Call for papers
French Association for American Studies Conference
23-25 May 2013
Angers, France
General Topic: Religion and Spirituality
Popular Music Panel Topic: Religion and Blasphemy in Popular Music

Though American popular music is more celebrated for its iconoclastic tendencies than its spiritual leanings, it welcomes the profane as much as the religious, the mundane as much as the transcendental, the flesh as much as the spirit. While heavy metal, rock, and gangsta rap have been famously accused by over-eager media of Satanism and immorality, other genres such as gospel, folk, and more recently Christian rock, New Age, or taqwacore have glorified God, and allowed their followers to access new forms of spirituality. The whole family of popular music, which includes the Carter Family, Madonna, Mahalia Jackson, Marilyn Manson, Little Richard, or Bob Dylan, reflects – sometimes magnifies – the relationship we may entertain with the divine. Some celebrate the Gospel, others tell us of their struggles with their inner demons. Even when it explicitly celebrates rebellion and transgression – or playfully and ironically conjures up some satanic majesty – popular music remains connected to the spiritual. Continue reading →

Call for papers
Severn Pop Network Inaugural Conference
The Small Economies of the ‘New’ Music Industry
University of Bristol
25 March 2013

The music industry is in a well-publicised state of upheaval. The emergence of digital reproductive technologies (such as CD burners and MP3s), of digital distribution and consumption technologies (such as the iPod, iTunes and Spotify), and of new social media (such as Myspace and Facebook) have radically disturbed established systems of production and consumption. The benefits of these changes have fallen unequally and most cultural commentary has focused on the problems caused to the global record industry. However, one of the distinctive features of the music industry is the continuity between localised ‘para-industrial acts’ and mainstream commercial practices. The importance of geographic and genre-based scenes means that small music economies have a greater significance for the structural organisation of the music industry than in other cultural industries: ‘in the music industry… the small is as significant as the big’ (Frith, 2000). Continue reading →