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Original Dunder Zubbis som lallande polyfoni

Abstract

The Polyphony of Original Dunder Zubbis: Ideology and Ugliness as Musical Protest

Ideas of ugliness are closely intertwined with ideological practices. A contemporary arena for such practices is public debates on ”social exclusion” and ”drug addiction”. Individuals are subjected as excluded through discursive practices where these groups are described in stigmatising ways, as ugly in the broadest sense. This article is an analysis of how ugliness is appropriated in the music of the Swedish group Original Dunder Zubbis (ODZ), a rap group associated with these social problems.
The analysis shows that ODZ’s use of themes of ugliness produces a collective. This collective is to a certain extent polyphonic, in the Bakhtinian sense. However, the verbal, audial and visual techniques employed by the group result in a collective without individual voices and perspectives. This can be understood as a way of resisting stigmatising ideological practices. When authority interpellates ODZ as addicts, criminals, and excluded, no single individual stops to recognise this subjectification.