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FriThis panel discusses various forms and modes of protest within a wide spectrum of traditional models, avant-garde conceptions of musical structure as message, satire and humour, subversion, performance and activism, and “commercialism”. Participants reflect on their own understandings of protest through music and discuss recent phenomena in regard to their social and political contexts. The question is: how can protest be effective today?
Please note that the previously-announced participation of Meira Asher is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.
Adam Harper is a music theorist, critic, and the author of the book Infinite Music. Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making (Zero Books, 2012), in which he speculates on how music may sound, and what forms it may take, in the future. A PhD student in musicology, Harper lectures and teaches at the University of Oxford, writes regularly for The Wire and Dummy, blogs on Rouge’s Foam, and gives interdisciplinary lectures and seminars at venues such as the Darmstadt Summer Courses in New Music and All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival, and on The Guardian’s ‘Music Weekly’ podcast series.
Meira Asher is known for her uncompromising societal art. Her work has been released on Crammed, Sub Rosa and Auditorium. Her early voice-based albums from the 1990s were too forward-thinking and challenging for Israeli audiences of the period, but after her departure to Europe they attained cult status. Her research areas include activist social documentary and the amplification of the human body.
Olaf Karnik is an author, journalist and critic for radio and print media such as WDR 3, Spex, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He has published books and articles about African American pop music, reggae in Germany, and music videos, has organised music events and presentations, and since 2009 is active as a lecturer at various universities in Germany. He has played in several bands and has been releasing albums since 1985.
Dubbed by Afropop Wordwide as "the cutting edge of satire in African hip-hop," FOKN Bois' bold, taboo-bashing raps have brought the Ghanaian duo to global recognition.