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This is the most up-to-date schedule for the 2024 online June sessions of the AAR Annual Meetings. If you have questions about the program, contact annualmeeting@aarweb.org. All times are listed in Eastern Standard Time.

AO27-105

Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit and Music and Religion Unit

Theme: Materiality, Identity and Style in Contemporary Pagan Music

Thursday, 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM (June Online Meeting)

Online June Session

Christopher Chase, Iowa State University, Presiding

This co-sponsored panel features musical Paganisms and their relationships to various nationalisms, ethnic identities and/or imagined communities. Anglo-American discourses of Paganism have shifted from libertine youth, aboriginal primitivism, eco-folk and folk-rolk nature veneration into harder-edged criticism and antinomian protests a part of general shifts and growth in new genres and recedence of older ones. Yet evidence indicates these are regional shifts to be compared and contrasted with Eastern European developments, particularly since the end of Communist statism. The composition of the panel reflects presenters' questions about 1) the usefulness of current critical theory concepts across Western and Eastern European divides 2) the degree to which Pagan musics have assumed enough cultural inertia to drive Pagan discourses as well as reflect them and 3) the conceptualization of these identities and discourses as a growing edge of _lore_, a body of emic somatic knowledge experienced through sonic immersion and 'imagined elsewheres.'

  • Michael F. Strmiska, Orang County Community College

    Changing Styles in Pagan Music as Signs of Shifting Worldviews

    Abstract

    The two genres of music most commonly associated with Contemporary Paganism are  acoustic folk music and heavy metal rock. Each of these can be further divided into numerous sub-genres. Pagan-related folk music is divisible into acoustic folk music inspired by the folk movement in the UK, the US and other Western countries in the 1960s & 1970s, as well as recreations of traditional folk music of bygone times, often performed on archaic ‘traditional’ instruments and understood to symbolise cultural and/or ethnic identity. Pagan-oriented heavy metal gave rise to such relevant sub-categories as black metal, pagan metal, and folk metal. This paper explores how these different musical styles correlate with different forms of Paganism with particular world-views and political stances, drawing on examples from the UK, the US, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

  • Michal Puchovský, Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences

    Between folklore and national identity: Comparative analysis of Pagan motives in the music of Tomáš Kočko’s Orchestr and Žiarislav & Bytosti

    Abstract

    Conference paper will discuss the similarities and differences between the musical production of two similar, yet different Pagan folk music bands from Slovakia (Žiarislav & Bytosti) and Czech Republic (Tomáš Kočko & Orchestr). Both artists have started their music carriers in late 90s, both are Pagan by religion and both are still going strong in the current local music scenes. The conference paper is based in the research conducted between years 2015 and 2023, with focus on Slovak and Czech Pagan music scene. The main sources of the data comes from textual analysis of the lyrics and semi-structured interviews with Tomáš Kočko and Žiarislav. Two theories will be used to frame the data – rise of the occultural milieu by Christopher Partridge and symbolic interactionism. The the main goal of the proposed conference paper is to shed more light into how are national, local and religious identities intertwined within contemporary Pagan popular music in Central Europe. 

  • Padraic Fitzgerald, College of Charleston

    Odin’s Mead : Music in Nordic Neopaganism

    Abstract

                In pre-Christian Nordic folk culture, the figure of the Skald occupied a space of prominence as masters of poetry and song and as keepers of folk tradition. In Contemporary Nordic Neopaganism, these skalds have re-emerged in the form of popular Nordic Neopagan aligned bands and musicians. These modern skalds occupy a similar place of esteem as their historic counterparts, occupying the role of “unofficial” authority figures within this growing religion. This authority is granted due in no small part to the music they craft, which in the case of some groups is composed and performed in a ritualistic fashion. This music represents a facet of the body of Lore, the corpus of mythic narratives, historical and archaeological accounts, folk traditions, and songs of the Nordic cultural area that are engaged with by practitioners of this emergent tradition to inform both individual and group Nordic Neopagan identity.