Resonances of Swissness in Switzerland’s Streichmusik
Abstract
This article investigates the current resurgence of folk music in Switzerland using the localized practice of Streichmusik (string music originating in the Appenzell and Toggenburg regions) as an example. I examine the linkage between Streichmusik and Swissness, a concept used in marketing Swiss products and culture. Swissness highlights contemporary Swiss national anxiety around shifting global, political, and economic dynamics as a rise in nationalism encourages identity politics. I argue that Streichmusik is a sonic resonance of Swissness and has been valorized by cultural tourism both locally and nationally through the notion of Heimat (homeland) and the trope of nostalgia.
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