‘Er det mig, lille mig, du vil ha’: Musik og identitet på kræmmermarked

In this article I discuss a specifi c concert performance by the female Danish singer Birthe Kjær at a major Danish market fair in Hillerød. Birthe Kjær is known as ‘The Queen of Dansktop’, which is a specific genre term derived from a Danish chart solely for songs in Danish called Dansktoppen. The chart was introduced in 1968 as a tool for competing with Anglo-American popular music which dominated the Danish charts during the sixties. Birthe Kjær had several hits on Dansktoppen before it was closed down in 1977. Stylistically her repertoire was closely related to a German schlager tradition, with up-tempo march tunes. Since the 1980s
she has tried to change her profi le towards a more sensitive and mature repertoire, but as this case study shows, the audience present at the fair still associated her with her early song material. In this specifi c concert situation Kjær tried to present some of her later material, but changed the set list as she felt a lack of response from the audience. Thus the concert could be read as a fi eld of negotiation of identity, where the performer, because of her selfunderstanding
as a performer and entertainer, puts her own preferences aside in order to give
the audience what they expected.