„Sounds Icelandic: Essays on Icelandic Music in the 20th and 21st Centuries”

Over the past 25 years, Icelandic music has been gaining considerable international attention. This is attested to by the international success of such acts as the Sugarcubes, and then Björk as a solo artist, followed by the worldwide success of Sigur Rós, and more recently Of Monsters and Men. And these artists reveal themselves to be ‘the tip of the iceberg’, once one delves further into the music of Iceland and the myriad of genres that thrive there. That such a small country can produce so much music of quality, value and acclaim is a fascinating situation that has boosted Icelandic tourism and made the country the ‘hippest’ place in the world. This is a book of wide-ranging essays on different aspects of Icelandic music, from the ancient traditional chants of rímur to the large output of classical music by nationalist composer Jón Leifs and others, to the plethora of Icelandic rock and pop groups that have already made an impact on the world as well as more idiosyncratic and genre-bending musicians now emerging from the Reykjavik music scene.

Thorbjörg Daphne Hall is Program Director and Assistant Professor of Musicology in the Department of Music at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavík. She is currently completing a PhD in Music at the University of Liverpool. She has published and presented conference papers internationally on Icelandic Music and the Iceland Airwaves music festival, and received an Icelandic music award in 2007 with the group Hjaltalin for their debut album Sleepdrunk Seasons, a band whose influences range from modern indie rock to 60’s pop music to classical music. She is also a member of the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

Professor Nicola Dibben is the author of Björk (Equinox Press, 2009) and co-author of Music and Mind in Everyday Life (OUP 2010). Her research into music, mind and culture has also been published in over 40 book chapters and journal articles, presented at conferences worldwide, and featured in the international media. In 2012 she collaborated with Björk, contributing to her ground-breaking multi-media project Biophilia – the first music album to be released as a suite of apps. Professor Dibben is editor of Empirical Musicology Review, a consulting editor to Musicae Scientiae, Music Perception, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, and she co-organised the 2009 international Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology.

Arni Heimir Ingólfsson holds a PhD in historical musicology from Harvard University (2003). He has held positions as Associate Professor of musicology at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and as Programme Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. His primary area of interest is the transmission of music to and within Iceland during the 16th and 17th centuries. His CD recordings (with the Carmina Chamber Choir, which he founded) of music from Icelandic manuscripts have received outstanding reviews and various awards. He is the author of Jón Leifs: Líf í tónum (2009), a biography of Iceland’s iconic national composer, also forthcoming in an English version as Jón Leifs and the Creation of Icelandic Music (Indiana University Press). He contributed to Björk’s Biophilia as writer and arranger of choir parts. Arni holds a research position at the Arni Magnússon Institute of Icelandic Studies, funded by the Icelandic Research Fund. He is currently Mellon Visiting Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy.

Tony Mitchell is honorary research associate at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is the author of Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester (London: Methuen: 1999), Popular Music and Local Identity: Pop, Rock and Rap in Europe and Oceania (University of Leicester Press: 1996) and the editor of Global Noise: Rap and Hip hop outside the USA (Wesleyan University Press: 2001). He co-edited Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia (Australian Clearing House for Youth Studies: 2008), North meets South: Popular Music in Aotearoa/New Zealand, (Perfect Beat: 1994), and Home, Land and Sea: Situating Popular Music in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland: Pearson Education: 2011). He has also published numerous articles on music and film in various countries, including Iceland, and writes reviews for the Australian magazines Music Forum and Cyclic Defrost.