Omnivorous Cultural Policy: The Case of Concerts Norway

Abstract

This article uses the case of Concerts Norway to analyze how the agency of esthetics is changing and expanding within a cultural policy institution. Concerts Norway has provided concerts to all age groups and all parts of the country for nearly fifty years. The ambition of the institution has been to ensure that all Norwegian citizens have had access to quality music. The article describes how these cultural policy ambitions entail a general esthetic agency, and how different kinds of musical genres have been given agency through the work of the institution, thereby representing a seemingly omnipotent and increasingly omnivorous cultural policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• cultural policy
• esthetics
• genre
• music
• omnivore

Notes

1 This article is a part of a larger research project, The Relational Politics of Aesthetics, financed by Research Council Norway.

2 My translation. Quotes from this report and other Norwegian documents are translated by the author.

3 Literally, viser simply means “songs” or “tunes,” but as a genre term, it refers informally to songs sung by one artist, often accompanying him- or herself on a guitar, usually with a strong emphasis on the lyrics. The viser genre is influenced by traditional folk songs, but an equally important inspiration for the great popularity of the genre in the 1970s was the American folk and protest song movement. This contributed to help make the genre an explicitly political one.