PGR Popular Music Studies Workshop

NOTE: Deadline extended to 19th September 2022.

On the 20th October 2022, The Institute of Popular Music (IPM) at the University of Liverpool is hosting a Popular Music Studies Workshop for postgraduate researchers (PGRs).

Designed as a small event for focused discussion, the Workshop will bring together PGRs from various disciplines to discuss their research and the study of popular music. Participants will be invited to:

• Gather for lunch and informal conversation (1pm-2pm)
• Participate in an ‘open masterclass’ session, sharing details of their own individual research projects and a particular issue, problem or challenge they are looking to manage or resolve (2pm-3pm)
• Contribute to a general discussion on the study of popular music (3pm-4pm)

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XXII Biennial IASPM International Conference

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
June 26–30, 2023

Theme: Popular Music in Crisis

It is not hyperbolic to claim that crisis characterizes the state of the world in the 2020s. The COVID-19 virus still rages across the globe. In many countries, this public health crisis intersects with a crisis of political legitimacy caused by increased polarization and the rise of right-wing populism. The refusal of many to vaccinate themselves against COVID-19 has led to the continuing spread of the disease. Elsewhere, similar dynamics are exacerbated by lack of effective vaccines, little-to-no capacity to make them, and the hesitancy of wealthier countries to distribute vaccines beyond their national borders. An ever smaller number of people control most of the world’s wealth as the gap between the wealthy and the poor has become a seemingly unbridgeable chasm. The ongoing crisis of climate change manifests in many ways: increasingly dangerous storms, displaced populations, out-of-control fires, financial and material devastation, rising sea levels, and more, unfortunately exacerbated by politics and the destructive impact of late capitalism. Wars, civil and otherwise, have also increased the numbers of migrants whose home countries are devastated but who are not welcomed elsewhere, leading to a crisis of the displaced and, with the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine compounding continued struggles in Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Syria, and many other regions, heightened tension between global powers that at times evokes the Cold War. The rise of neo-fascism has accompanied the return of dangerous nationalisms that attempt to disenfranchise certain members of society, often by race, gender, and sexuality, while reinforcing existing social and racial constructions. Other crises abound, as white supremacy rises again in North America and Europe, women’s rights are under attack in various repressive regimes across the globe, and we learn of human rights abuses perpetrated during military crises and civil unrest.

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Anonymous Creativity: Library Music and Screen Cultures in the 1960s and 1970s

We invite chapter proposals for an edited collection focusing on library music in the 1960s and 1970s and its contemporary afterlife.

Library music – sometimes referred to as stock or production music – is music created specifically for synchronisation in radio, film, television, and other media. Unlike traditional scoring, library music is not created for integration into a specific media artefact but is designed to capture more general themes or moods. Despite being used in a variety of media as far back as the 1920s, library music has yet to gain extensive academic attention. This collection aims to historicise and theorise aspects of library music production during what is often referred to as its ‘golden age’ – the period from the 1960s to the early 1980s – which witnessed a huge rise in library music production (linked to the emergence of television production and an increase in independent filmmaking). Library music composers were key contributors to the sonic identity of audiovisual media of the period, providing thousands of signature tunes, themes, and incidental music for film and television programmes. Despite their ubiquity and enduring cultural resonance, their contributions are often unacknowledged, and very little is known about the conditions in which library music was written, commissioned, recorded, circulated, and used. There has been some important academic work on library music (e.g. Nardi 2012; Wissner 2017; Durand 2020), but there is still much to be discovered within this relatively overlooked mode.

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Feeling the Future – Haptic Audio

The multidisciplinary journal Arts – which has a long-running theme of ‘music and the machine’ is proposing a special issue entitled ‘Feeling the Future – Haptic Audio’ and is are currently seeking contributions from experts who could provide insightful perspectives derived from their experience in the area.

We particularly welcome submissions that address musical/audio applications of force-feedback, telehaptics, and haptic shared control. More broadly, we wish to underline haptics’ usefulness to audio and music. Contributors should be mindful of the readership of this journal, and so overly mathematical texts are not advised, although they can be of a highly technical nature.

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Voices Of Women: Materialities, Cultural Transfer, And Musical Authorship

VOW Erasmus+ Educational Symposium for researchers, music educators, and graduate music students
Dec. 1-2, 2022
University of Groningen

The Voices of Women project, an Erasmus+ funded joint project with the University of Groningen, The University of Stavanger, The Arctic University of Norway (Tromsø), and The University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar invites paper presentations from teachers, graduate students, and scholars interested in the theme of musical authorship in connection to women’s voices. We understand voices metaphorically, artistically, and literally to include women or women-identifying genders in a variety of roles whose creative musical ‘voices’ contribute to the authorship of a particular body of work. The two-day symposium explores this theme of authorship in relation to the sub-themes of music materialities and cultural transfer.

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MusicID Digital Research Fellowship

Call for Proposals
Deadline: August 1, 2022

MusicID is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for our fifth annual Digital Research Fellowship.

MusicID is an academic platform that compiles current and historical music industry data into a single, easy-to-use source. Incorporating 5,452 different charts spanning 74 countries, MusicID provides access to chart information from Billboard and the Official Charts Company dating back to the 1950s, as well as contemporary statistics on iTunes downloads, Spotify and Apple Music streams, and Shazam searches. It also includes built-in visualization tools which allow users to create and export customizable tables and graphs.

https://musicidhub.com/musicid-digital-research-fellowships

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RMA Vision, Mission, Identity

Mon, 18 July 2022, 13:00 – 17:00 BST (UTC+1) 

A half-day virtual symposium on the identity of the RMA in the context of contemporary musical culture and music studies.

Registration via Eventbrite. All welcome!

Since its founding as the “Musical Association” in 1874, both music and the ways we understand it have changed significantly. In recent years, there has been a move towards greater diversity within the organisation, both in its membership and in the areas of music study and practice that it encompasses. These changes have highlighted a need to reflect on the identity of the Royal Musical Association. Why might some people object to the remit and name of the Royal Musical Association? And why might others find it unproblematic?

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Mainstream Silence: Thinking about the Music Everyone Listens to but Nobody Really Discusses

University of Strasbourg
December 1-2 2022

Organizers: Elsa Grassy, University of Strasbourg, Isabelle Marc (USIAS-UCM)
Scientific committee: John Mullen (Rouen), Christophe Pirenne (Liège)

Whether we choose it or whether it is chosen for us, music is with us all the time, both during exceptional events in our lives and in the humdrum everyday. Researchers have delved into the use of music in daily life, in particular in connection with sound reproduction technology and with socializing habits (DeNora 2011, Kassabian, Boschi et Garcia Quiñones 2013). However, rare have been researchers, particularly in France, who have looked at majority or mainstream music genres, artists, or songs with the aim of analyzing them from an aesthetic or social point of view (Pirenne 2021). In this way, popular music studies seems to have reproduced inside the popular field the aesthetic and value-ridden hierarchy which held sway between classical and popular music.

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There’s a song to be sung:  Critical reflections on the music and influence of Johnny Clegg

Proposal submission: 30 September 2022
Full chapters due: 30 June 2023

Introduction

As a South African musician, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and cultural activist, Johnny Clegg has had a significant impact on the South African musical landscape. His career, which began with long-time friend SiphoMchunu in the 1970s, spanned 5 decades and involved success with Juluka, Savuka and as a solo artist, both in South African and internationally. During the apartheid era he experienced police harassment and broadcast censorship and became overtly involved in South African cultural politics, being instrumental in the formation of South African Musicians Alliance. He became embroiled in debates around the cultural boycott. Academically, Clegg had an honours degree in Anthropology and lectured in Anthropology for four years before turning to music full time. He presented and published academic papers with a particular focus on Zulu music, dance and culture. In 2015 he was honoured with an OBE. His death in July 2019 cut short an active and engaging musical career. In 2021 an autobiography, Scatterling of Africa, which covered his early years, was published.

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SEM Student News, 18.1 (“Music and Pleasure”)

This is the second call for submissions for the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of SEM Student News. The theme for this new issue, Vol. 18, No.1, is “Music and Pleasure.” The frequent stratification between professional musicianship and making music “for pleasure” often frames the latter category as something less serious or valuable. But for many of us, participating in and experiencing music in informal or communal spaces fills us with powerful sensations of joy. Music is often a part of other activities associated with pleasure such as sex, the alteration of one’s consciousness through drugs or meditation, and physical expressions like dancing. Music is also frequently integral to the pleasure gained from forming connection with a group (e.g., singing songs at sporting events) or passing through different stages of our lives (e.g., music in play settings among children). In this issue, we want to take seriously the interrogation of pleasure as it relates to these and other activities in and around music.

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