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What causes a song to be banned?

Norwegian musician Pal Moddi Knutsen decided to find out and embarked upon a project he's called Unsongs - a collection of songs that have, at one stage or another, been banned or suppressed. With a list of more than 400 songs, spanning multiple continents and centuries, he found the attempts to make sure they could not be heard were as mild as an airplay ban and as brutal as murder. Moddi has reworked 12 songs into an album and he's been speaking to Lawrence Pollard about the story behind a couple of them, starting with Punk Prayer by the Russian group Pussy Riot.

(Photo: A parrot, goat and rooster. Credit: Thinkstock / AFP)

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6 minutes

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