MUSIK FOR MISBRUGERE

Abstract

The back entrance of the Copenhagen Central Station has for some decades been shelter

and meeting place for alcoholics, drug abusers and drug dealers, because this part of the

Central Station faces a part of the town which for more than a hundred years has

accommodated prostitution in general, and since the legalisation of selling pornographic

films and pictures in 1969 also shops and cinemas for that purpose. When hash and

narcotics entered the milieu of prostitution this part of town – called Istedgade kvarteret

(Isted Street Quarter) – became also domicile of junkies, drug dealers and prostitutes

dependent on narcotics. After a radical restoration of the Central Station in the 1990’s the

management wanted to get rid of the abusers in the back entrance. So did many travellers.

And as the police did not succeed they bought a music concept from the central station

in Hamburg, which had proved its efficiency there. By playing music from the period of

romanticism (about 1800-1860) from a loudspeaker they stressed the abusers so much

that they after a few days of persistence left the entrance hall. Now the question is: what

made them leave? – It is well known that music has been used for psychological purposes,

in super markets, in films, in wars and as means of torture. But why should music from

exactly that historical period affect the abusers? Most of the junkies and alcoholics are

not familiar with nor attracted to classical romanticism. They have through their whole

are anthropologists, who do not settle for surfaces, but insist on reflecting on their own

incorporated cultural learning processes.