FINAL MS November 2017 Submission Version 2 - Clean (1).pdf (210.25 kB)
The screams all sound the same : the music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse
Over the last two decades, a substantial body of geographical research has emerged examining the mutually generative relations between music, space, place, landscape, identity and locality. This work has revealed the complex ways in which specific geographical identities and imaginaries can be reinforced and created through differences in sound, through lyrics, and through the acts and meanings of making music. Yet, these identities and imaginaries can also perform important economic functions, representing geographical discourses that musicians can employ to develop distinctiveness to make themselves marketable, particularly in the context of a heavily-saturated contemporary global music market. In this paper, we examine this with specific relation to the Icelandic band, Of Monsters and Men. We provide an account of how references to landscape and folklore in the band’s music, lyrics and imagery represent not only expressions of intimate connections with local landscape, cultural identity and lived experience, but also embody awareness of a pre-existing Icelandic imaginary. The use of folk music instruments, cultural references and motifs, we argue, acts to legitimise the band’s use of this imaginary. Further, we highlight explicit attempts to brand Icelandic music under a single ‘label’ as representative of the way in which this Icelandic imaginary comes to represent a powerful, if potentially homogenising, geographical discourse to mark out Icelandic music in a crowded global music market.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
AreaCitation
TWEED, F. and WATSON, A., 2018. The screams all sound the same : the music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse. Area, 51 (1), pp.126-133.Publisher
© 2018 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Published by WileyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: TWEED, F. and WATSON, A., 2018. The screams all sound the same : the music of Of Monsters and Men and the Icelandic imaginary as geographical discourse. Area, 51 (1), pp.126-133, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12422. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Acceptance date
2017-12-05Publication date
2018-03-14ISSN
0004-0894eISSN
1475-4762Publisher version
Language
- en