When we, Andrei Rogatchevski, Yngvar B. Steinholt, Arve Hansen and I, submitted our abstracts for a panel at the 2017 IASPM conference in Kassel we just wanted to present some uses of popular music during conflict. The response to our papers on the role that popular music played during the recent (and ongoing) Russian-Ukrainian conflict was so good that not only did we present the results again in revised versions during the 2018 BASEES Annual Conference (Cambridge) and the 2018 Insomnia Festival (Tromsø), but we also explored possibilities to publish the results.

After some searching we decided to contact ibidem – where both Andrei and I have previously published in Andreas Umland’s series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”. Both the publisher and Andreas liked our proposal so we spent 2018 writing the book. We were also very fortunate to convince the legendary Soviet & Russian music journalist and critic Artemy Troitsky to write a very fitting foreword. In addition, Arve not only contributed with 12 striking pictures but he also designed the book’s cover art.

The book

Arve Hansen, Andrei Rogatchevski, Yngvar Steinholt, and David-Emil Wickström. 2019. A War of Songs – Popular Music and Recent Russia-Ukraine Relations. Stuttgart: ibidem Press. ISBN: 9783838211732

is now available both at the publisher’s German website (www.ibidem.eu/en/war-of-songs.html), at Columbia University Press (cup.columbia.edu/book/a-war-of-songs/9783838211732) as well as in (online) bookstores.

Here are some interviews with my co-authors talking about the book: www.svoboda.org/a/29917054.html (Russian), www.radiosvoboda.org/a/29922213.html (Ukrainian) and www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-news-agents-13th-july-2019 (English).

Our Russian Space research group (RSCPR) also has a facebook page with updates: www.facebook.com/Russian-Space-Research-Group-RSCPR-655255434935769/