Call for contributions via text or video blogs
Online Conference on Performance in the Studio
29 April-5 May 2013
Convened by the (UK) AHRC-funded Research Network on Performance in the Studio (PitS)

The PitS Network was set up to study musical performance in the recording studio from as wide a range of perspectives as possible. The main focus has been a filmed recording session that took place in the studios of the London College of Music, UWL involving Jo Beth Young, a singer / songwriter and Grammy-winning producer Mike Howlett. Along with drummer Chris Taylor, double bass player Jonny Bridgwood and the Bergersen String Quartet arranged by Oscar nominated arranger/composer John Cameron, Jo Beth Young and Mike Howlett were filmed in rehearsal and throughout the session and in a series of interviews. This unprecedented resource will be available to view on the Art of Record Production (ARP) website at the beginning of April 2013. As a further output of the research network we are convening an online conference which will also remain as a legacy resource on the ARP website. Continue reading →

Call for papers
Studying Music
An International Conference in Honour of Simon Frith
University of Edinburgh
10-12 April 2014

Music scholarship has widened enormously in scope in the last several decades, especially in response to developments in sociology and cultural studies. Previously accepted concepts such as excellence, authenticity and value have become understood as social constructions rather than inherent or aesthetically autonomous. As a result, long-established canons have been questioned and the boundary between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture has become less secure, with questions of aesthetics becoming intertwined with questions of politics and identity. Continue reading →

Call for contributions
NIGHTS 2013
Health, Pleasure and Communities
Padova, Italy
25-27 September

Download the call for contributions for Nights 2013: Health, Pleasure and Communities, the first international conference derived from the Nightlife Empowerment and Well-Being Implementation Project.

See the conference website for more details.

Call for papers
Researching Music Censorship
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
6-8 June 2013
Deadline: 6 February 2013

Music censorship is a relatively new area of research and as a scholarly field of study it is a disputed issue. This is so because it involves a large range of intertwined components and because in discourses over censorship it is generally difficult to pinpoint the relation between cause and effect. The immanent versatility of the concept – as well as its practical dimensions – calls for a multidisciplinary approach. Further it has proven vitally important to understand the process as a political and social phenomenon resting on various aspects like race, gender, religion and class and the intricate power relations involved in the concept/phenomenon of freedom of expression in relation to music and musicians and to an overarching relation between human rights and musical performance in its broadest sense. Continue reading →

Call for papers
Music and Environment Symposium
University of Technology, Sydney
Friday 26 April 2013

Music relates to different types of environmental transformations: social, economic, political, cultural or technological, while environmental changes can be heard in music and soundscapes. There has been an increase in academic discourse relating to the ecology of sound, or ‘green music’, often in relation to the preservation of an environment’s sonority. Environmental sounds figure in sound sculptures, installations and compositions. In popular music, the notion of place has been of particular interest. Labels such as the “Seattle”, “Liverpool”, “Perth” or “Dunedin” sound have come to function as almost genre-like distinctions relating to place-based music. Continue reading →

Call for papers
Functional Sounds: Auditory Culture and Sound Concepts in Everyday Life‏
Berlin, 4-6 October 2013

Information and call for papers can be found at http://www.soundstudies.eu/2013conference/

The conference is organised by Sound Studies Lab at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the international research network Sound in Media Culture, and European Sound Studies Association (ESSA). Continue reading →

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 →