The Chiptune Studies Reader

We are excited to announce that we are seeking contributions for The Chiptune Studies Reader, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed and edited volume on chiptune – or ‘chipmusic’ and ‘micromusic’ as it is also known – which we intend to publish through Oxford University Press. Rooted in the emergence of video game audio technology, and subsequently re-routed through the subversive musicality of an underground participatory culture, chiptune is a form of electronic music that has blossomed into a global phenomenon over the course of nearly four decades. Today, the umbrella term ‘chiptune’ subsumes an ever-growing plethora of (sub)genres, practices, and a heterogeneous worldwide following, whose musical output is as creatively playful and diverse as it is distinct by way of its mediation. Chiptune’s technologies, timbral palettes, and associated iconography have grown rapidly in their accessibility, playability, and ubiquity, and have become woven into pop-cultural imaginaries far beyond their own humble beginnings in the music of video games’ past.

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Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination

Chris Anderton and Lori Burns, editors
https://www.progectnetwork.com/call-for-papers

Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination will present analyses of progressive rock and metal music that reveals a striking engagement with literary texts and themes – from classic literature, mythology and poetry to science fiction, horror, and other genres. While many of the extant publications on progressive rock and metal have focused on the history of progressive rock, few have examined the ways that it intersects with the literary imagination, whether drawing on myths, legends, and stories as source material, or using storytelling modes to create new stories and worlds. Progressive rock musicians have often created concept albums based around these source materials and worlds, and they offer more than simply fantasy and escapism, with narratives and themes that comment on the social, cultural, and political milieux in which they are made.

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1st International Music Livelihoods Symposium

The Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre and/of the Creative Arts Research Institute will be holding the 1st International Music Livelihoods Symposium (online), December 6&7, 2021. Keynote speakers include Dr Nicole Canham (Monash University) author of recently-released Preparing Musicians for Precarious Work (Routledge).

The core theme of the symposium is “Educating for the Sustainable Musician in Post-Normal Times.” Postnormal times (PNT) is a concept developed by Ziauddin Sardar as a development of post-normal science. Sardar and Sweeney (2016; 2020) describe the present as “postnormal times”, “an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense” (n.p). The term “music livelihoods” further acknowledges the complex lives of musicians involving their changing musical identities, diverse career journeys, and an external environment impacting their values and opportunities.

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Call for Proposals: Riffs Vol 6 Issue 1 (July 2022)

Guest Editor: Jenny Ann Cubin
otobiographies
a posthumous collaboration
with jacques derrida

the ear is uncanny
(large or small)
it is the most open organ.
i tell my life to my self
(i recite and recount)
but become what i am
through the ear i borrow
(through the ear you lend).
we proceed
seeking out the edges
(the inner walls, the passages).
these labyrinths come down
to the ear you hear me with
(to the ear I hear you with).
we recite and recount
and become what we are.

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Popular Music, Populism and Nationalism in Contemporary Europe

University of Oldenburg (Germany), 07–09 April 2022

Organisation: Prof. Dr. Mario Dunkel, Reinhard Kopanski, Simon Wehber (University of Oldenburg; Faculty III; Department of Music).

Deadline for submitting proposals: 15th November 2021

It is undisputed that the recent rise of populist-nationalist and far-right parties poses a challenge to democracies, not exclusively, but also in the European Union. However, “populism’s toxic embrace of nationalism,” as Lawrence Rosenthal calls it, is more than a party-political or economic phenomenon. It also has a cultural dimension, which remains largely unexplored. Regarding music as a ubiquitous cultural practice, this conference addresses this cultural dimension from three music-oriented perspectives:

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Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies

We are seeking expressions of interest from scholars whose research is focused on popular music to contribute towards a handbook that surveys the diversity of approaches in its study. Drawing upon up-to-date and newly emerging writing, this handbook aims to offer an authoritative overview and critique of popular music methodologies, with topics including (but not restricted to):

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“When I Think of Home: Race and Borders in Popular Music”

2022 Pop Conference Call for Presentations 

April 21-23, 2022

Many of us have been home, listening to music. Stuck there during the global pandemic, we have explored what home sounds like and what home means materially, culturally, and in ways that are utterly personal. As a place of security that feels less a given than before; as a right that many do not enjoy; as a nexus of struggle in a time of gentrification, economic transformation, conflict over indigenous homelands. For some home is a place it can be necessary to leave, and for others it is one, as Stephanie Mills made clear, it sure would be nice to get back to.

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Special Edition: Metal and Hardcore in Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands

Perfect Beat: The Asia-Pacific Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture 

This call for proposals is for a special edition of Perfect Beat, focused on heavy metal and hardcore music, scenes, practices, and cultures in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Metal and hardcore have a long and nuanced history in Aotearoa, where scenes have interfaced with localised aesthetics and histories, and responded to urbanisation, deindustrialisation, and globalisation in complex and multi-faceted ways. Moreover, metal and hardcore’s relationship to Māoritanga is similarly significant, despite only recently coming into greater international focus with the success of Alien Weaponry’s use of Te Reo Māori. Heavy metal and hardcore’s history in the Pacific Islands is deserving of further attention, particularly given the growth of bands such as Kūka’ilimoku in Hawai’i, the recent staging of Metal United World Wide in Papua New Guinea, and the established history of metal in the Solomon Islands.

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Music and Antifascism: Reflections on the Past and Possibilities in the Present

July 7, 2022 | McGill University, Montreal

Symposium website: https://musicandantifascism.wordpress.com

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Federico Spinetti, University of Cologne

How have artists resisted the global surge of far-right movements and authoritarian regimes through music and music-making? How has music been mobilized against fascism and fascist tendencies in societies in the 20th and 21st centuries?

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Any Sound You Can (Re) Imagine, A 25th Anniversary Special Issue 

Journal of Popular Music Education 

Any Sound You Can (Re) Imagine, A 25th Anniversary Special Issue 

Guest Editor 

Daniel Walzer: Assistant Professor of Music and Arts Technology: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Guest Contributor 

Paul Théberge: Canada Research Professor in Music and Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University, Canada

2022 marks the 25th anniversary of Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music / Consuming Technology, a ‘book about the role of recent digital technologies in the production of popular music…the industries that supply these technologies, the media that promote them, and the meanings they have for the musicians who use them’ (Théberge 1997: 5). A ground-breaking and interdisciplinary study drawing on music technology, cultural studies and popular music, Théberge’s research examined the complicated tensions among production and consumption, capitalism and consumerism, and what Henry Jenkins (2006) would later refer to as convergence culture, an interconnectedness among ‘media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence’ (n.p.). Music production and consumption remain complex, as does the influence that corporations exert on virtually all aspects of the creative process. Prescient today as much as it was then, Any Sound You Can Imagine remains essential reading for scholars in popular music and technology.

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