With its rich cultural heritage and vibrant performance scene, Germany is a land of music. Millions of people sing in choirs or play an instrument; hundreds of theatres, orchestras, ensembles and bands ensure an offering of immense density. The new 620-page publication by the German Music Information Centre includes background details and data about music culture in Germany. “Musical Life in Germany” includes 22 articles by well-known authors from the spheres of academia, cultural policy and musical practice. Subjects range from music education and training to amateur and professional music-making and the music economy.
Continue readingcfp: SEM 2020 panel ‘Feminist and Critical Race Approaches to Analyzing “Culture” in Music Streaming Services’
Panel Proposal for the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting
Ottawa, Canada October 22-25, 2020
Feminist and Critical Race Approaches to Analyzing the Emerging Role of ‘Culture’ in Music Streaming Services
Panel Organizer: Darci Sprengel, University of Oxford
In September 2018, Spotify launched its ‘Global Cultures Initiative’, which it insisted would make it a ‘leader’ in the field of audio streaming by moving the platform beyond its traditional focus on North American and European musics to ‘promote and advance culturally diverse music’ (Spotify Newsroom 2018). As Spotify expanded to other regions, however, it met pushback from local rivals. For example, Anghami (‘my tunes’ in Arabic), founded in Lebanon in 2012 and known as ‘the Spotify of the Middle East’, claims to meet better the needs of Arab listeners. It boasts alternative algorithmic technologies with unique abilities to combine international and local sounds in ways it asserts listeners in the Middle East and Arab diaspora want to hear, making Anghami’s distinctly local knowledge its ‘sonic brand’. These trends indicate that music streaming services differentiate themselves not through the music they provide, but through the techniques they employ to mediate between users and music catalogue (Goldschmitt and Seaver 2019).
Continue readingPopular Music Education in Wales: Time to Move Forward
Immersed in the City Festival
Popular Music Education in Wales: Time to Move Forward
Tramshed Tech, Cardiff
January 30th 2020 (9.30-4.30)
Wales has a unique landscape culturally, politically, linguistically and of course musically. Like other Small Nations, the country has a distinct set of challenges in order to ensure it exploits the full potential of music education. In terms of popular music education, this broader landscape is/has been informed to some degree via initiatives funded by Welsh Government, the Arts Council and local councils, with partners such as the PRS Foundation and BBC Wales, all of which are intended, at least in part, to ‘educate’ stakeholders within the Welsh Music Industry – audiences and musicians alike. Most importantly, although these initiatives are positioned outside ‘mainstream’ education, they can be regarded as existing in tandem with debates concerning the place of popular music within the curriculum, which have been part of recent discussions in the Senedd. Featuring a range of expert speakers, this symposium will examine these debates, outlining case studies of good practice and ways in which the Welsh education system can more appropriately include popular music within its remit. To book a place and find out further details, click here, then click on ‘Symposium’. The event is part of the Immersed in the City Festival, which is headlined by Richard Ashcroft. The £5 includes lunch, with all proceeds going to Teenage Cancer Trust.
Sonic Scope: New Student Journal
SONIC SCOPE: NEW APPROACHES TO AUDIOVISUAL CULTURE
An e-journal for student voices to challenge, energise and diversify engagement with audiovisual media
Sonic Scope invites fresh, intrepid and dynamic student voices to re-imagine and revise critical, interdisciplinary approaches to audiovisual media. Today’s accelerated media landscape offers an unprecedented range of audiovisual experiences, from dynamically reactive video games and ultra HD sports events, to live-streamed political rallies and YouTube vlogs. Within this expanding landscape, the relationship of music and sound to image has undergone radical cultural and aesthetic upheaval. Sonic Scope intervenes in this shifting media terrain by engaging with audiovisual events as they happen. At the same time, it uses contemporary debates to revitalise discourse on traditional audiovisual forms, such as film, opera, theatre, the sounding visual arts and intermedial music.
Statement about use of sonic weapons in Chile
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music IASPM rejects the use of sonic weapons in the social protests in Chile. This statement was prepared by the Latin American and Spanish IASPM branches and the Spanish Society for Ethnomusicology and approved by the Executive Committee in December 19, 2019.
IASPM and their Latin American and Spanish branches, and Sibe, the Spanish Society for Ethnomusicology issue the following statement:
IASPM, IASPM-LA, and IASPM-Spain are professional associations that bring together more than a thousand specialists in the study of music and sound in society.
As professionals, we want to express our deep concern and rejection of the Chilean government’s intention to incorporate acoustic weapons to repress the social protests that have taken place in recent weeks.
Our colleagues from the Chilean Society of Musicology have exposed in detail the dangers to the health and physical integrity of the protesters and of the general population that the use of this arsenal implies (see English version here).
We want to emphasize that sound in all its forms (including music) is a fundamental factor in the construction of people’s subjectivity and the social ties that articulate our society. Its use for repressive purposes has numerous and painful antecedents that we cannot allow to be repeated and normalized.
Executive Board IASPM
IASPM-Latin America
IASPM-Spain
Sibe-Sociedad de Etnomusicología
Continue readingcfp: Music and the Spanish Civil War
Call for Papers
Music and the Spanish Civil War
8 – 10 October 2020
Humboldt University, Berlin
Convened by Diego Alonso (Postdoctoral Fellow, Humboldt University, Berlin) in collaboration with the International Hanns Eisler Society, Berlin. The conference is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Keynote speakers:
Michael Christoforidis & Elizabeth Kertesz (U. of Melbourne, Australia)
Gemma Pérez Zalduondo (U. of Granada, Spain)
Until recently, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was frequently considered a time of paralysis, a parenthesis between the rich musical life of early 20th-century Spain and the new cultural and musical landscape of post-war Spain under Franco’s dictatorship. Accordingly, we still lack a thorough account of the role played by music and music criticism in this crucial period of Spain’s recent history. Similarly, the international impact of the Civil War on music has been explored only sporadically. These studies have focused primarily on a few musicians and a small selection of works, rather than more fully examining the range of activities, productions and debates involving music in and beyond Spain.
Continue readingcfp: IASPM Canada Annual Conference 2020 (deadline extended)
Big Sounds from Small Places
IASPM Canada Annual Conference 2020 Call For Papers
Cape Breton University: Sydney, Nova Scotia
12 – 14 June 2020
Submission Deadline: 10 January 2020
As we enter into a new decade it’s apt to question our place in the world. Almost sixty years ago, Marshall McLuhan notably coined the term Global Village to refer to the global spread of media content and consumption, and yet Canada still struggles with its position in the world as an imposing landmass with a relatively small population, and how that influences where and how its cultural texts are encountered. This conference seeks to address the concept of voice and sound as tied to space and place, in the broadest sense. In regards to popular music in Canada, we have established a strong identity, but one that is often defined in opposition to our more vocal neighbours to the South. As we continuously define and redefine Canadian cultural identity, and cultural outputs, this conference questions how our musical landscape has historically adapted, and will continue to adapt, to an increasingly globalized environment.
Continue readingIASPM Journal 9.2 (2019) issue is now published
Please follow the link to the latest issue of the IASPM Journal: https://iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/issue/view/69
PhD scholarship related to creative music production at the University of Huddersfield
Please note we have a PhD Scholarship in Creative Music Production just advertised at the University of Huddersfield. It is open to a range of research areas and approaches.
https://research.hud.ac.uk/research-degrees/researchscholarships/mhmscholarships/creative-music/
Call for Applications
Creative Music Production Scholarship
The Department of Music and Humanities is pleased to invite applications for the Creative Music Production Scholarship and for full and partial fee-waiver bursaries for PhD studies starting in September 2020.
The scholarship and fee-waivers are open to applicants engaged in research on any aspect of creative music production. Projects may be practice-based with a reflective commentary, analytical, theoretical or empirical. Relevant topics might include but are not limited to:
- creative practice in the studio,
- sonic signatures,
- the studio as instrument,
- genre aesthetics,
- trends in music production and marketing,
- performance and collaboration in the studio,
- the business of record production,
- professional roles in the recording industry,
- technological changes in music production and dissemination,
- affordances of digital music production,
- gender equality in music production,
- teaching music production.
New issue of JPMS and other news
Hi music writers,
It’s time to end another volume year (our second with UC Press) of Journal of Popular Music Studies. Below this I’ll paste the editors’ note for issue 31:4, written by Robin James – check out her new book The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics. And as always, I encourage you to subscribe individually, using the sliding scale fees on the IASPM-US website (http://iaspm-us.net/), or to make sure your institution – if you have one — subscribes, which helps even more.
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