ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of ‘home’ as a central theme in musical practices linked to far-right populism in Austria and its close ties to nationalism, nativism, and agrarianism. Through ethnographic research and in-depth group analyses of two songs identified via fieldwork, the authors explore the ways in which music can playfully invite listeners to participate in collective musical practices as a form of politicisation. In this sense, popular music can become a tool for the mainstreaming of far-right populist tropes by actors such as the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). In the songs themselves, there is no overt embrace of populism. There is, however, an adjacent set of significant conditions (for example, specific material surroundings) that characterise a performative style encountered in the field, in which certain preferred readings of the songs and their affordances can take root.
