The Discourse of Folk Music: Voices, Sounds, and Grooves

The course will give an outline of the musicological discourse which has risen in relation to folk music as a term, practice, and ideology. International research into folk music - from Bela Bartok to Steven Feld's "ecomusicology" will be elucidated, and we will meet issues tied to the role of folk music in both the building of nations and select resistance movements, as well as to perceptions of its emphasis on locality, natural environment, tradition, identity, and authenticity.

In the Norwegian context, the inheritance from Ludvig Mathias Lindeman and Edvard Grieg will be explored. Questions of how Norwegian folk singing and dance music has been represented, categorised, transcribed, and analysed will be discussed.

The course will give specialized and analytical insight into a selection of central recordings of older, newer, Norwegian, and international folk music. The construction of an understanding of the distinctiveness of folk music, its historically changeable ideology, and its continuing ability to inspire and fascinate performers, listeners, and researchers today are central to the course.
Performers and researchers affiliated with NTNU will partake in some of the course's seminars.

Knowledge:
An examinee with a completed qualification in MUSV3114
- will have in-depth knowledge of older and newer discourse in folk music and practice.
- will have knowledge about historical and recent problems within Norwegian and/or foreign international folk music.

Skills:
An examinee with a completed qualification in MUSV3114
- can express his/her deepened knowledge in a convincing way, both in writing and speech
- can individually find and assess relevant research-based knowledge to elucidate an issue in connection to older, newer Norwegian or international folk music
- can, based on his/her deepened knowledge, discuss academic texts in a diversified way, enter a dialogue with the texts of others, and carry out his/her own reasoning, both in writing and speech.

Lectures and seminars.

The text for the home examination should have a length of about 10 pages.

Students at the bachelor's programme in Musicology must choose "bachelor's thesis" as the form of assessment in one MUSV31**-course in the third or fourth semester. The bachelor's thesis will be thematically based on the in-depth course, and is supervised individually in the amount of 5 hours. The scope of the bachelor's thesis is 15-20 pages.