ABSTRACT
Through their analysis of performances by and practices of reception relating to two major popular music acts – the Austrian folk-pop musician Andreas Gabalier, and the German R&B singer Xavier Naidoo – the authors highlight how live music settings such as concerts function to mainstream right-wing and far-right populism on an affective level. Based on participant observation at concerts and Musicological Group Analyses, the chapter argues that Gabalier and Naidoo exemplify two of the ways in which right-wing and far-right populism can be mainstreamed in celebrity music culture. Whilst Gabalier presents himself as a voice of the people, legitimising far-right populist frames and combining neotraditional aesthetics with a modern sound that draws on African American genres such as swing, blues, and soul, as well as country music-inspired sounds of the cultural far right in the US, Naidoo alternates between what could be described as two different personas. As Dunkel and Kopanski argue, this strategy of Naidoo’s to employ two different personas has allowed him to cultivate both mainstream and far-right audiences. Enjoyed by those in both the political mainstream and far-right milieus, Naidoo occupies a unique position in the cultural mainstreaming of far-right populism in Germany and German-speaking countries.
