Agents and Actors: Networks in Music History: Sixth Sibelius Academy Symposium on Music History

Wednesday 3 June—Friday 5 June, 2020
Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland
Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019

The Fifth Symposium took institutionalisation as its theme in order to contribute to and clarify the ways in which they exert power, the relationships between then, and the hierarchies they establish. In the final plenary session, delegates debated a range of topics that might be given further consideration in the next symposium. The discussion largely focussed on two areas of interest – heritage andnetworks – and both were considered important current areas of work with which the next symposium could engage. It has been decided that the sixth symposium should concentrate on networks and music, while the seventh would focus on questions of heritage.

Read the rest of this entry »

IASPM-US 2020 Conference: “BPM: Bodies, Places, Movements”

May 21-23, 2020
Ann Arbor, Michigan

The International Association for the Study of Popular Music-United States chapter (IASPM-US) invites proposals for its annual conference, which will take place in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan on May 21-23, 2020. We welcome abstracts on all aspects of popular music, broadly defined, from any discipline or profession, and especially encourage submissions on the many rich popular music histories of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Detroit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Putting the Empire into Music – Investigating the VIA Phenomenon

23rd–24th April 2020
Wissenschaftsforum Potsdam
Deadline: 30.10.2019
https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-40871?title=putting-the-empire-into-music-investigating-the-via-phenomenon&recno=19&q=&sort=&fq=&total=848

All across the Soviet Union, from Belarus to Central Asia, from Moscow to Georgia, the VIA phenomenon (Vokal’no–instrumental’nyi ansambl’) played a central role in Soviet popular music and culture. The label VIA applied to acts which were quite distinct from other musical genres and subcultures (bards, punk, rock and jazz) and was invented by the Soviet authorities in the early 1960s in order to counter the growing influence of Western pop music in the empire. From this date onwards until the end of the Soviet Union, a number of well-known popular musicians entered the scene and made a lasting impression on the Soviet and post-Soviet collective memory. Bands like Ariėl’, Pesniary, Gunesh, Vesëlye rebiata, Orėra, Siabry, Zemliane and Golubye Gitary blended different musical styles and genres like pop, beat, rock, jazz, synth-pop, progressive rock and electronic music; with catchy melodies, a good dose of experimentalism and a solid technique, and managed to gain popularity while maintaining high production and recording standards.

Read the rest of this entry »

International Summit on Gender, Sexuality, and Equity in Grove Music Online

University of Guelph (Canada)
May 29, 30, and 31, 2020

In the fall of 2019, Grove Music Online (GMO) will launch a comprehensive revision and expansion of its content relating to gender and sexuality. While its focus is on gender and sexuality, this endeavor presents an opportunity for all fields of music and sound scholarship— performance, education, composition, ethnomusicology, musicology, library science, music theory, and music therapy—to take an intersectional approach to addressing equity and inclusion of all kinds in print and digital reference documents (encyclopedias, dictionaries, indexes, educational materials, source books, score anthologies, museum exhibits, and so on). To that end, in collaboration with scholarly and community partners, the University of Guelph will hold a summit from May 29-31, 2020.

Read the rest of this entry »

Riffs: Call for Proposals

Technology is something I love and hate at the same time. One one hand the absence of any kind of technology means silence (or an environment of natural sounds which we hear much clearer because of the general silence); on the other hand, you need technology to make art’.

Christina Kubisch, ‘Artists’ Statements II: Christina Kubisch’, in The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music, ed. by Nick Collins and Julio d’Escriván, 2nd edn (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2017:176)

This issue of Riffs will engage with music and technology, and the ways in which we communicate our insights, observations, engagements and relationships between them. As the journal title suggests, we are interested in pieces that take an experimental approach to the analytical consideration of popular music. For examples of pieces based on previous prompts, have a look through our current and past issues, available to download from our website – www.riffsjournal.org.

Read the rest of this entry »

Punk and the Sacred

The Punk Scholars Network will be hosting a 1 -2 day symposium at Mansions of the Future (Lincoln, UK) on the 28^th and 29^th November 2019 on the theme of ‘Punk and the Sacred’ as part of the Punk Scholar’s Network’s series of themed symposiums.

The keynote will be delivered by Ross Haenfler.

Read the rest of this entry »

International Artistic Jazz Research Symposium

Date: 6 October, 2019
Venue: Jam Music Lab Private University Vienna, Guglgasse 8, Gasometer B, 1110 Vienna
Submission Deadline: 19 August 2019

In partnership with Institute for Jazz Research, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, and Jam Music Lab Private University for Jazz and Popular Music Vienna

Read the rest of this entry »

Imperfection as an Aesthetic Idea in Music: Perspectives from Musicology and Artistic Research

Venue: University for Music and the Performing Arts, Graz, Austria (Kunstuniversität Graz)
Dates: May 6 and 7^th, 2020
Submission Deadline: 15 October 2019
Languages: English and German
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Seth Brodsky (University of Chicago)

Web address: https://musikaesthetik.kug.ac.at/institut-14-musikaesthetik/symposien/imperfection-as-an-aesthetic-idea-in-music.html

When we look to music, are we looking for perfection? Or does imperfection ultimately have more aesthetic value for us as practitioners and researchers? Historically, perfection has been treated with suspicion as an aesthetic idea in general.  Already in the 1757 On the Sublime and the Beautiful, Edmund Burke mused that “beauty in distress is the most affecting beauty”; Heinrich Kleist, in his 1810 On the Marionette Theater, further suggested that perfection in art only resided beyond the domain of the properly human.  In recent discussions of aesthetics in the more specific realm of music, however, the issue of imperfection has most often been discussed with primary reference to musical improvisation, although additional topics have sometimes been part of the discourse in musicology and artistic research.

Read the rest of this entry »

Researching Live Music: Gigs, Tours, Concerts and Festivals

Following publisher feedback, the previously advertised title of ‘Studying Live Music and Festivals’ has been amended to the following title, and is now under contract with Taylor & Francis/Routledge:

Researching Live Music: Gigs, Tours, Concerts and Festivals

Edited by:

Chris Anderton (Solent University, Southampton, UK)
Sergio Pisfil (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK)

We would like to encourage scholars from all disciplines to present chapter proposals for research that relates to one of three broad areas of the live music ecology. First, research that reconsiders the role of technology in the production of music events. Second, research that examines the complex set of industries and issues that surround the promotion and business of live music. Finally, research that explores the social issues and factors involved in the consumption of live music performances. Our objective is to bring together solid methodological and theoretical positions to provide a critical resource that casts new light on the practices of live music – past or present, and from any part of the world. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Special issue of the Journal of Festive Studies on “The Materiality of Festivity”

In previous issues, the Journal of Festive Studies explored the emerging academic sub-field of festive studies (broadly defined) and the politics of carnival. For this issue, we follow Peter-Paul Verbeek’s advice and look at “the things themselves,” i.e. at the material culture in which carnivals and other festivities are rooted (Verbeek, 2005).

Read the rest of this entry »