Special Issue of Rock Music Studies: Working as a Musician Transnationally

Guest-edited by Pierre Bataille (U. of Grenoble-Alpes), Marie Buscatto (U. of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne), Martin Cloonan (U. of Turku), and Marc Perrenoud (U. of Lausanne)

Submissions are invited for a special issue of Rock Music Studies on the topic of Working as a Musician Transnationally.

This issue addresses the question of rock and popular musicians working across borders. We would like to focus on the careers of those rock and popular musicians who have become transnational when they regularly tour in another country or tour recurrently around the world. It can be routine for musicians to play in a foreign country or region where they have an audience. In some cases, the international market may even be more important for them than their audience at home. The scope of such activities can range from a big world tour of stadiums by a megastar to a humble tour in some countries in underground venues by an alternative independent artist. Musicians may also operate transnationally via active local music networks and venues.

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Afro-Futurism. Arena Rap. The Self-Producer. A Popular Music Research Day

Join us for an interactive Popular Music Studies Research Day with renowned speakers Laina Dawes, Steve Waksman and Paula Wolfe. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/afro-futurism-arena-rap-the-self-producer-a-popular-music-research-day-tickets-151480441077

Join us for an interactive Popular Music Studies Research Day with renowned speakers Laina Dawes, Steve Waksman and Paula Wolfe to discuss: what it means to be a black artist, the advent of arena rap, and the poetry of the recording studio.

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Singing Out: The Musical Voice in Audiovisual Media

From the musical numbers of The Jazz Singer and the reality drama of BBC 2’s The Choir, through to the playback stars of commercial Hindi cinema and the competitive performance of karaoke video games, singing has and continues to play a central and special role in multimedia. The act of singing emphasises the gendered, raced, aged, and classed body, and the identifying markers of the voice itself. It draws attention to vocal production in a way that is not only sonically compelling, but also often emotionally acute. It can heighten communication, act as an aid to memory and product placement, and invite judgement from both professional and armchair critics – something the TV talent show has commodified as entertainment in itself. Singing both demarcates and breaks down textual and conceptual boundaries: between narrative and number; professional and amateur; transparency and manipulation; authenticity and the performative; and pathos and camp. As Laing (2000) argues, song ‘transfigures’ speech: it offers both performers and listeners an intensity of experience, of emotion, of being that gives it a special status both on the soundtrack and in the circulation of musical texts  outside it.

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Migration and subsequent transformation/evolution of music genres and associated subcultures in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Call for chapters for an edited book

As music genres and associated subcultures travel transnationally, they tend to change to adapt to new audiences’ needs and circumstances. This proposed edited volume examines how different music genres and related subcultures have evolved as they traverse national and geographical borders and intends to unearth the dynamic nature of music and the communities it inspires.

As an example, contributors might want to look at the relationship between free jazz in the US and Europe in the 1960s/70s, at the transmission of reggae from Jamaica to Britain, at the transglobal appeal of hip or hop, or the adoption of skinhead culture in the far east. Attention might turn to punk’s transferal to Eastern Europe or China, or examples of folk music migrating across continents, or western adaptation of music from the far east.

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Dream Factories: Prince, Sign O’ The Times, Box Sets & Cultural Artefacts

Special Issue: Dream Factories: Prince, Sign O’ The Times, Box Sets & Cultural Artefacts

Deadline for abstracts: Friday 28 May 2021.

Deadline for final submission: Friday 8 October, 2021.

The guest editors – Dr Kirsty Fairclough (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Prof. Mike Alleyne (Middle Tennessee State University) – are seeking abstracts for papers that examine the expansive super deluxe Sign O’ The Times 2020 box set. The essays will explore its multiple levels of musical and cultural significance, while critiquing the value of its presence as a commercial artefact and a signifier of Prince’s creative legacy in the context of previous posthumous deluxe edition reissues.

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Sound Systems at the Crossroads

Sound System Outernational #7 online, in association with Sonic Street Technologies ERC research project.
12-16 July 2021, 4pm to 6pm UK time (BST)

SSO #7 Call for Participation:

Send a proposal of not more than 300 words by 3 May to [email protected], accompanied by a short bio (100 words).

Sound systems are currently at a crossroads despite the unprecedented explosion of the form during the last decades. Sound system culture has gained increasing attention from cultural organisations, the music industry and researchers. But the pandemic has been accelerating trends in both positive and negative directions.

In a positive direction online formats have been encouraging a new inventiveness and creativity in formats and content. A whole new range of opportunities are in the process of opening up for both practitioners and audiences and SSO #7 is part of this process.
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Staging popular music: sustainable music ecologies for artists, industries and cities

12^th International Music Business Research Days
Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 3-4-5 November 2021

AIMS

This conference focuses on the intersection between key transformations in the popular music industries. Music represents and generates value on various levels from the individual to the global, and in many different spheres from the cultural and social to the economic and political. Popular music is staged through multiple platforms, actors, businesses, intermediaries and policies. The current COVID-19-crisis both challenges the music industries and acts as a catalyst of new digital innovations. This is a vital moment to (re)consider the future directions of the music industries. While the music industries are characterized by continuous change and transformation, significant disruptions have always impacted its resilience. Such disruptions can be external shocks, including the current crisis, new technologies, political change or aesthetic-cultural innovations. From an ecological perspective, all transformations force the industry to reshape and rethink itself. This will likely result in both positive as negative consequences. We need to critically reflect on what the immediate and long-term future of music ecologies entails, who benefits and who suffers from such disruptions.

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Transnational Perspectives on Music, Sound and (War) Propaganda (1914–1945)

21–23 October 2021 (Virtual conference)

Convened by Diego Alonso (Humboldt University, Berlin), Christian Koller (Swiss Social Archives and University of Zurich) and Steffen Just (University of Potsdam)

Keynote speakers:

Anne C. Shreffler (Harvard University) Jens Gerrit Papenburg (University of Bonn)

The three decades between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II are pivotal in the history of sound propaganda from both the political and the technological perspective. Those years saw the emergence of international fascism, communism and totalitarian states, strong nationalist currents as well as the institutionalisation of propaganda in the Americas, Europe and elsewhere. The period also witnessed the development of electric transmission media for acoustic and optical data in the form of radio, sound cinema, public address systems and television. Music and sound took on a fundamental role in the processes of political persuasion and psychological warfare as well as nationalism during this period.

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Translation, Interpretation, Adaptation Music Between Latin America and Europe, 1920 to 2020

6^th to 8^th of October 2021, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Music is created in a specific context: Music is shaped by the prevailing sound environment, which, in turn, is influenced by the music. Music requires instruments, techniques and skills of the musicians involved. When music or musicians leave their own language and sound context, translation processes often occur: music is performed by interpreters, orchestrated or technically processed, mixed with other styles, heard and perceived in many ways. Vocal music is provided with texts in new languages. The original meaning can be changed profoundly. The linguistic, musical and medial rewriting of existing music is a common practice and a basic principle to be found in music history. Music is therefore characterized by procedures of self-reference, arrangement, parody, re-orchestration, revision, variation, and improvisation. It is in constant flux. In scientific terminology, these terms and others, such as borrowing, quotation or cover, refer to translation processes in various ways. They are extremely diverse and difficult to grasp conceptually, as Silke Leopold has noted with regard to the diverse history of adaptation (Leopold 1992).

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Jazz Education in Research and Practice

Jazz Education in Research and Practice explores diverse topics of jazz scholarship and its applications to pedagogy. The journal provides a forum for interaction and exchange between researchers and practitioners grounded in scholarship. It was developed by and is an extension of the Jazz Education Network Research Interest Group (JENRing) founded in 2014 under the umbrella of the Jazz Education Network (JEN). The journal aims to be inclusive of a wide range of perspectives, from musicology to cultural studies, from psychology to business, that can be applied in the field. In this respect, the editors particularly welcome articles that provide models, resources, and effective techniques for the teaching and learning of the art form.

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