Contribution short abstract:

At a time of rapid economic growth and urbanisation, Swiss ‘folk music’ (Volksmusik) was presented on national television in the 1960s-1990s as a pastoral ideal world. The paper shows how the mass medium created a vernacular idyll and discusses if and how folk musicians rewrite this legacy today.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution focuses on Swiss "Volksmusik" (folk or popular music) and specific developments in the mass media in the 20th century. These developments still shape the perception and representation of folk music in Switzerland today. The television programmes of the Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) from the 1960s to the 1990s not only document the way in which regional musical cultures were popularised nationally, but also how folk music and the vernacular - despite contemporary renewal - were linked to an imagined and idealised pre-industrial and 'primitive' agrarian society. At a time of rapid economic growth, urbanisation and modernisation, Swiss folk music and folklore was presented as a pastoral idyll and became a nostalgic space of problem-free living. This "ideal world" way of staging folk music was not always approved of by the audience but was also criticized.

In my paper, I would like to outline the ways in which the audiovisual medium of television has created a "folk music" idyll and to discuss ways in which Volksmusik today unwrites this legacy.