SLAS Conference
March 28-30
University of Liverpool

Call for papers

Music is a present element in the life of individuals living as part of communities and nations. Music in Latin America holds a rich variety of expressions originated within and outside the region. In an expansive trend of cultural globalisation, the study of music in its relationship to place and identity becomes a tricky task. This panel invites paper proposals by researchers working in the field of popular music in contemporary Latin America. Special interest is drawn to topics which relate to the complexities of the relationship between music and nation, identity, and memory.

Deadline for proposal submission 10th of February (Please not that you need to register to the conference no later than the 15 th of February).

If you would like to present on this panel please send an abstract to Violeta Mayer

Information on www.slas.org.uk/events.htm#conf08

Call for papers

Music and the idea of the North

6-7 September 2008
Venue: Sullivan Room, Leeds Town Hall

A conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of Leeds TownHall, hosted by: The Institute of Northern Studies, Leeds Metropolitan University Leeds University Centre for English Music (LUCEM), University of Leeds Leeds International Concert Season Opera North

On 6 September 1858, Queen Victoria travelled to Leeds by rail to open the new town hall, built to an ambitious prize-winning design by the young Hull architect Cuthbert Brodrick. In the festivities which unfolded over her two-day visit, music played a prominent role, from the 32,000 Sunday-school children who sang hymns as the procession passed, to the massed choral forces which delivered the Hallelujah Chorus at the climax of the ceremony itself. In the decades that followed, Leeds Town Hall became one of the most widely recognised emblems of civic pride in the north of England, and a prestigious venue for the festival premières of works such as Edward Elgar’s Caractacus, William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the opening of the town hall, LUCEM and the Institute of Northern Studies present a two-day conference addressing connections between music and global northern identities: how does music express ideas of ‘the north’ and ‘northerliness’, and how have musical cultures been shaped by the dynamics of north vs south?

Papers are invited on any aspect of music and the north, but are particularly encouraged on the following themes:

Proposals (up to 200 words) for papers of c. 20 minutes’ duration should be sent by 31 March 2008 to the programme committee:
Professor Tony Collins, Leeds Metropolitan University
Dr Rachel Cowgill, University of Leeds
Professor Dave Russell, Leeds Metropolitan University
Professor Derek Scott, University of Leeds

Our keynote speakers will be:
Professor Sherrill E. Grace, University of British Columbia, author of Canada and the Idea of North (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001)
Professor Peter Davidson, University of Aberdeen, author of The Idea of North (Reaktion, 2005)

Further details will be posted on the LUCEM and Institute of Northern Studies websites in due course.

Call for Papers

… alles hat seine Zeit
(All things have their season)
Age and Ageing in Popular Music

19th Conference of the Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik
(the German Association for the Study of Popular Music ASPM)
31st October – 2nd November 2008 in Akademie Remscheid near Cologne, Germany

Remember ‘Hope I die before I get old’ – that supposed pop consensus in the late sixties? Since then, the ageing process has certainly left its mark on the productive forces and forms of all genres, topics, performers and listeners of so-called popular music. The starting point of the discussion at the nineteenth ASPM conference will be the fact that such processes are not only increasingly having an impact on the production and reception of popular music – but in fact always have had.
Age as a stamp of quality in the blues and jazz, age as a blind spot in pop, or as a simulation of perennial vitality and potency in rock (Mick Jagger) but also as a sign of premature ageing (Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards) … Of course we will scarcely be investigating the ageing process in the artists, but rather that of the genre itself. Can we speak of a ‘later style’ in the Stones’ work? Why can pop mainstream products – after a certain safe passage of time – be termed evergreens or (in an inversion of the meaning) oldies? Are sweet sixteens immortal?
If the performers can’t be made responsible for the cliché of popular music as youth music, can we then look to blame the audiences? And what power to define ‘youthfulness’ (as in sex and drugs and rebelliousness) does popular music actually still have, when teenagers go to concerts with their Mamas and Papas?

At the ‘… alles hat seine Zeit’ conference, German-language popular music scholars will be looking at this topic for the first time. We warmly invite scholars of all disciplines interested in the multifarious questions and processes of ageing in popular music to contribute.
Selected contributions on the focus topic of the conference will be published after peer review in the Beiträge zur Popularmusikforschung (Contributions to Popular Music Research) series ( Bielefeld : transcript-Verlag).
The languages of the conference and the publication will be German and English.

Papers should be registered at the ASPM office with title and abstract by 1st April 2008:

Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik e.V.
Ahornweg 154
25469 Halstenbek
Germany

or mailed to Alenka Barber-Kersovan

Further details can be found on our website: Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik

the eXtensible Electric Guitar Festival

Since its development in the mid-twentieth century, the electric guitar has had a profound influence on many aspects of music, creating new sounds, spurring the development of new musical styles, and reshaping concepts of musicianship. In the early twenty first century, despite retaining its iconic status as a symbol of innovation and transgression, the electric guitar and its uses now seem commonplace, almost routine; in short, the instrument may be in danger of losing its edge.

The Extensible Electric Guitar Festival aims to rediscover and showcase the electric guitar’s spirit of innovation and exploration. To that end we are looking for music and musicians that use the electric guitar in innovative ways and which extend its capabilities. Music which uses the electric guitar as a controller, with electronics and computers, and with multi-media are encouraged. We anticipate having two evening concerts, one in a concert hall setting, another in a club setting. There

Music: The Extensible Electric Guitar Festival
Clark University, Worcester MA USA
April 4-5, 2008Call for Music and PerformersDeadline: 01/01/08Project directors:
David Claman
Matt Malsky (Clark University)

Symposium: The Extensible Electric Guitar Festival
Clark University, Worcester MA USA
April 4-5, 2008Call for Presentations
Symposium: ‘Instruments of the Post-Prohibitive Age’Deadline: 01/01/08Our symposium begins where Kyle Gann’s keynote to the Extensible Toy Piano Festival (Nov. 2005) left us — with a consideration of the ‘post-prohibitive era’.** Listeners have access to music from every historical era, social context and geographic location, and it’s all accessible instantaneously. Musicians can synthesize all previous musical thought. Every musical style, unusual sound, revolutionary impulse or aesthetic ideal can be incorporated into new music. If modernism’s relationship with mass-culture was marked by a fear of contagion, our post-prohibitive era might be thought of in terms of information-overload. And how do we go about making sense of it all?

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