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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Special Issue of Americas: Sound, Activism, and Social Justice

Recent use of music and sound in social and political activism has recalled attention to their emotive, rhetorical, and infiltrative power. From the 2019 protests in Chile against economic inequality to the protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020, activists have seized upon music and sound–and creative methods to deliver them–not only to deploy urgent political messages, but also as tools to foster, enact, and sustain social change. We are acutely aware that change occurs not only through sonic emission but that it also requires listening. As recent studies have shown, aurality is a process through which people make sense out of the natural, social, and cultural world where they live. As such, aurality is not apolitical, since listening to sound–and to the messages it carries–is sensitive to power relations that mediate the circulation of aural messages in the public sphere. Thus, emission and listening have the potential to be activist strategies to contest politics of exclusion in order to effect objective transformations in the status quo.

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Dancecult Conference 2021

We are delighted to announce the call for proposals for Dancecult’s inaugural conference on the theme of ‘Reconnecting Global Dance Cultures’, to be held online on the 16^th and 17^th September 2021. From dancehall to raving, club cultures to sound systems, disco to techno, breakbeat to psytrance, hip hop to dubstep, IDM to noisecore, nortec to bloghouse, global EDMCs have all been affected by recent events. As we move out of the pandemic into yet another moment of global uncertainty, we seek to capture the experiences of our communities as we now look ahead to a new era for dance culture. What effect has the pandemic had on these formations? What lies ahead for clubs and festivals and how can they prepare for future disruptions? How have producers and clubbers adapted during the enforced digital migration? How can the industry and producers take advantage of these current paradigms and foster new connections with fans and between communities?

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All the Things You Are: Popular Music and Material Culture

31st Annual Conference of the German Society for Popular Music Studies GfPM in cooperation with the Dept. of Art and Material Culture, TU Dortmund University
22 – 24 October, 2021

The material side of culture plays a crucial role for human acting and thinking; culture cannot be con- ceived of without the involvement of things. People permanently materialize their concepts about the world surrounding them, their Lebenswelt, and they (re-)form and (re-)arrange them in a con- stant process. The material and the immaterial, reification and idea mingle and form a constellation which is compatible with both sides. Things, be they prominent or commonplace, are constantly be- ing invented, used and are object to signification; their multi-faceted compatibility is revealed in eve- ryday practice.

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Taylor Swift: Eras, Narrative, Digital Media and Music

Deadline for proposals (250 words): 11:59pm EST  March 31, 2021
Selection notification by April 15, 2021
Proposed date: July 17, 2021

On February 11, 2021, pop star Taylor Swift announced the anticipated re-release of her 2008 album Fearless, a project launched following the contentious and public battle between Swift and her former label Big Machine Records. While specific and noteworthy in its particulars, this release also comprises one in a long series of re-visiting and re-versioning of the star’s life and output by Swift, the media, her fans, and her detractors. Listening to Swift’s releases as artifacts of the current digital age, this study day seeks to position Swift as a prism through which to examine intersecting issues in contemporary music industries and media ecosystems, from copyright and pandemic creation, to multimedia star texts and digital fan practices.

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Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960

Dates: 28-29 October 2021
Location: University of Amsterdam and/or online
Organisers: Carolyn Birdsall, Corinna R. Kaiser and Erica Harrison
Contact: [email protected]
Abstracts: 15 April 2021, no more than 300 words plus short biography
Acceptance: 01 May 2021
Papers: 01 September 2021, position papers (2000-4500 words)

Bringing critical perspectives to bear on radio archives is the main departure point for this international workshop, which explores broadcasting, archives and the historical data they have co-produced. This two-day workshop brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars and practitioners invested in theoretically-informed, connective histories about radio archives. It takes up a historical-geographical focus on radio archival collections in Europe that were affected by war and political transformations between 1930 and 1960, including case studies for Axis, as well as Allied, countries during and after World War II.

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