Welcome to The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch

Popular Music Studies in the Twenty-First Century

Posted: March 8th, 2012 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

It is thirty years since the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) was founded and the journal Popular Music was launched. Although much is different today in popular music studies, the field still faces a number of challenges, some of which have changed very little during the intervening period.

In a recent paper in IASPM Journal Vol 2, Philip Tagg assesses what issues need to be addressed in the field, and how they could be explored, covering subjects such as interdisciplinarity, interprofessionalism, epistemic inertia and invisible music. He concludes that musicologists working in popular music have failed to make sufficient inroads into conventional musicology to ensure that popular music and art music are now treated equally. He also points out that researchers in popular music studies from non-musical backgrounds still struggle to address the music within popular music studies.

IASPM Journal, the journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, is now seeking responses that address the issues raised by this paper, which is available at http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/issue/current.

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