IASPM-US 2009 Conference
University of California, San Diego
May 29-31, 2009
San Diego, CA
The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to December 22

Borders, boundaries, and frontiers have intersected and interacted with popular music in differing ways, times, and places, and oftentimes these relationships have been particularly resonant in diasporic communities. Taking an open-ended approach to borders and boundaries as types of thresholds and to frontiers as kinds of liminal zones, this conference seeks to explore their significance in popular music in terms of the aesthetics of genre and style, the politics of personal and social identity, and the dynamics of time and place. Potential issues for discussion include technology, media, industry gatekeepers, changing business practices, gender, migration, ethnicity, nationality, language, and changing definitions of music that involve region and era. The program committee of the 2009 conference of IASPM-US invites proposals for papers, panels, or roundtables relating to these ideas and, of course, welcomes proposals on any aspect of popular music. Continue reading →

An Interdisciplinary Conference on Music & Copyright
University of Salford, UK February 18-19, 2009

This conference proposes to investigate the current U.S. and U.K. statutes that regulate the protection of sound recordings. It will inquire to what degree those laws secure the rights of both the owners and creators of the music contained on these products as well as determine their impact upon those who consume and comment upon this material. The pending efforts to universalize an extended term of copyright underscore the potential for even more draconian controls upon recorded music. Will the public, creators, and commentators continue to be able to acquire, appreciate and appropriate musical materials? Can some balance be found between the need for profit and the pursuit of pleasure? Is it possible in a civil society for music effectively to be silenced through constraints over its recorded legacy?
Continue reading →

The Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, the Eduardo León Jimenes Cultural Center (Centro León) and the Institute of Caribbean Studies (INEC) announce the International Conference “The Bolero in Caribbean Culture and Its Worldwide Circulation,” to be celebrated April 17, 18, and 19, 2009, in the facilities of the Centro León, in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

This is the third edition of the conference Music, Identity, and Culture in the Caribbean (MIC), which has been declared an “Event of High Cultural Interest” by the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic. Continue reading →

Call for Papers
International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Canada
Dalhousie University, Halifax
June 12-14, 2009

IASPM-CA is pleased to call for proposals, panels and roundtables for this special interdisciplinary conference on the theme of “Peripheries and Centres.” We also welcome submissions on any aspect of popular music.
We are aiming for as broad a representation of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives as possible and hope for a conference that will provide perspectives on and (re)evaluations of the periphery/centre relationship as it relates to popular music. What changes are affecting the concepts of centre and periphery and related notions like mainstream and fringe, heartland and hinterland, privileged and marginal, mass culture and subculture? How should they be rethought? Is there still a “centre” (generically, geographically, economically, ideologically) in popular music in the 21st century? Continue reading →

2009 Pop Conference at EMP|SFM
April 16-19, 2009, Seattle, WA
Call for Proposals

Though Prince seems to have bowdlerized “D.M.S.R.” in his concerts since becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, the relationship of pop music to sex, love, physical movement, and the body rarely stays hidden very long. For this year’s Pop Conference we invite presentations, addressing any period or style of music, that bring erotic and sensual issues to the forefront and connect them to political and aesthetic concerns. Rock and roll has long congratulated itself on riding the Big Beat over all sanctimonious opposition, but can we take our sense of these archetypal struggles somewhere beyond, say, Footloose? Continue reading →

An international conference
Venue: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Date: 10-11 July, 2009

Over the last twenty years or so there has been much interest in music and diaspora, that is in migrating music. No doubt this interest is historically grounded. Movement of peoples and their music across the world has been occurring to an unprecedented extent and in novel ways.

Researchers in a variety of disciplines have then responded by studying musical flows and the formation of hybrid styles, but also the way in which apparently similar music can mean quite different things in different contexts. We might sum up the overarching framework as one in which researchers focus on the (largely benign) diversification and pluralisation of musical meaning and experience.

We do not seek to overturn this framework. Quite simply, it taps an important part of the reality of migrating music in the contemporary period. But we do want to bring up a number of problems and issues, and call on colleagues to think about what these might mean. Continue reading →

Call for Papers

Society for Music Analysis Autumn Study Day
University of Liverpool, School of Music
22 November 2008

For most listeners to music, sensuous affect is of primary, perhaps even singular, importance. Our responses to music in everyday situations, ranging from background ambience to pounding film scores to sources of studious contemplation, are mediated through music’s sculpting of sensual, physical, emotional and affective experiences.

Yet when it comes to analyzing the musically sensuous, music theory and analysis have proved stubbornly resistant to (and perhaps even fearful of) engaging with the musically sensuous, often retreating instead into ostensibly more cerebral studies of the musically syntactical. This one-day conference seeks to contribute to the process of redressing that imbalance, not least by acknowledging that separations of the sensuous and syntactical in music are, at best, artificial necessities for study and, at worst, utterly misleading. Continue reading →