Marita Rhedin
About Marita Rhedin
Research
Influenced by ethnomusicological thinking, and trained as a singer and vocal teacher, my research projects often concern various techniques, functions and meanings of singing – the music, lyrics, voice and artistic expression related to social issues.
My current research project Songs of the Swedish Suffrage Movement deals with the role of music in the fight for women's suffrage during the first two decades of the 20th century.
I have previously devoted a project to the songs of Barbro Hörberg, which in addition to an article resulted in an album with the trio Sonika (vocals, guitar, violin).
My doctoral thesis from 2011, Singing story-tellers – the singing of visa on the public stage from 1900 to 1970, deals with the literary visa (ballad) and its representatives on the stage. Based on recordings, I follow the genre from the lute singers and peasant comedians of the early 20th century, through the golden age of the genre in the 1930s and 1940s, to the revival of the visa in the 1960s. The focus is performance practice (to identify characteristic features for the performance of the visa on the public stage), how this has changed over time, and musical, social, technological etc reasons for the development.
I am a member of the Research Group for Song lyrics at the University of Agder.
Teaching
At the Department of Cultural Sciences, I teach Musicology at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. I’m responsible for the internship course Qualified Work Placement with a Humanities Perspective.
Collaborations and external activities
In the project Songs of the Swedish Suffrage Movement accessibility and staging are central perspectives, and I therefore have an active dialogue with several collaborators for knowledge exchange, inspiration, and dissemination of results.
The Swedish Song Book is a long-term collaborative project between Jonsered Manor, researchers from the University of Gothenburg, representatives of Folkuniversitetet and the Swedish Visa Academy.
I have studied music at Ingesund’s Folk High School's music program, Malmö Academy of Music and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, while also working as a freelance singer.