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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CUMIN Workshop on Hip-Hop, Healing and Wellness

Blended online and in-person, Friday 24 June, 2022, 11:00-16:00

Organisation: CUMIN https://contemporaryurbanmusicforinclusionnetwork.wordpress.com

CUMIN (Contemporary Urban Musics for Inclusion Network) is an AHRC-funded Network organising a series of Workshops in 2022 and a major conference in 2023. Workshop 2 from this series takes place in conjunction with University of York on Friday 24th June at York’s StreetLife hub (29-31 Coney St., York).

Hip-hop and other forms of contemporary urban music have been claimed to offer a ‘healing power’. The purpose of this workshop is to ask exactly what benefits to health and well-being can be identified, how these benefits can best be maximised, who is being impacted upon and why there is a need for those people to receive support for their health and well-being.

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RMA: Mission, Name, Identity

Online, Monday 18 July, 2022, 13:00-17:00 (UTC+1)
Organization: Royal Musical Association
Organising Committee: Nicola Dibben, Freya Jarman, Laudan Nooshin

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? We propose to hold a half-day virtual symposium on this topic raising these and related questions.

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Special Issue of Rock Music Studies

After All This Time: Legacy Acts, Fandom, and Collective Identity

Guest-edited by Andy Bennett and Devpriya Chakravarty (Griffith University, Australia)

Submissions are invited for a special issue of Rock Music Studies on the topic of Legacy Acts, Fandom, and Collective Identity. Popular music is now increasingly acknowledged as a key aspect of contemporary history and heritage. The marketing of popular music as a form of youth-based leisure and consumption from the mid-1950s onward has had significant implications for its cultural meaning as a collective soundtrack and a means through which successive generations of youth have sought to distinguish themselves from the parent culture. This aspect of the relationship between popular music and youth became more pointed during the 1960s and into the 1970s with a new political sensibility among youth, and was also reflected in much of the popular music of the time, which gave rise to a global counter-cultural movement. This sensibility continued to reverberate in subsequent musical genres such as punk, post-punk and new wave.

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Gender and Jazz: Histories and Scenes

Special Issue of Popular Music History (2023)

From the latter half of the twentieth century there has been increasing interest and work in gender and jazz, with several collections examining the roles of women and gay and lesbian musicians in the jazz world, both historically and contemporarily. Nichole Rustin-Paschel and Sherrie Tucker’s 2008 collection Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies has now become an eminent text in the area, and more recently, the Jazzinstitut, Darmstadt held its 14th Jazzforum on the topic of gender and identity in jazz (resulting in a published collection by the same name in 2016). These, and other collections and articles, have delved into gender and its roles in the jazz world, however there are still many more aspects to explore.  Gender, and gender binaries, have shaped the jazz world since the 1920s. Now in the 2020s, the centennial of the Jazz Age gives us an opportunity to explore the many ways that perceptions of gender have been defined and evolved over the last 100 years. There is a need to examine where we are at in the 2020s, and to give thought to the work ahead as creative practitioners, researchers and historians. This themed issue seeks to explore both the known and unknown about gender in the jazz world. Asides from issues around femininity and masculinity (and men and women) in jazz, we seek articles that explore musicians, bands, and scenes who have been ignored or shunned because their performance of gender and/or sexual orientation did not comfortably fit into the perceptions held by critics and audiences. We also seek explorations around power dynamics and gender on and off the bandstand, #MeToo, and collectives such as We Have Voice and Keychange.

Please submit a short abstract (no more than 200 words) to guest editor, Aleisha Ward: [email protected] Abstracts deadline: 1 June 2022

Western Popular Music and the Making of Indian Modernity 

Special Issue of South Asian History and Culture

From the colonial period onwards a variety of Western musical forms and practices have traveled to the sub-continent interacting with domestic sound cultures and contributing to making of Indian modernity. While other influences from the west – in science and technology, political governance, and market mechanisms – have received considerable academic attention, the impact of western popular music in the Indian context is a relatively ignored area of inquiry. This special issue of South Asian History and Culture is based on the premise that our understanding of Indian modernity is enhanced by a deeper exploration of the ways in which western music – beginning with colonial army bands to MTV and beyond – has contributed to the formation of modern sensibilities in India. The issue focuses exclusively on the western pop music (as opposed to western influences on indigenous music-making) that reached Indian audiences as well as local production of English-language pop and seeks to ask a set of questions surrounding these musical encounters to refine and develop our understanding of how popular cultural flows are constitutive of local modernities. What was/is the nature of the audience for western music in India? Was the reception of this music tied to elite-formation? Can one speak of a sub-culture around western pop? Was there any clearly formed state policy regarding What part did this music play in creating an urban youth culture in postcolonial India? Was the Indian recording industry able to nourish homegrown western pop artists? What the was the role of Indian radio and television in creating an enclave of western pop that was distinct from vernacular popular culture?

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Intellect Handbook of Global Music Industries

Edited by Chris Anderton, Martin James, Daniel Nordgård and Sergio Pisfil

Social, technological and political developments and disruptions continue to impact the music industries, fostering new revenue streams and opportunities, and allowing music from around the world to gain a global audience. Audio streaming, video apps and social entertainment services have rapidly become key areas of growth, and there has been a rise in academic work focusing on the global music industries in terms of their issues, challenges, and opportunities. Much of this work describes developments in the global north, and while this book will explore and expand upon this field, it also seeks to explore the industries from a global perspective. We therefore encourage proposals that stress global overviews, tackling issues to do with global capitalism, trans-national companies, geo-politics and so on, but also proposals that focus on significant local/regional contexts that cast light on global differences and what may be learned from them.

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Talking Heads – Academic Book Collection

Talking Heads – Academic Book Collection Call for Papers

Talking Heads have proved to be one of the most influential of any of the groups associated with the punk and new wave scene that flourished in New York in the mid-1970s. They released a number of epoch-defining albums (Talking Heads 77, Fear of Music, Remain in Light, Little Creatures); they spawned influential and successful offshoots- David Byrne’s collaboration with Brian Eno on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; Tom Tom Club (Tina Weymouth’s and Chris Frantz’s side project); and their forays into other media (music video; the concert film Stop Making Sense; and the feature film True Stories) were, for the most part, both critically and commercially successful. After the band’s dissolution, the band members, David Byrne in particular, have continued to produce music and to work in a variety of different cultural areas.

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Call for Presentations, Popular Music Books in Process Series, April 2022

Since early in the COVID-19 crisis, Popular Music Books in Process has curated online events, usually weekly, for music writers and scholars to showcase new and recent books or works in progress for an engaged and interactive audience. The series is a collaboration between the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Pop Conference, and IASPM-US. There have been 65 events so far, all preserved on YouTube.

Though the pandemic context has shifted, we believe this series still has a role to play, providing an accessible ongoing exchange inside music-writing communities and beyond. However, we are moving from a weekly to an every-second-week format, plus breathers to recharge between “seasons.” We’ll continue to feature single, paired, or grouped speakers. Unfortunately, with fewer events, our selection process will be tighter. But we hope this new format—along with our newly expanded organizing team—will help keep the series sustainable into the future.

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