Call for papers
Real Country? Geographic, Cultural and Stylistic Challenges to the Country Music Genre
International Symposium
13-14 November 2013
Strasbourg, France

In 2006, an article in the Observer Music Monthly stated, “Country is often seen as the whitest, most segregated of all styles: the redneck soundtrack of the racist South”. First marketed as “old time,” then as “hillbilly music” by northeastern music executives in the 1920s and 1930s country music has been branded with the same stereotypes as its region of origin. Perceived as conventional, vulgar and conservative, it has been charged with wallowing in easy patriotism and mawkish sentimentality, based on a homesickness for a lost agrarian past which at times slips into an unquestioning fondness for pre-Civil War Dixie. Continue reading →

Call for papers
Pop-Life: The Value of Popular Music in the Twenty First Century
University of Northampton
6-7 June 2014

It has increasingly become a truism to suggest that contemporary popular music practice is in a state of flux. Established patterns of consumption, distribution and production have at the very least been revolutionised by the opportunities afforded by digitalisation and the internet. While subcultural identities may have become increasingly adopted by mainstream media, the proliferation of media outlets has contributed to an increasingly varied and cosmopolitan listening experience both in terms of stylistic breadth but also in terms of historical depth. While some commentators have sounded the death-knell of the music industry, others see an opening-up of opportunity for musicians and audiences around the world that may be far more liberating than at any time since the dawn of recorded music. Continue reading →