Call for articles: If You Could Read Our Minds: Essays on Gordon Lightfoot

Edited by Melissa Avdeeff (Coventry University) and Scott Henderson (Trent University Durham GTA)

Proposals are sought for an interdisciplinary, edited collection focused on the work and career of Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.

Lightfoot’s career spans more than six decades, beginning with his emergence in the folk rock scene in Toronto’s Yorkville in the 1960s through to continued touring in the present decade. Lightfoot’s success has bridged a number of genres, including folk, pop, country, rock and a range of crossovers. A string of Top 40 hits in the 1970s cemented Lightfoot’s international reputation, both as a singer and songwriter. In addition to his own recordings, Lightfoot’s songs have also been recorded and performed by an amazing array of diverse artists., across a vast range of musical genres.

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Songwriting Studies Journal

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Songwriting Studies Journal, an initiative that emerges from the AHRC-funded Songwriting Studies Research Network based at Birmingham City University and the University of Liverpool. Since launching our series of national research events we’ve become increasingly aware of the diversity of scholarly work that intersects with songwriting. The network now seeks contributions from scholars for an inaugural issue of the journal that will help define the emerging interdisciplinary field of songwriting studies.

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cfp: Metal and the Holocaust

Call for Papers: Metal and the Holocaust
(special issue Metal Music Studies 2020, ed. Keith Kahn-Harris and Dominic Williams)

Our special issue tackles a well-known but little-studied phenomenon: the importance of Holocaust themes to the metal scene. The Holocaust has often featured as a subject of metal lyrics (from Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ on). It has repeatedly been referred to in descriptions of metal’s sound (e.g. the ‘Heavy Metal Holocaust’ of 1981). And it has formed part of accusations and warnings against bands who flirt with and sometimes outright endorse far-right and neo-Nazi politics.

Even with those bands – the vast majority on the scene – who do not engage in such politics, their interest in the Holocaust has frequently been seen as exploitative at best. But many metal lyricists and musicians claim that they are providing a ‘history lesson’, and many teenagers’ first acquaintance with such figures as Josef Mengele and Reinhard Heydrich surely comes from Slayer.

It is high time, therefore, that the tangled relationship of metal and the Holocaust be unpicked and examined. We wish to face up to a difficult and troubling topic, and accept that many of the ways that metal has approached it are not beyond critique. But we are also interested in possibilities that come from its incorporation and embodiment of the Holocaust. What aspects of metal’s politics need to be thought through, attended to, challenged? Can metal form a kind of historiography? Metal frequently evokes extreme affects. Does this focus provide a means of testifying to the Shoah that goes beyond the simply propositional or representational? Are such modes of remembrance exportable beyond the bounds of the metal scene, or do they only work within the particular codes and values of this subculture? How do they compare to other forms of ‘Holocaust impiety’ and other forms of representation?

We seek proposals for articles of 6,000-8,000 words. Final deadline for articles will be 1 December 2019.

Questions could include but are not limited to the following:

  • What part has metal played in transmitting knowledge of or interest in the Holocaust?
  • What place does this particular subject have within the subculture? Is it one of many horrors that its fans wish to face up to, or does it have a particular significance for them?
  • Can metal provide history lessons?
  • How has the understanding and presentation of the Holocaust by metal bands and fans been influenced by:
    • politics (including those of the far right)?
    • religious and anti-religious positions?
    • interest in Nordic and Germanic culture and themes?
  • Does metal offer ways of approaching the Holocaust from which other cultural forms can learn, e.g.
    • its tendency to avoid moralising?
    • its concentration on intense feelings rather than contemplation?
  • How has the significant history of Jewish involvement in metal culture impacted the scene’s responses to the Holocaust?
  • How have Israeli metal scenes engaged with the Holocaust?
  • Is the approach taken by these forms of music best characterised as ‘holocaust impiety’?
  • Is it possible to be ‘reflexively anti-reflexive’ about the Holocaust?

Send abstracts of 150-250 words plus a short bio note to Dominic Williams (dominic2.williams@northumbria.ac.uk) by 6 September 2019.

Riffs: Call for Proposals

Riffs: Call for Proposals
’Technology is something I love and hate at the same time. One one hand the absence of any kind of technology means silence (or an environment of natural sounds which we hear much clearer because of the general silence); on the other hand, you need technology to make art’.
Christina Kubisch, ‘Artists’ Statements II: Christina Kubisch’, in The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music, ed. by Nick Collins and Julio d’Escriván, 2nd edn (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2017:176)
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Call for chapters: Geographically isolated and peripheral music scenes

I’ve had a few slots open up for contributions to an edited collection on geographically isolated and peripheral music scenes. I’m particularly interested in bringing in diverse perspectives beyond the UK/ North America and Australia/ NZ dialogues I currently have, and am particularly keen to provide this opportunity to female academics.

Please see below, and if you are interested please send your abstract to cballico@gmail.com by Wednesday August 21, 2019. Full chapters will be due October 31st, 2019.
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21st Century Music Practice series of Elements by Cambridge University Press

I am very pleased to announce the launch of the 21st Century Music Practice series of Elements by Cambridge University Press. Elements are a new publishing format that CUP are promoting that consists of a 20,000 word text – somewhere in between a standard journal article and a book – and which can also involve extensive multi-media content. The series has developed out of the 21st Century Music Practice Research Network which currently has around 250 members in 30 countries and is dedicated to the study of what Christopher Small termed Musicking – the process of making and sharing music rather than the output itself. Obviously this exists at the intersection of ethnomusicology, performance studies, and practice pedagogy / practice-led-research in composition, performance, recording, production, musical theatre, music for screen and other forms of multi-media musicking. The generic nature of the term ‘21st Century Music Practice’ reflects the aim of the series to bring together all forms of music into a larger discussion of current practice and to provide a platform for research about any musical tradition or style. It embraces everything from hip hop to historically informed performance and K-Pop to Inuk Throat Singing.
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CfP (yearbook): Populäre Lieder im langen 19. Jahrhundert / Popular Songs in the Long 19th Century

CfP (yearbook): Populäre Lieder im langen 19. Jahrhundert / Popular Songs in the Long 19th Century

Deadline: 15 May 2019 (abstracts); 31 January 2020 (full articles)
We invite you to submit articles for the volume 65 (2020) “Populäre Lieder im langen 19. Jahrhundert / Popular Songs in the Long 19th Century” of the yearbook “Lied und Populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture”. The yearbook is published by the Zentrum fuer Populäre Kultur und Musik (Freiburg University).

For detailed information see: http://www.zpkm.uni-freiburg.de/publikation/jahrbuch/cfpyearbook65popularsongs19thcentury (German and English).

Potential contributors are asked to send abstracts of not more than 2,000 characters including spaces as well as a short academic CV by 15 May 2019. By the end of May, you will receive feedback on the acceptance of your contribution. The contributions should cover 35,000 to 50,000 characters including spaces and should be submitted by 31 January 2020. Please send any inquiries or abstracts to Knut Holtsträter (jahrbuch -at- zpkm.uni-freiburg.de). We accept contributions in German or English.

cfp: Experts, non-experts and the participatory production of knowledge (Volume! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies)

Quick link: https://journals.openedition.org/volume/6370

Experts, non-experts and the participatory production of knowledge. The case of popular music research (Volume! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies)
Editors: Christophe Pirenne and Christophe Levaux (University of Liège, Belgium)

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