Peripheral/ geographically isolated

Despite advancements in technology facilitating an ease with which geographical distance can be overcome, coupled with a shift away from a reliance on core creative centres for a range of creative and business services, peripheral and geographically isolated contemporary music scenes continue to face a range of challenges which impact upon the ways in which they connect with new audiences and industry beyond their home locale. This ranges from needing to make higher investments of time and money, to having to overcome attitudinal and cultural barriers in order to be viewed as worthy of prominent attention. More broadly, geographic isolation also impacts upon the ways in which culture can flow into these scenes, particularly in the live music setting. At the same time, however, this distance can also result in a range of benefits to these scenes in relation to the ways in which they are structured and how they function locally. This includes cultivating a recognition of the need to support one another, a high degree of expertise and skills concentrated on a small number of workers and a tight network of spaces, as well as the development of a strong work ethic to make the most of opportunities when they arise.

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5th European Conference on Social Media

21-22 June 2018, Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland

Mini Track on Social Media and the DIY Artist: How the development of social media has impacted on the music industries
Mini Track Chair: Dr Paul Oliver, University of West London. UK

Since the inception of the internet, DIY (do-it-yourself) artists and entrepreneurs working within the music industries have used social media in sophisticated ways to collaborate, create and disseminate their music online. Initially in the early 2000s with MySpace, then with Facebook and YouTube and now with Instagram and Snapchat, social media has revolutionised the way DIY artists and fans, and the wider music community, can interact with each other. Moreover, social media platforms have begun to expand and elaborate on existing features developing stronger possibilities to interact through live video streaming and storytelling which, in turn, makes it easier for organic DIY music communities to form on a global scale based on niche interests.

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AMS/SMT Alternative-Format Joint Session on Hip-hop Studies

In the introduction to his 2000 book Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based Hip-Hop, Joseph Schloss notes the relative absence of music studies:

“It does no disservice to previous work to say that [hip-hop studies] has tended to focus on certain areas (such as the influence of the cultural logic of late capitalism on urban identities, the representation of race in popular culture, etc.) to the exclusion of others (such as the specific aesthetic goals that artists have articulated). Nor is it a criticism to say that this is largely a result of its methodologies, which have, for the most part, been drawn from literary analysis. We must simply note that there are blank spaces and then set about to filling them in.”
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Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music

The editorial team of Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music invite 300 word / one page of A4 (visual) proposals for the next 2018 volume from PhD, MA, and outstanding undergraduate students, based on the following prompt:

“There is nothing wrong with hating rock critics” – Of Montreal, 2003

Your response should consider in some way journalistic and academic forms of writing and critiquing popular music, and the overlap between these two forms/forums. This volume will be guest edited by Laura Snapes, a music and culture writer based in London.

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Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice

University of Huddersfield, UK
3rd-5th September 2018

This is a call for papers for a joint conference arranged by four organisations:

• International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK & Ireland Branch (IASPM UK&I)
• Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
• Dancecult: Electronic Dance Music Culture Research Network
• International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)

Hosted by the University of Huddersfield, this event will combine the IASPM UK&I Biennial Conference, with the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), a conference of ISMMS, and feature the additional participation of Dancecult. The theme of the conference is Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Studies Theory and Practice.

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​Sounds, scenes and urban policies: Contemporary issues and new horizons for the geographies of music

Call for Papers – ​AAG 2018, New Orleans, April 10-14, 2018

Organisers: Séverin Guillard (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Ola Johansson (University of Pittsburgh) & Joseph Palis (University of the Philippines-Diliman)

Sponsored by: Media and Communication Specialty Group

Over the last few decades, a rich body of literature has showed the importance of studying music to understand the spatial dimensions of societies. In the field of geography, several works have focused on the role that music has had in the construction and perception of specific places and spaces: scholarship addressed issues such as the ability of songs and performances to build mental maps of cities or regions, and to challenge the dominant practices and norms associated to them, the way music was used by local authorities in order to (re)brand and regenerate a locality, the circulation of music genres in a context of cultural globalization (Leyshon et al., 1995; Connell and Gibson, 2003; Anderson et al., 2005; Johansson and Bell, 2009; Canova, 2013).

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Music and Audio-Visual Culture MUCA

From 15-17 February 2018, the University of Murcia, Spain will host the Fifth International Congress: Music and Audio-Visual Culture MUCA, to provide a forum to scientific exchange with participation of composers, visual artists and researchers from several national and international universities.

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Beyond Genre: Jazz as Popular Music

April 19-21, 2018
Center for Popular Music Studies
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH

The intersections of jazz and popular music are myriad. Louis Armstrong recorded with Jimmie Rodgers and Bessie Smith; Carlos Santana recorded with Alice Coltrane; Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly featured Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, and Kamasi Washington; George Benson topped the Billboard 200 in 1976; Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis are all inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; consider also the careers of The Bad Plus, Benny Goodman, Spyro Gyra, Kenny G, Norah Jones, and countless others.

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Music Transitions and Futures

Venue: The Boiler House, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Date: Thursday 25th January 2018.

The International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS) at Newcastle University, in collaboration with the National Association for Music in Higher Education (NAMHE), announces a one-day conference focusing on progression routes for students transitioning from secondary to tertiary music education. This event will take place on January 25th 2018 at Newcastle University.

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Here, There, Everywhere (& Nowhere): Musical Perspectives on Migration, Networks and Borders

Senate House, London
Friday 6th April 2018, 10am- 5pm

Join us for a one-day collaborative research event organised by The University of Gloucestershire’s Music and Media Department in association with The Institute of Musical Research and the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

In the context of rapidly-changing models of consumption and patterns of identification that are occurring across the music industries, this event focuses on notions of boundary, flow and borders, and seeks to establish conceptual connections in relation to musicology, musical networks, and musical identities.

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