A teenage Björk, in defiance of her stuffy music schooling, had studied not only Cage but also the radical turn-of-the-century composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose early operas developed a voice that flickered, glissando-style, between boisterous singing and speech. Schoenberg called the technique sprechstimme, but when you hear it performed now-even if not in Björk's own, meagerly bootlegged rendition of his Pierrot Lunaire-the style has arrived in the timeless preserve of the Björkian.
No Music for Genocide's mission statement calls on artists and labels to join the cultural embargo in protest of "Israel's genocide in Gaza; ethnic cleansing of the Occupied West Bank; apartheid within Israel," repression of pro-Palestine activism, and the music industry's links to "weapons and crimes against humanity." The campaign arrives as numerous artists pull their catalogs from Spotify entirely, many citing now-Executive Chair Daniel Ek's investments in artificial intelligence (AI) military technology through his venture fund, Prima Materia.