ABSTRACT
Is there a way to escape the ubiquitous ‘exoticising strategies’ of writings on ‘Nordic’ music, or the conviction that the ‘Nordic’, fundamentally, derives from ‘nature’? These are core questions in a chapter that investigates the margins and borderlines of ‘the Nordic’, through a selection of case studies which cut across traditional boundaries of contrasting musical genres. Starting with the work of Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim (1931–2010), as an example of orientation and writing ‘strategies’ that break with expected ‘Nordic exoticism’, the chapter explores Nordheim’s connections with the sounds of Studio Experimentalne in Warsaw, Poland; how ‘Nordic jazz’ of the 1970s and 1980s typically included networks of Finnish, Norwegian, and Polish musicians (Vesala, Stańko, Christensen, Andersen, Garbarek, and others); and questions why the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki would engage with contemporary jazz musicians (‘Nordic’ or otherwise).
