Race & Ethnicity in Cultural Production‏

Call for submissions
Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture
Special Issue on Race and Ethnicity in Cultural Production
Editors: David Hesmondhalgh and Anamik Saha

Within media and cultural studies, questions of race and cultural difference in popular culture have tended to be explored through textual analysis, in relation to what Stuart Hall (1988) called “the politics of representation”, in terms of how they either reinforce or challenge essentialist notions of race and ethnic identity. Some of the most important recent interventions in cultural studies however, are those that have gone beyond the text and have focused on the production of culture and identity as constituted in, and by, global transformations (Clarke and Thomas, 2006; Niranjana, 2006). Yet far less attention has been paid to the production and circulation of representations of difference in popular culture. The aim of this special issue of Popular Communication is to address race and ethnicity in terms of how they are experienced in cultural production, in both its everyday and industrial contexts, and in terms of how they influence the production and distribution of cultural goods. Continue reading

Live Music Exchange, Leeds: Interesting Times for Local Live Music‏

Call for papers
4-5 May 2012
Venue Bar Meeting Room, Leeds College of Music, Leeds

A conference to mark the start of a new AHRC-funded initiative: the Live Music Exchange, a knowledge transfer project emerging from three years of wide-ranging research into the social, cultural, historical and economic dimensions of live music. For more information about the Live Music Exchange, please see http://www.livemusicexchange.org

This conference is designed to forge links between industry and the academy by examining the issues facing those working at the front-line of local live music, and exploring the ways in which academic research can encourage and assist a vibrant and sustainable live music ecology. Continue reading

David Sanjek Archive‏

This is posted on behalf of Dave Sanjek’s family.

Dear Family & Friends,

A campus-wide memorial service for Professor David Sanjek will be held on Thursday, February 23 from 11 am to 2 pm at the University of Salford in Salford, England.

David passed away on November 29, 2011 in New York while en route to the annual meeting of the Historic Recording Preservation Board at the  US Library of Congress, a board on which he had served for the past ten years. Continue reading

Master of Music degree at Texas State University – Mariachi and Salsa tracks

Texas State University offers a 36-hour Master of Music degree with emphases in either Latin Music Performance or Latin Music Education, and tracks in either Mariachi or Salsa music. The program includes specialized courses in Salsa and Mariachi arranging, vocal and instrumental techniques, ensembles, and history and research. For degree plans, media, and info on the award-winning ensembles Salsa del Rio and Mariachi Nueva Generacion, please visit http://latin.music.txstate.edu or contact John Lopez (johnlopez@txstate.edu).

IASPM 17th Biennial Conference‏

Call for papers
Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Challenging Orthodoxies
IASPM 17th Biennial Conference
24-28 June 2013
Universidad de Oviedo
Place: Gijón, Spain

The popular music studies field in all its inter-disciplinarity has been characterised by encounter, dialogue and exchange, and also by tension. Our title ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ takes the triple metaphor of bridge, inferring meetings and communication; trouble, indicating stresses and power struggles; and water, indicating flow and travel, as fertile themes for debate at the 17th Biennial IASPM Conference. We propose five streams (TRACKS) dealing with popular music and history, marginality, copyright, collectivities, and space. Extending across all streams is the topic of technology. Continue reading

Virtual Bands, Virtual Music

Call for chapters
Virtual Bands, Virtual Music
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2012

Shara Rambarran and Sheila Whiteley are seeking contributions from the wide spectrum of musicology and social sciences for an edited text on Virtual Bands, Virtual Music that will reflect upon its origins, its characters, its music(s), its scattered identity, its legacy, its worldwide membership and circulation. How can we define aesthetically, culturally, politically, and ideologically the concept and meaning of virtual bands? To what extent is contemporary popular music driven by the digital media (Internet, digital music distribution, consumption), music technology (sampling, remix, MP3), and creative artistic technology (music video, performance, virtual groups)? Continue reading

BAPMAF Archives Accra Flood Disaster Report

Update from John Collins on the Accra flood disaster
BAPMAF webpage
Information on donations

It’s now almost three months since the disastrous Accra floods of October 26th hit my house and the BAPMAF music archives. So in this letter I want to update the situation and also thank the people who contributed through sympathetic and morale-boosting emails and through financial donations and other forms of support. Continue reading