Kärjä, Antti-Ville
(Helsingin yliopisto, 2019)
The thesis focusses on how music has been mythologised in different ways. Mythologisation
refers to the ways in which a given phenomenon – in this case music – is connected and
invested with ideas and stories that ultimately cannot be substantiated as they
characteristically deal with “religious” issues and questions in the sense that they have no
empirical answers and thus necessitate believing while there may be overwhelming
evidence against them. In the thesis, mythologisation of music is addressed in relation to the
postsecular attempts to rescript the sacred, by paying specific attention how different
conceptualisations of the “popular” and the “sacred” become interrelated. Thus, the
treatment is predominantly theoretical in nature and linked to a broader interest in the
intersections of the popular and the sacred in music. The analysis does not focus on
religious popular music, or popular music and religion, but on a more conceptual level on
how different apprehensions of the popular and the sacred become operationalised and
politicised in musical situations.
On the basis of existing research within ethnomusicology and the philosophy of music,
mythologisation of music is divided in the thesis into four general categories: first, origins of
music, detectable not just in the ubiquity of cosmological explanations in various epics and
indigenous mythologies but crucially also in the hard-core neuroscientific approaches to
music; second, music’s autonomy, based on widespread assumptions about music as a
transcendent or supernatural power of its own, with certain universal traits and inexorable
effects; third, individuals with allegedly exceptional musical propensities, whether labelled as
stars or geniuses; and fourth, authenticity, particularly in relation to presumptions about
pureness and excellence.
Methodologically, the thesis builds on the cultural study of music and anthropology and
sociology of religion. Through socio-constructionist discourse analysis the categories of
mythologisation of music are examined in relation to the multidimensionality of the popular
and the sacred. Regarding the popular, at issue are its quantitative, aesthetic, sociological,
folk, partisan and postmodern dimensions; the sacred in turn is examined in terms of
religious, subcultural, national, economic and political aspects.
The analysis reveals that the dimensions of the popular that become emphasised in
mythologisation of music are the aesthetic, folk and postmodern ones, while on the sacred
side it is the cluster of subcultural, national and economic facets which is connected to all
areas of mythologisation of music. All five aspects of the sacred have however a fairly equal
footing in the ways to mythologise music, which is somewhat unsurprising given the close
connection between myths and the sacred in the general sense. With respect to the popular
in turn, the conspicuous links between myths about individuality in music and quantitative
and mass cultural dimensions are notable. Moreover, the findings indicate that overall the
discourses of autonomy and authenticity carry a paramount weight when considering the
intersections of the popular and the sacred in mythologisation of music.