Michael O’Toole will read his paper, “‘Gedanken sind frei’ to ‘No Pegida’: Music In, With, and Against the Pegida Demonstrations in Germany,” followed by discussion. As always, EthNoise! meets Thursdays at 4:30pm in Goodspeed Hall, room 205. Please find Michael’s abstract below.

Beginning in October 2014, the recently founded organization known as Pegida (“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West”), has held weekly demonstrations every Monday in Dresden, inspiring similar demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in other cities across Germany. Motivated by fear of an “Islamization” of Germany and the country’s growing efforts to address a recent surge in refugees and asylum seekers, the Pegida demonstrations have grown from a few hundred participants in October to approximately 25,000 at the most recent demo on January 12. In this presentation, I will discuss the variety of ways in which music has played a role in the nation-wide debate sparked by the Pegida demonstrations. Drawing on examples from social media, I will consider the role of music, sound, and silence within the demonstrations themselves, as well as consider several examples of music as a medium for supporting, protesting, or satirizing the Pegida movement and its significance.