New Zealand Glimpsed through Iceland: Music, Place and Psychogeography

Abstract

Psychogeography has been applied to music in relation to the way in which music can express both a ’spirit of place’ and a topographical dimension in which musical forms, idioms and modes of expression mirror features of landscape and cityscape. This article explores analogous geomorphic aspects of Icelandic and New Zealand music, both emphasizing the two countries’ similar geographical features and the ways in which music has reflected them, as well as examining geopolitical affinities between the two countries.