Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the launch of the online peer-reviewed journal Transposition – musique et sciences sociales No. 9 – “Music and Sexuality”, with contributions by Marion Brachet, Chiharu Chûjô, Aurore Flamion, Clara Wartelle-Sakamoto, Toby Young, Charlotte Vaillot Knudsen, Tia DeNora and Annegret Fauser. The issue aims to explore the seldom studied connections between music and sexuality, the relationship of sound and music to sex and desire. We also invite you to discover an interview with the argentine company Opera Queerand 23 book reviews of recent publications in musicology and social sciences. And popular music studies: https://journals.openedition.org/transposition/?lang=en

Wishing you a good read,

Esteban Buch, Violeta Nigro Giunta (eds.)

All the best,

Sarah, for the editorial team of Transposition

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new issue of TRANS-Revista Transcultural de Música, in this case volume 24, corresponding to the year 2020.  It includes a special dossier on “Music, Sound and Culture in Central America”, edited by Antonio Monte Casablanca (Free University of Berlin), Amanda Minks (University of Oklahoma) and Helga Zambrano (University of California – Los Angeles).

In the words of the editors, this volume “aims to integrate the Central American region into current academic knowledge and debates around the categories of music, sound and orality, particularly from the different points of view of the humanities and social sciences.” Beyond the intrinsic quality and interest of each of the articles, this collection, as a whole, reveals the rich (ethno)musicological thinking of a region that perhaps has not received due attention from music and sound studies. The publication of this special issue also responds to the Ibero-American vocation of TRANS-Revista Transcultural de Música, the flagship journal of SIBE, the Spanish Society for Ethnomusicology.  The issue is completed with the usual section of reviews.

Dear IASPM-ites,

With apologies for cross-posting: Jonas Menze and I are pleased to be able to announce that our latest book, Gear Acquisition Syndrome – Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music, featuring a foreword by Steve Waksman, has been published today. Scholars interested in how musicians acquire, use, collect and regard musical equipment as part of their extended selves, essential for their music-making, may find it a stimulating and enjoyable read.

The book is available as a free, downloadable open access eBook here: https://unipress.hud.ac.uk/plugins/books/27/

Abstract:

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, also known as GAS, is commonly understood as the musicians’ unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments and equipment as an anticipated catalyst of creative energy and bringer of happiness. For many musicians, it involves the unavoidable compulsion to spend money one does not have on gear perhaps not even needed. The urge is directed by the belief that acquiring another instrument will make one a better player.

This book pioneers research into the complex phenomenon named GAS from a variety of disciplines, including popular music studies and music technology, cultural and leisure studies, consumption research, sociology, psychology and psychiatry. The newly created theoretical framework and empirical studies of online communities and offline music stores allow the study to consider musical, social and personal motives, which influence the way musicians think about and deal with equipment. As is shown, GAS encompasses a variety of practices and psychological processes. In an often life-long endeavour, upgrading the rig is accompanied by musical learning processes in popular music.