Guest: Phil Dodds, Bråkmakargatan in Rosengård: An Intermedial Perspective on Malmö New Wave Rap

This week we are visited by Phil Dodds from Lund University who will give a presentation titled Bråkmakargatan in Rosengård: An intermedial perspective on Malmö New Wave rap.

Note that this is an afternoon seminar.

About the seminar

Phil Dodds is a researcher in the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences at Lund University. He is co-editor of POPULÄR – Nordic Journal for Popular Culture Research. His PhD (2017) in cultural and historical geography is from the University of Edinburgh. 

In this presentation, Phil Dodds analyses the role of the city in the music (and music videos and live performances) of the Malmö New Wave rappers: Guleed, Adam Aden and Ozzy. These artists represent a new addition to a tradition in Sweden of rappers emphasising their connections to specific (usually socially stigmatised and contested) areas of Swedish cities. The presentation will be focused, in particular, on a televised performance of the song “Ozzy på Bråkmakargatan” (“Ozzy on Troublemaker Street”) by Ozzy feat. Timbuktu. This layered and detailed performance is built around a re-telling of a classic Astrid Lindgren tale, and it features lyrical references to other Swedish national heroes including the footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic, plus popular musical conventions that evoke childhood joy and encourage a kind of communal musical experience. Moreover, the song and its performance build the Lindgrenian saga out of and into the urban space in which Ozzy grew up (an area near Zlatan Court in Rosengård, Malmö), and the staging and choreography feature stylised versions of specific urban sites, especially Million Programme architecture and local “livs” grocery shops. The presentation discusses how Ozzy is situated in relation to a broader hip-hop history and analyses, from an intermedial perspective, the significance of the specific places that Ozzy produces and performs. 

It is possible to attend the seminar both from Dacke in Växjö and via zoom. Contact us at ims@lnu.se if you want to participate via zoom, or sign up for our external email list to receive automatic updates on our events (zoom link and additional information are sent out one week in advance).

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen