The Fifth Biennial Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives Conference

Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, United Kingdom
30 July-2 August 2019

Congregational music-making is a vital and vibrant practice within Christian communities worldwide. It reflects, informs, and articulates convictions and concerns that are irreducibly local even as it flows along global networks. The goal of the Christian Congregational Music conference is to expand the avenues of scholarly inquiry into congregational music-making by bringing together world-class scholars and practitioners to explore the varying cultural, social, and spiritual roles music plays in the life of various Christian communities around the world. We are  pleased to invite proposals for the fifth biennial conference at Ripon College in Cuddesdon, near Oxford, United Kingdom between Tuesday, July 30 and Friday, August 2, 2019. The conference will feature guest speakers, roundtables and workshops that reflect the ever-broadening scope of research and practice in Christian congregational music-making around the world.

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Locating Heavy Metal Music and Culture

International Society For Metal Music Studies

4^th ISMMS biennial international Conference, 17-20 June 2019, Nantes (France)
www.francemetalstudies.org

Presentation

Five years have passed since the inception of the ISMMS (International Society for Metal Music Studies), an international association that has been triggering a new dynamic of collective research on hard rock, heavy metal and metal within the humanities and social sciences. It was officially launched during the first conference on “Heavy Metal and Popular Culture” at Bowling Green State University (Ohio, USA) in April 2013. This founding event which was followed in 2015 by the “Modern Heavy Metal: Markets, Practices and Culture” at the University of Helsinki’s (Finland) International Institute for Popular Culture, and in 2017 by the “Boundaries and Ties: the Place of Music Communities” Conference one at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada).

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Setting the Record Straight: Hidden Histories of Popular Music

Editors:

Chris Anderton (Solent University, Southampton, UK) [email protected]
Martin James (Solent University, Southampton, UK) [email protected]

Proposals are sought for chapter contributions to an edited collection with strong publisher interest.

The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes and music genres has been mediated through numerous academic and popular press publications (including magazines, films and television documentaries), as well through officially released music industry products and the informal productivity of artist and genre enthusiasts. This book will examine these various publications and will question how and why they are constructed. For instance, the formal mediations of the music industry and popular press typically present linear narratives that are based on simplifications, exaggerations and omissions. The histories they construct often place an undue emphasis on key moments of birth and death, or on particular personalities that are deemed to drive those moments. This approach tends to lead to totalising ‘popular’ histories that reduce otherwise messy narratives to one-dimensional interpretations of a heroic and celebratory nature. Ideological positioning, personal biases and sometimes untrustworthy narrators lead to historical perspectives that become naturalised and accepted as being true, and serve to narrow our understanding of the development of popular music. They also contribute to the creation and maintenance of myths that reinforce the contemporary industry of music nostalgia, and are further communicated through the user-generated content of social media and the Internet. Artists, genres and events may be removed from these simplified and mythologised media narratives or their significance downplayed in processes of distortion and selection. The informal mediations of fans and enthusiasts may reinforce such mythologies or actively challenge them by presenting alternative narratives. For example, bloggers and non-commercial bootleggers uncover ‘lost’ recordings, make live concerts available to trade, or publish their own interviews and stories that extend beyond the official canon.

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Music, digitalisation and democracy

Study day at Åbo Akademi University, December 14, 2018
Organised by Dept of Musicology at Åbo Akademi University, the research project

On Friday, December 14, 2018, the Department of Musicology at Åbo Akademi University and the research project “Digitaliseringens inverkan på minoritetsmusik” (DIMM – “The Impact of Digitalisation on Minority Music”) will host a study day at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland.

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British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference

11-14 April 2019, The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, Scotland
www.bfe2019.wordpress.com

Keynote speaker: Professor Mellonee Burnim, Indiana University

As with all BFE Annual Conferences, we welcome papers and panels on any aspect of current ethnomusicological research. 

The 2019 theme will be Collaborative Ethnomusicology

In recent years, the focus of ethnomusicological research and dissemination has become increasingly centred on the ways in which ethnomusicologists have been able to work in collaboration with the practitioners who they study. This has also had an effect on the ways in which research findings are presented. Is it still acceptable to focus solely on the academic monograph or article publication, or should we be paying more attention to presenting our research to a wider audience, in more accessible formats and language? How have we, as ethnomusicologists, been bridging the gap between the academic and performance contexts in which practitioners operate, and in what ways have we successfully given back to the communities in which we have conducted fieldwork? The aim of this conference is to discuss the ways in which we have, and can, collaborate with practitioners, cultural groups, and academics. What kinds of issues might come into play regarding power relations and hierarchy, and how has reciprocity featured within and as a result of these collaborations? How have we moved beyond the academy and the discipline in terms of collaboration and dissemination, and how have we moved forward in terms of conducting fieldwork and negotiating our roles as both researchers and performers? As well as dealing with issues concerning the dissemination of research and fieldwork collaborations, this conference will also consider the idea of collaboration and music much more broadly. How might we approach, understand and theorize intercultural collaborations? What can we learn from less successful attempts at collaboration, and projects aimed at a commercial market?

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Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music – Volume 3

Ideas of noise…

Submissions should in some way critically engage with “ideas of noise” as a statement, a question, or even consider the Birmingham-based experimental sound festival, Ideas of Noise.

As the journal title suggests, we are interested in pieces that take an experimental approach to the consideration of popular music. For examples of pieces based on previous prompts, have a look through our current and past issues.

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The Art of Record Production Conference 2019

In C: Creation, Connectivity, Collaboration, and Controllers

Hosted by Berklee College of Music, Boston, May 17–19, 2019
DEADLINE for abstracts: September 28, 2018, 12:00 a.m., EDT
Notification by October 29, 2018

Our title for the 14th Art of Record Production Conference is inspired by Terry Riley’s seminal, minimalist work “In C” (1964). When asked how he would describe the relationship between his drive to push technology to its limits in the 1960s and the musical possibilities that resulted, Riley replied that it was all driven by “the ‘What if?’ principles.” This conference seeks to bring together scholars, artists, and innovators applying “What if?” principles to practice and research. Our “C” themes—creation, connectivity, collaboration, and controllers—all represent areas of movement in contemporary record production, and we invite participants to interpret them creatively as they relate to active research projects and creative work. Consider the following questions about each thematic component.
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6th Global Reggae Conference – Reggae Innovation and Sound System Culture II

February 13-16, 2019, UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES, MONA CAMPUS

The University of the West Indies and Birmingham City University are delighted to announce the staging of the 6^th Global Reggae Conference under the theme Reggae Innovation and Sound System Culture II. Hosted as a premier biennial event by the Institute of Caribbean Studies and the Reggae Studies Unit inside Jamaica’s Reggae Month, this conference will engage academics within a wide field of scholastic orientations and practice. This event comes as part of larger project on music and cultural innovation and black popular culture through which both Universities have engaged in a partnership to expand scholarship and outreach through community engagement, experimentation, archive building, exhibitions, among others.

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Sixth International Congress: Music and Audio-Visual Culture MUCA

From 14-16 February 2019, the University of Murcia will host the Sixth International Congress: Music and Audio-Visual Culture MUCA, to provide a forum to scientific exchange with participation of composers, visual artists and researchers from several national and international universities.

We welcome proposals for individual papers (in English or Spanish) in order to promote new perspectives and dialogue about the main topics. Proposals should include:

• Abstract (250-300 words)
• Institutional affiliation (if applicable), brief biography and email address.
• Audiovisual required.

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Musical Cities: Music, Historiography, and Myth

The International Association for the Study of Popular Music-United States chapter invites proposals for its 2019 conference. The meeting, which will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, March 7-10, 2019, will feature the theme “Musical Cities: Music, Historiography, and Myth.” We welcome proposals for individual papers and panels (up to four individuals) on any aspect of popular music, especially proposals on the musical cultures of New Orleans; music in and of the global and local South; and music and race and resistance.

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