood.
Michael Billig Banal Nationalism (1995)

6. A nation will often hide behind its icons and what they represent, such as
Bonnie Prince Charlie, Robert the Burce or Robert Burns, in order to
preserve an identity they have become accustomed to.
The meaning of these icons would change if the relationship between them
and the nation they represent was less arbitrary, so it is imperative that in
order to maintain ones identity, one has to neglect what is often the
‘inconvenient’ truth.
“Myths can help bridge the present with the past, to offer a legitimating
continuity through suitable history" (McCrone)
"Myth history is vital part of the story-telling of any country...."Myths don't
disappear when confronted with facts - they operate on a different plane -
they validate experience and action, independent of their truth status
Truths and Myths

7. National Composers
‘Nationalism’ in 20th centaury musical terms refers to the musical ideologies and
motifs associated with a specific country, region, or ethnicity, such as folk tunes
and melodies, rhythms, and harmonies inspired by them. (Shepherd 1997)
At the end of the 19th century, new music exploded. Serialism became the vogue of the
day, rejecting melodies for its ‘sissy’ characteristic. Impressionism, however, bloomed in
France, celebrating the beauty of simplicity. Claude Debussy was, undoubtedly, the
foremost composer for impressionist music. He drew inspiration from the Orient, utilizing
the Pentatonic scale of oriental music, as well as the similarly exotic whole tone scale.
His music resembles the paintings of that time – calming and having an emphasis on
movement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVV0jkZC4jI
Germany has been the epicenter of classical music, with the presence of Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, the Strauss family, Bruckner etc. However, none of them embodies the German
spirit as much as Richard Wagner. Wagner remains the most controversial composer. His
anti-semitism led him to become Hitler’s favorite composer, and his music is still commonly
associated with Fascism.
Wagner wrote operas. Huge, purely Wagnerian operas that no one has ever attempted. He
threw away the Italian tradition, and created his own, purely German opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q

8. To install a sense of nationalism, pride, loyalty
To demonstrate strength to apposing nations
God Save the Queen
la Marseillaise
Stars and Stripes
Used as a propaganda tool
Used to manipulate Cultural Identity
Used to exert social economic policy
Martial Music
National Anthems

9. National Anthems
Vietnam - "Tien Quan Ca"/"Army March
Our flag, red with the blood of victory,
bears the spirit of the country.
The distant rumbling of the guns mingles
with our marching song.
The path to glory is built by the bodies of
our foes.”
For too long have we swallowed our
hatred. Be ready for all sacrifices
Scottish National Anthem
2nd verse
The Hills are bare now,
And Autumn leaves
Lie thick and still,
O'er land that is lost now,
Which those so dearly held,
That stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
French National Anthem
Rise children of the fatherland. The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's. Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields. The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst. To cut the throats of your sons and consorts
To arms citizens Form your battalions March, march Let impure blood Water our furrows.

10. Eurovision
• Music has a powerful influence on the individual as well as the collective. Music that can be
defined as ‘fundamentally collective’ is national music. Concepts such as unisonance and
cultural intimacy make that clear. Political scientist Benedict Anderson came up with the term
‘unisonance’, which refers to the sonic moment that occurs when people from throughout the
nation gather in a shared performance of music. This moment, this communal experience of
music, generates a feeling of cultural intimacy (Bohlman, 2002).
• The ESC has created throughout its history a form of European public sphere that has both
reflected and contribute to what constitutes the shared meaning of ‘Europe’
• The Eurovision Song Contest presents one of the most successful pan-European identity
building vehicles to date, through the following three main modes:
a) identity-formation at the pan-European level;
b) identity articulation at a national level, both endogenous –that of the nation towards
itself- and exogenous –the nation towards the ‘other’ Europe.
c) An arena for manageable popular expression of national ‘contests’ and regional
collusion. (Gonzalo Torres (2011))
• It has been utilized by nations as a vehicle to ‘speak’ and present themselves to Europe as
rightful members of it

11. Eurovision
Father Ted 1996
Ireland
My lovely horse
https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=T2OEd4p
LMOI
Dschinghis khan1979
West Germany
Dschinghis khan
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=eAEUrp2V4ss
Lordi 2006
FinLand
Hard rock
Hallelujah
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=gAh9NRGNhUU
Baranovskiye Babushki
2012 Russia
Party for Everyone
https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=BgUstrmJzyc
Verka Serduchka 2007
Ukraine
Dancing Lasha Tumbia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=fQX6qmLNamM
LT United 2006
Lithuania
We are The Winners
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=DBAdOlQPbwg
Abba 1974
Waterloo
Sweden
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=BQn1gJdVKi4
Loreen 2012
Euphoria
Sweden
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?time_continue=37&
v=Pfo-
8z86x80&feature=emb_title
katrina and the
waves 1997
Love Shine a light
UK
https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=NnoikRec67k

12. Local versus National
• Each Country is made up with different regions, UK, USA, France, Spain, etc.. The UK,
despite being a small country has four, and within these regions, there are local
communities, with local sounds. Scotland alone has four recognised Dialects; in
conjunction to this we also have local vernaculars…”Gonny” “Ken” “Wheesht” “Aye”
• These local languages/sounds do not give a representation of what the nations music
represents and or the rest of the UK.
• Multiculturalism - The leading factors that construct identity within one’s nation is
immigration and emigration. The UK has influences from France, Germany, Norway,
Ireland, Denmark, ect. Both Canada and America, has direct cultural identifiers from
most of Europe.
• Studies within ethnomusicology, however, stress that music not only is a cultural and
expressive practice that bonds group members together, but can also cross boundaries
between social identities and shape new ones (Cidra 2015; Pettan and Titon 2015)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIFJ8tgECZ8

13. Consumption and distribution
• “Independent music scenes have been prominent in the last two decades of the 20th
century, but today indie music can be disseminated online, and internet tools allow
people in distant locations to engage with each other easily online. With the popularity
of the internet, some local spaces devoted to music are becoming less popular and less
viable. Yet local spaces continue to provide the infrastructure for music scene”
(Kruse2010)
• The main governing factor that has changed the manner in which music shapes identity
is online consumption.
• Online music is borderless; therefore influences that once shaped the local and national
identity is no longer applicable. Individuals, locals, and nations can be directly influenced
from music around the globe.
• Music not only functions to express and maintain pre‐existing identities, it also provides
resources for contesting and negotiating identities and constructing new ones Due to
globalisation processes, with their flows of ideas, people and products, hybridisations
are continuously arising between cultural identities, practices and belongings.
(Jung 2014; Kyker 2013; Stokes 2004).

14. Conclusions
• National Identity is hard to define! It may have
something to do with borders, history, culture, legal
status and the economy. It may be largely imagined.
• Music can be associated with cultural/national/local identity
– but rarely in a narrow sense
• Like all forms of modern identity, Cultural identity is now no
longer fixed, as the influences that define who we are
changes, so does music.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbef0Cm8uDk