Summer 2026: Lyse Netter

Musical, lyrical and cultural interest is a journey that evolves throughout life. I was mostly interested in punk, indie and alternative rock music in my teens and early twenties. My Bloody Valentine was my absolute favourite band. My interest in My Bloody Valentine started when I discovered the British music magazine NME around 2002, which I bought at the newsagent Narvesen in the area of Oslo called Grunerløkka, and read from page to page every week. I also took some drumming lessons, tried to learn guitar, and played in a band called The Malachites for a short while with my friend (and still co-DJ in Sweet Talking) Adrian Eidem. I quickly discovered, however, that I would never be a musician. I like listening and thinking to music more than playing it. My interest in music as culture, history and social memory has remained, although developed and expanded into new areas. Many of the academic questions that I have explored in my research later in life related to Black and Afrodiasporic politics and aesthetics, have also been shaped by those first encounter with rock journalism in the early 2000s. What this period of teen obsession and discovery taught me, was that music and culture matters, and help to shape who we are and who we become. For example, one of the chapters in my doctoral dissertation about Linton Kwesi Johnson (University of Oxford, 2017) is called “The Black New Wave” and explores how Johnson's record label LKJ-records was a DIY project that centred Black British autonomy and grassroots activism, influenced by a broad range of subcultures in the UK at the time. That research tried to show that what it means to be a part of the Jamaican diaspora has always been an open-ended and genre-bending question negotiated in dialogue, conflict and experimentation, with other people and with the world. I look forward to going to Moss this summer!