Musical Materialities in the Digital Age

27-28 June 2014, University of Sussex

Keynote Speakers

Will Straw (Professor, Department of Art History and Communications Studies, McGill University; Director, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada)

Noel Lobley (Ethnomusicologist and Research Associate, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)

Conference outline

Music, while summoning notions of intangibility, transience and loss, is also associated with material objects that serve to ground the musical, make the transient permanent and defer loss. Unearthing music’s association with materiality reveals a fascinating array of artefacts, including instruments, scores, transcribing devices, sound recordings and much more. Such artefacts provide vital reference points for historical research as well as inviting new creative uses, rediscoveries and (re)mediations. They also add to the ever-growing archives of past objects, whether stored in ‘physical’ or digital forms. Music’s material traces serve as vital ways of mediating memory, whether in private collections or public exhibitions. Furthermore, the use of musical ‘ephemera’ such as record sleeves, programmes, flyers and posters as a primary means for putting the popular musical past on display in museums and galleries has highlighted the ways in which such objects are not so ephemeral after all.

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From Death to Democracy: Music and the Politics of Memory in a Transnational Perspective

A special issue of IASPM@Journal edited by Barbara Lebrun (IASPM-bfE, University of Manchester) and Catherine Strong (IASPM-ANZ, Monash University, Melbourne). 

IASPM@Journal is planning a special issue for publication in 2015, focusing on popular musicians hailing from countries with dictatorial or military regimes, whose deaths coincided with moments of dramatic political change and became instrumental in efforts of national reconstruction towards democracy. The visiting editorial team, Barbara Lebrun (University of Manchester, UK and Francophone branches) and Catherine Strong (Monash University, Australia, ANZ branch) are concerned with the historical and cultural processes by which the songs and media images of these artists have become, posthumously, sites of tension for the expression of a new national, sometimes diasporic, identity.

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Napster, 15 years on: Rethinking digital music distribution

Call for papers – First Monday themed special edition

Guest editors: Raphaël Nowak (Griffith University, Australia) and Andrew Whelan (University of Wollongong, Australia)

2014 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the release of the peer-to-peer application Napster. Developed by a student, Shawn Fanning, with the help of his friend Shawn Parker and uncle John Fanning, Napster established music downloading as a mass phenomenon. By 2001, 50 million users had downloaded content with Napster. Many other applications followed – Gnutella, Kazaa, LimeWire, eMule, Soulseek, BitTorrent, among others –further developing and entrenching p2p technology.

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The Languages of Popular Music: Communicating Regional Musics in a Globalized World

29th September – 2nd October 2014, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik e.V. (ASPM) and the University of Osnabrueck are inviting scholars of all disciplines studying popular music to submit proposals for the international conference “The Languages of Popular Music: Communicating Regional Musics in a Globalized World”. The conference will take place at the Institute for Musicology and Music Education, University of Osnabrueck, Germany, from 29th September to 2nd October 2014.

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Keep it Simple, Make it Fast! Underground Music Scenes and DIY Cultures

9-11 July 2014

Venues: Faculdade de Letras | Universidade do Porto | Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal

The Conference Organizing Committee hereby announces its “Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! Underground music scenes and DIY cultures Conference” which will take place in Porto from 9 July to 11 July 2014. The organisation of the conference will be undertaken by the Research Project Keep It Simple, Make It Fast! (PTDC/CS-SOC/118830/2010). The Call for Papers of this conference is open for presentations to all core areas of sociology and social sciences. The Conference Organizing Committee invite experienced and young scholars from various disciplines to participate in the conference. The Conference Organizing Committee would like the participants to know that the selected papers from the conference will be published in an edited collection by an international publisher.

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Memory, Power, and Knowledge in African Music and Beyond

Date: September 03-06, 2014
Venue: University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Language: English

This conference seeks to explore, both from historical and contemporary perspectives, the nexus between memory, power, and knowledge in the music of Africa and its various diasporas. These explorations encompass the history and politics of sound archiving and scholarly practices as much as intersections of memory, power, and knowledge in musical performance itself. The contexts within which we would like to examine this broader field include, but are not limited to, the realms of popular culture, politics, religion, as well as education. Throughout history, music has been a crucial means in the representation of power and status as well as the negotiation of individual and collective identities. As a repository of knowledge, musical practice often functions as a form of social memory, which we understand not as a static entity but as a dynamic field within shifting power relations on both the local and translocal level. Media technology has, over more than a century now, played an important role in the reconfiguration of this nexus, and particularly the rise of electronic media in recent years has changed and accelerated its dynamics. Finally, our own engagement as scholars is deeply implicated in the intersection of memory, power, and knowledge, compelling us to constantly question our canons and to reflect on the implications of academic research.

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IASPM-Canada 31st Annual Conference

Université Laval
May 23-25, 2014

The deadline for abstracts has been extended to Monday January 20.

This year’s conference will take place at Université Laval in Quebec City. Founded in 1663, Laval is the oldest francophone university in North America and one of Canada’s leading research institutions. The university provides easy access to Quebec City with its stimulating combination of historic architecture and a vibrant and diverse cultural life.

We welcome proposals on any topic relating to popular music for this open un-themed conference. Proposals for single papers, workshops, performances or other forms of presentation may be submitted. Abstracts for individual papers, roundtables, and workshops should be no longer than 300 words; proposals for panels should include an abstract for the panel as a whole (300 words max.) as well as an individual abstract for each paper proposed for the panel (300 words max.). It is possible that the program committee may accept a panel but reject an individual paper on that panel.

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Music and Screen Media

 June 25th & 26th, 2014

We welcome submissions on all aspects of audiovisuality, including, but not limited to, music and sound for fiction film, documentary, television, music video, video games and interactive media.

Keynote Speaker: Professor John Richardson, University of Turku

Roundtable Convener: Professor Anahid Kassabian, University of Liverpool

If you have any queries, please contact Holly Rogers at [email protected]

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Developing Pedagogies of Punk

Call for Chapter Contributions

Developing curriculums and pedagogical approaches to the teaching of Punk music is a poorly investigated area within Music in Higher Education. The growing capability for institutions to develop programmes in these popular music areas have led to an appropriation of traditional teaching methods in some areas and innovative groundbreaking processes in others. The aim of this edited volume is to capture the contemporary thinking and doing of teaching practitioners around the world exploring their practice as punk pedagogues.

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The 4th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference 2014 in Chiang Mai (Thailand)

Date: 8-9 August 2014, (Friday-Saturday)

Organized by:
Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group (IAPMS group),
College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai, Thailand

We are pleased to announce the 4th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference, which will take place on August 8-9, 2014 in Chiang Mai, in collaboration with College of Arts, Media and Technology, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Following the first conference in Osaka in 2008, the second conference in Hong Kong in 2010, and the third conference in Taipei in 2012, we move our next meeting to Thailand—hub of vibrant Southeast Asian popular music and music industry.

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