MPSG 2017 Themed Session: Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

To be held at King’s College London, 13-14 July 2017

Session convenor: Stan Erraught (Buckinghamshire New University)

Repetition has been a recurring trope in the history of music; indeed, it seems to be a necessary feature of (almost) all music. Yet as McClary (2004) has noted, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the use of repetition increased dramatically in Western musics, and the nature of many musical repetitions became more extreme. More precisely, whereas many previous musics from the eighteenth century onwards had wedded repetition with the development of musical material, repetition in much music from the later twentieth century became more purely cyclic, involving extensive repetition of often extremely short musical units, without significant variation or development. Such use of repetition is discernible in pieces as diverse as Steve Reich’s Different Trains, Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock’s “It Takes Two,” or Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” amongst innumerable other examples. Further, repetition appears as a feature not simply within works, but also across works; to give an extreme example, the ‘amen break’, a 7- second sample from an obscure soul B-side, effectively gave birth to a whole school of genres and subgenres within and beyond Drum and Bass.

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Special issue of Shima on Island Music and Dance

The April 2017 issue of Shima (v11 n1) will be a theme one on (any aspect of) island music and dance (contemporary or traditional).

Intending authors should familiarise themselves with the instructions for authors at: http://shimajournal.org/instructions.php

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Nocturnes: Popular Music and the Night

Call for Chapter Proposals
Editors: Giacomo Bottà and Geoff Stahl

After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang out
After midnight, we’re gonna chug-a-lug and shout
We’re gonna cause talk and suspicion
Give an exhibition
Find out what it is all about

           – JJ Cale, “After Midnight”

I go out walkin’ after midnight
Out in the starlight, just hoping you may be
Somewhere a-walkin’ after midnight
Searchin’ for me

           – Patsy Cline, “Walking After Midnight”

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Extreme Music: Hearing and Nothingness

December 1-2, 2016, University of Southern Denmark

Call for papers

Please Note! Due to summer vacations around the world, we are giving a vacation-based extension for abstract submission until August 28, 2016.

Call for papers and practical information (hotel, dining, etc.) as a PDF  

The research group The Performances of Everyday Living at SDU Odense is pleased to invite paper submissions for presentation at EXTREME MUSIC – HEARING AND NOTHINGNESS. The research presented should suggest, explore and examine the respects in which music may be transgressive, provocative or alien; are there respects in which some music challenges us to the point that it may even prompt questioning as to the very nature of music? We would like to emphasize that we heartily welcome research presentations dealing with the notion of extreme music in relation to any musical genre to which it may be applicable.This conference is a cross-disciplinary endeavor. We welcome presentations from the perspectives of philosophy, musicology, marketing, media studies, medicine, acoustics, theology, literary studies, music pedagogy, semiotics, sociology, linguistics, religious studies, anthropology, psychology, biology, education studies, music therapy, performance studies and culture studies.

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IASPM Journal 7/2 (2017) Pop Life – The Popular Music Biopic

http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/797/864

Popular music biopics are becoming ubiquitous. Marshall and Kongsgaard (2012) list 28 for the years 1980-2010 and recent years have seen films on NWA, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Brian Wilson, Bessie Smith and Whitney Houston. Increasingly common also are films about managers, record company owners and fans, who are not even musical performers. Is the biopic trend-driven by an ageing audience for popular music? Does it represent another attempt by the music industry to cash in on its back catalogue, or is it part of a canonisation process by which yesterday’s popular culture becomes today’s “art”? Is the lack of critical attention paid to the biopic because it falls between film and music, history and fiction, product and art?

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The Art of Punk

University Of Northampton
Friday 25th November 2016

Third Annual PSN Conference and Postgraduate Symposium

With all of the records, books, films, gigs and other material punk stuff out there, we sometimes forget that our movement is a leap of faith. A belief that life matters, so don’t fuck it up, and if someone else is fucking it up, do something about it.

Mark Bayard, ‘Introduction’, in Craig O’Hara. The Philosophy of Punk: More than Noise! (2013)

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Brian Eno: Oblique Music

Edited by Sean Albiez and David Pattie (Bloomsbury Academic)

Brian Eno: Oblique Music is the first academic collection to take a detailed multi-perspectival look at the work of one of the most influential figures in popular music. Edited by Dr Sean Albiez (Southampton Solent University, UK) and Professor David Pattie (University of Chester, UK), the book features studies by a number of academics based in the United Kingdom and United States. The collection contents are:

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Media and Creative Industries Symposium

Technology and Transformations in the Creative Industries
Oct. 19th 2016

Do we need new maps?

The Department of Media and Creative Industries at Bucks New University, in association with Fisheye Film Festival and UK Music, invite proposals for papers, panels, performances and other interventions that might address some of the topics in the brief below.

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