Review of Nicola Dibben, Björk (Indiana University Press, 2009)

[1] Bjork Guðmundsdottir's works have consistently posed a challenge to pop and art music as well as to those critics who have explored her music. The broad diversity of her approach to media and genre has made her oeuvre particularly enigmatic. Nicola Dibben premises this key trait of Bjork's work, calling her a whole artist who "communicates her ideas through the integrated use of all media at her disposal" (Dibben 2009, 23). To uphold such an interpretation of Bjork's work and artistic position, Dibben veers from many previous texts on the pop artist that presuppose a chronological biography as its organizing structure. Instead she adopts a thematic approach to all her artistic projects regardless of genre or release date. She investigates Bjork's critical reception, dividing the book into themes surrounding many of the basic binaries the artist bridges, particularly her understanding of pop/avant-garde, nationalism/globalism, and nature/technology. By providing a concerted and accessible analysis of the artist's music, Dibben adds a formalist dimension to past critiques of Bjork's work. Dibben's book provides an in-depth academic treatment of the artist as both a cultural and musical figure of great importance. Bjork offers an intriguing case study of the artist and adds to a continued conversation about the role of music in the face of digital utopianism and globalization that will assuredly be a standard for any subsequent study on Bjork.[2] Although Bjork's performance and musical experimentation is often aligned with the likes of Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson, what differentiates Bjork is her purposeful position in popular rather than art music. Dibben quotes Bjork: "I could've so easily gone and become a composer and done some avant-garde music in some corner for the chosen eleven and a half person [sic]. But I've never wanted to do that" (Dibben 2009, 159). Dibben, however, cuts the quote short as Bjork goes on to say, "I think my role is more to be some sort of a communicator between all sort [sic] of different worlds" (Walker 2003). Her assumed role as an intermediary becomes the central premise of Dibben's book with its assertion that the goal of Bjork's work is to create unity from the disparate.[3] One such union lies in the popular reception of her work despite its experimental nature. Bjork's vocals borrow techniques from experimental musicians and popular singer-songwriters, two roles that Dibben argues are typically seen as oppositional since popular music as an institution rests on salability. Bjork's belief that popular music should reflect the interests and experiences of the people is readily in evidence, however. While Bjork's vocal effects are atypical for popular music, Dibben claims that they are rooted in emotional expressiveness and authenticity-two values that form the very bedrock of popular singer-songwriter styles. Indeed, the listener relates to the music through an emotionally authentic connection that is unfettered by the artist's professional technique. Although her popularity stems largely from a sense of emotional authenticity, Dibben refuses to align Bjork with any vision of a Romantic auteur, arguing that the collaborative nature of her work and the associative nature of her collaborations maintain the integrity of the other artists she works with while sustaining her own controlling force over the product.[4] Besides Dibben's fresh and perceptive analysis of musical form and vocal technique in regard to Bjork's union of the experimental and the popular, what I find particularly insightful in this study is her attention to Bjork's particular form of nationalism. As one of Iceland's most internationally visible citizens, Bjork is often taken up as an exemplar of what being Icelandic entails. In Dibben's analysis she recognizes that nationalism is a complex process of citation and representation that is in a constant state of construction and debate. Before introducing Bjork's image as a representation of Iceland, as many popular writers have done before her, Dibben invests a significant portion of her second chapter to analyzing the national image Iceland has created for itself. …