The Autoethnography of Composition and the Composition of Autoethnography

Wednesday 17 June 2020, University of Glasgow
CFP: deadline for submissions 28 February 2020

The advent of autoethnography, a form of qualitative social science research that combines an author’s narrative self-reflection with analytical interpretation of the broader contexts in which that individual operates, holds particular significance for the field of music composition (broadly conceived). As a model for creative practice, autoethnography has been adopted by artists and researchers as a means of enfolding critical reflection upon social, cultural, and political identities and contexts into creative process and outcomes. It has similarly proven useful to practice-researchers, who are increasingly expected to produce written narratives to support and explain their musical creations. In particular, the expectation of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that creative practice outputs will be contextualised through an accompanying commentary signals the importance of establishing scholarly structures appropriate to the discussion of one’s own work, a practice to which autoethnography is well-suited.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ethnomusicology Review Volume 23

Ethnomusicology Review is now accepting submissions for Volume 23, scheduled for publication in Fall 2021. Starting as Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology (PRE) in 1984, Ethnomusicology Review is a refereed journal managed by UCLA graduate students and a faculty advisory board. We maintain an extensive editorial board and publish interdisciplinary music research in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, and other languages on a case-by-case basis.

Read the rest of this entry »

EUPOP 2020

Jagiellonian University, July 22nd – 24th, 2020
Deadline: 29th February, 2019

Individual paper and panel contributions are welcomed for the ninth annual international con-ference of the European Popular Culture Association (EPCA), to be held at Jagiellonian Uni-versity, Kraków, Poland, July 22nd – 24th, 2020.

EUPOP 2020 will explore European popular culture in all its various forms. This includes, but is by no means limited to, the following topics: Climate Change in Popular Culture, European Film (past and present), Television, Music, Costume and Performance, Celebrity, The Body, Fashion, New Media, Popular Literature and Graphic Novels, Queer Studies, Sport, Curation, and Digital Culture. We also welcome abstracts which reflect the various ways of how the idea of relationship between Europe and popular culture could be formed and how the current tur-moil in European identity (e.g. the legacy of totalitarianism and fascism), union, its borders and divisions are portrayed in popular cultural themes and contents.

Read the rest of this entry »

Media and the Night: An International Conference

April 29 and 30, 2020
McGill University, Montreal

Organized by

Jhessica Reia, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
Will Straw, James McGill Professor of Urban Media Studies, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

Over the last decade, the study of the night has emerged as an international, interdisciplinary field of scholarly research. Historians, archaeologists, geographers, urbanists, economists and scholars of culture and literature have analyzed the night time of communities large and small, across a wide range of historical periods. The study of the night has expanded in tandem with new attention to the night on the part of city administrations, organizers of cultural events (like nuitsblanches and museum nights) and activists fighting gentrification, systems of control and practices of harassment and exclusion which limit the “right to the night” of various populations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popular music in the Post-Soviet sphere: Analysing current trends

Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden
3-4 September 2020 (lunch to lunch)

The workshop titled “Popular music in the Post-Soviet sphere: Analysing current trends” aims to carve out the main contributions currently being made by scholars to studies of Post-Soviet popular music in the 21st century. Popular music studies, investigating both the sounds, lyrics, performance and wider practices and cultures of popular music, is a large and vibrant research area. However, popular music produced in the Post-Soviet sphere, by artists associated with the Post-Soviet sphere, consumed by listeners in the Post-Soviet sphere/diaspora, or thematising Post-Soviet topics has not been the focus of much research in comparison to Western European and Anglo-American popular music. This is all the more surprising as Estrada, Russkii Shanson, Pop/Popsa, Rock, EDM and Rap/Hip Hop are major genres in Post-Soviet countries with large quantities of music produced, performed and listened to.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pop and Politics: State of the Field/State of the World

Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association of Canada
Concordia University, Montreal, QC, May 7-9, 2020

After a one-year hiatus, the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association of Canada is back and looking forward—as well as up, left, right, down, and back. For our 9^th annual conference, which will take place at Concordia University in Montreal, QC from May 7^th-9^th, 2020, we’re reflecting on the state of our field by inviting discussion on the relationship between popular culture and politics, broadly conceived.

Read the rest of this entry »

Music & Brands

For the fifth yearbook on music business and music culture research 2021

Edited by: Prof. Dr. Michael Ahlers, Lorenz Grünewald-Schukalla MA, Dr. Anita Jóri, Dr. Holger Schwetter.

Ever since the early formations of a music-based music industry (Tin-Pan-Alley), non music-related companies built and strategically used relationships with music and actors within music culture. At that time mainly cosmetics and tobacco products were promoted by printing sheet music with advertisements. Nowadays the forms in which music and commercial activities of non-music actors are combined have become highly differentiated. At the same time, the market for activities such as sponsoring or advertising has increased in volume.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sound / Music / Decoloniality: A Research Colloquium

Maynooth University Arts & Humanities Institute
24-25 March 2020
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Rachel Harris (SOAS)
Dr Thomas Irvine (Southampton)

It is well understood that sound and music operate as media of governance in various historical and contemporary colonial matrices of power. As such, they have been central not only to processes of territorial colonization, but also to cognitive and behavioural colonization. Indeed, efforts to displace or ‘write over’ other soundscapes and to delegitimize and render mute other forms of knowledge production, other aural/musical epistemes, are integral to colonial and imperial processes of epistemicide.

Read the rest of this entry »

Critical Perspectives on Music and Society

This book series produces books that present a critical perspective on popular music and the music industry. Two dominant strains of thought exist for the study of popular music. First, many texts in the popular culture tradition celebrate the artists, fans, and cultures that arise from popular music. Second, Music Industry Studies texts give students a “how-to” perspective on making it in the music industry. In both cases, texts rarely address the way that the music industry produces and reproduces power. The purpose of this book series is to provide a platform for authors who explore the social production of music; as such it is broadly interdisciplinary.

Read the rest of this entry »

Low End Theories: Understanding Bass Music & Culture

A Joint BFE-RMA Study Day
Victoria Rooms, University of Bristol, Saturday 16 May 2020

Over the last four decades, hip-hop, EDM, and sound system-influenced genres with bass-heavy beats have become staples of global club culture. Digital audio production tools are increasingly mobile and affordable, while low-frequency vibrations diffuse through diverse parts of society, from the UK Deaf Rave movement to 2017’s #grime4corbyn campaign.

The academic literature on bass music and culture, meanwhile, has steadily grown since the turn of the millennium. Authors such as Bradley (2000), Veal (2007), and Henriques (2011) have collectively focused on reggae and dub music, laying an invaluable intellectual foundation for more recent efforts to expand the sounds, issues, theories, and methods that might fall within the frame of bass music studies.

Read the rest of this entry »