Dear Colleagues,

This is the first call for submissions for the Fall 2022 issue of SEM Student News. The theme for this new issue, Vol. 18, No.1, is “Fieldwork and Identity.” After over two years of disruptions and reconsiderations of the fieldwork process brought on by the pandemic, many graduate students, who might have experienced delays, are once again preparing to enter the field. Despite the impending sense of a “return to normalcy,” many of us are finding that the pre-pandemic “field” we may have been prepared for has changed in fundamental ways. This issue of SEM Student News is an opportunity for graduate students to participate in a process of dialogue and exchange about their aspirations, experiences, and adjustments they have made in relation to fieldwork. At the core of this discussion, we hope to center the issue of identity: How have the intersections of our own identity, that of our research collaborators, and that of the field itself changed the ways we are thinking about the past, present, and future of our work? Beyond articles that reflect on experiences or offer novel theoretical considerations of the topic, we particularly welcome pieces reflecting collaborative approaches that promote the forum- and community-based goals of this issue.

Dear Colleagues,

This is the second call for submissions for the Spring/Summer 2022 issue of SEM Student News. The theme for this new issue, Vol. 18, No.1, is “Music and Pleasure.” The frequent stratification between professional musicianship and making music “for pleasure” often frames the latter category as something less serious or valuable. But for many of us, participating in and experiencing music in informal or communal spaces fills us with powerful sensations of joy. Music is often a part of other activities associated with pleasure such as sex, the alteration of one’s consciousness through drugs or meditation, and physical expressions like dancing. Music is also frequently integral to the pleasure gained from forming connection with a group (e.g., singing songs at sporting events) or passing through different stages of our lives (e.g., music in play settings among children). In this issue, we want to take seriously the interrogation of pleasure as it relates to these and other activities in and around music.

Andy Bennett and Jon Stratton are editing a collection discussing pub rock in the UK and Australia. We are looking for someone to write a chapter on gender, focusing on women, and pub rock in the UK. The completed chapter will be around 6000 words and we will need it around the middle of November. The book is to be published by Routledge. All enquiries should go to either Andy or Jon, or both of us. Andy’s email address is a.bennett@griffith.edu.au, Jon’s email address is jon.stratton@unisa.edu.au.

After All This Time: Legacy Acts, Fandom, and Collective Identity

Guest-edited by Andy Bennett and Devpriya Chakravarty (Griffith University, Australia)

Submissions are invited for a special issue of Rock Music Studies on the topic of Legacy Acts, Fandom, and Collective Identity. Popular music is now increasingly acknowledged as a key aspect of contemporary history and heritage. The marketing of popular music as a form of youth-based leisure and consumption from the mid-1950s onward has had significant implications for its cultural meaning as a collective soundtrack and a means through which successive generations of youth have sought to distinguish themselves from the parent culture. This aspect of the relationship between popular music and youth became more pointed during the 1960s and into the 1970s with a new political sensibility among youth, and was also reflected in much of the popular music of the time, which gave rise to a global counter-cultural movement. This sensibility continued to reverberate in subsequent musical genres such as punk, post-punk and new wave.

Kia ora koutou,

With the usual apologies for cross posting. I am pleased to announce a call for abstracts for a special issue of Popular Music History Journal on jazz and gender. Please see below for details:

Special Issue of Popular Music History (2023)

Title: Gender and Jazz: Histories and Scenes

From the latter half of the twentieth century there has been increasing interest and work in gender and jazz, with several collections examining the roles of women and gay and lesbian musicians in the jazz world, both historically and contemporarily. Nichole Rustin-Paschel and Sherrie Tucker’s 2008 collection Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies has now become an eminent text in the area, and more recently, the Jazzinstitut, Darmstadt held its 14th Jazzforum on the topic of gender and identity in jazz (resulting in a published collection by the same name in 2016). These, and other collections and articles, have delved into gender and its roles in the jazz world, however there are still many more aspects to explore.  Gender, and gender binaries, have shaped the jazz world since the 1920s. Now in the 2020s, the centennial of the Jazz Age gives us an opportunity to explore the many ways that perceptions of gender have been defined and evolved over the last 100 years. There is a need to examine where we are at in the 2020s, and to give thought to the work ahead as creative practitioners, researchers and historians. This themed issue seeks to explore both the known and unknown about gender in the jazz world. Asides from issues around femininity and masculinity (and men and women) in jazz, we seek articles that explore musicians, bands, and scenes who have been ignored or shunned because their performance of gender and/or sexual orientation did not comfortably fit into the perceptions held by critics and audiences. We also seek explorations around power dynamics and gender on and off the bandstand, #MeToo, and collectives such as We Have Voice and Keychange.

Please submit a short abstract (no more than 200 words) to guest editor, Aleisha Ward: a.ward@auckland.ac.nz Abstracts deadline: 1 June 2022

Special Issue of South Asian History and Culture: Western Popular Music and the Making of Indian Modernity 

Description of Topic 

From the colonial period onwards a variety of Western musical forms and practices have traveled to the sub-continent interacting with domestic sound cultures and contributing to making of Indian modernity. While other influences from the west – in science and technology, political governance, and market mechanisms – have received considerable academic attention, the impact of western popular music in the Indian context is a relatively ignored area of inquiry. This special issue of South Asian History and Culture is based on the premise that our understanding of Indian modernity is enhanced by a deeper exploration of the ways in which western music – beginning with colonial army bands to MTV and beyond – has contributed to the formation of modern sensibilities in India. The issue focuses exclusively on the western pop music (as opposed to western influences on indigenous music-making) that reached Indian audiences as well as local production of English-language pop and seeks to ask a set of questions surrounding these musical encounters to refine and develop our understanding of how popular cultural flows are constitutive of local modernities. What was/is the nature of the audience for western music in India? Was the reception of this music tied to elite-formation? Can one speak of a sub-culture around western pop? Was there any clearly formed state policy regarding What part did this music play in creating an urban youth culture in postcolonial India? Was the Indian recording industry able to nourish homegrown western pop artists? What the was the role of Indian radio and television in creating an enclave of western pop that was distinct from vernacular popular culture?  

Cantautore: the Songwriter in Culture and the Media

Edited by Olivier Julien (Université Paris-Sorbonne), Massimo Locatelli (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), Elena Mosconi (Università di Pavia/Cremona)

“Cantautore” is a project that aims to reconsider the role and figure of the singer-songwriter in Italian and international culture.

The singer-songwriter is a mythical figure in popular imagination in different countries, a bridge between a variety and even contradictory forms of experience, both cultural and social. In the Italian context, it has been respectively interpreted in social history as a symptom of collective traumas (Bonanno 2009, Santoro 2010), and in popular music studies as a successful pop icon (Gentile 1979, Borgna 1995-2004), or as a genre (Fabbri, 1982) and – consequently – as an ideological construction (Tomatis, 2019). Only recently, has the transnational dimension of this phenomenon been stressed out and problematized further (Green and Marc 2013, Looseley 2013, Marc 2016).

Journal of Music, Technology and Education Special Issue: ‘Exploring Audio and Music Technology in Education: Pedagogical, Research and Sociocultural Perspectives’

Full paper submission deadline: 1 April 2022

The past decade has seen increased interest in the pedagogical facets of audio engineering, sound design, music technology and related fields. Much of this rising interest in the teaching and learning aspects of sound corresponds to a growing number of institutions offering training options for people interested in the technical, creative, scientific and cultural aspects of audio. However, while the options for learning about such topics have expanded, there remains a dearth of scholarship on the theoretical, sociocultural and interdisciplinary aspects of audio and its connection to teaching and learning in a broad array of institutions. Also, little scholarship has emphasized a professional development model for the educational aspects of audio, particularly for those working with the next generation of practitioners in all educational contexts. What impact do audio and music corporations have on facilities and curricular decision-making? For this Special Issue of the Journal of Music, Technology & Education, the guest editors seek contributions addressing one or more of the topics below:
• graduate teaching and research in audio education;
• diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in audio education;
• improving the quality of teaching and learning in audio education;
• sociocultural, historical and interdisciplinary aspects of audio education;
• limitations of a technocratic model of pedagogy in audio education;
• education-industry partnerships in promoting communities of learning and practice;
• impact of professionalization and standardization of curriculum by corporations;
• audio education as an emerging academic field for research and practice;
• global perspectives on audio education;
• social media, online communities and informal learning;
• pandemic-related case studies including hybrid/online learning strategies; and
• school-based (elementary, secondary, high school) and community-based learning

perspectives/collaborations.

Other topics relating to audio education are also welcome. Please submit full papers
by 1 April 2022 via the journal’s page (which can be found here). Expected publication
date in late 2022 or early 2023. Questions about the CFP are welcome and may be

addressed to Daniel Walzer at dawalzer@iu.edu.

Dear Fellow IASPM Members (with apologies for any cross-posting), 

Please find below details of a wide-ranging Call for Contributions which will hopefully be of interest to some of you.

The Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle is seeking contributions for a special issue on ‘Music and Covid-19’, guest edited by Dr Larry Zazzo (Newcastle University) and Dr Adam Behr (Newcastle University).  As, educators, scholars, performers and audiences, we are all starting to emerge from the pandemic transformed and still facing substantial challenges.  COVID-19 continues to have an effect on the creative economy and its regulatory environment, as well as the practical contexts of making, distributing, teaching and researching musics of all kinds. For many, these challenges have been — and still are— existential, as musicking performers and venues of every genre still struggle to return to a pre-COVID-19 ‘normal’.