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

Communicating Music Scenes: Networks, Power, Technology

Posted: September 23rd, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Budapest, 19-20 May 2017

The conference aims to address the relation(ship)s and communication between people, formal and informal institutions, and technologies in the context of music making. Understanding and exploring music scenes as networks can help us to uncover the power relations that affect those scenes, while also leading to a nuanced understanding of the changing technological and media context in which music is produced, disseminated, consumed, and talked about.

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New executive committee

Posted: September 22nd, 2016 | Filed under: News | No Comments »

Dear IASPM UK and Ireland Branch members,

Following elections at the recent IASPM UK and Ireland Conference, our branch now has a new executive committee:

Chair: Sarah Hill
Postgrad Representative: Alex Harden
Ireland Representative: Caroline O’Sullivan
Member-at-large: Rupert Till
Membership Secretary: Toby Young
Treasurer: Rosemary Hill

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Music and Magic

Posted: September 21st, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

This special issue of the UK journal Popular Music will focus on the intersection of popular music with ‘magic’, however authors may wish to define the term.

Despite its relegation to ‘entirely misunderstood hocus pocus’ (Henry 2001) since the development in the 17th century of modern music and acoustic science (see Gouk 1999), the notion of magic has continued to shape and influence our engagement with the world as one particular mode of knowledge –typically (but not necessarily convincingly) when pitted against so-called reason and science. In Totem and Taboo, originally published in 1913, Freud contends that magic is a body of instructions, a technique that primitive men and neurotics mobilise when they are confident about their possibility to control the world –when they believe, specifically, that their acts can influence other persons or things, by a rather straightforward process of imitation. This does not just concern neurotics and savages, however, but also artists : in the modern, scientific age, ‘only in art does it still happen that a man who is consumed by desires performs something resembling the accomplishment of those desires and that what he does in play produces emotional effects –thanks to artistic illusion- just as though it were something real’ (Freud 1975 p.90). The desire, and sometimes the ability, to produce emotional effects thanks to an imitative process with one’s inner wishes is a fundamental characteristic of magic, which Freud also defines as ‘the omnipotence of thought’ (ibid. p.85). Further, and although he does not develop this point, Freud claims that the frequent comparison of artists to magicians is not just a matter of hyperbole, but also indicative of something more significant, a sense that artists (musicians?) can control or change the world.

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El oído pensante

Posted: September 21st, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

El oído pensante invites the submission of articles for the fifth volume (No. 1, 2017)

The aim of this biannual peer-reviewed online journal of free access is to promote debate on theoretical, methodological and epistemological dilemmas faced by different kind of music research. Since the intention of the journal is to promote critical thought aimed to dismantle usual concepts and to open new approaches, papers restricted to analyzing particular cases will not be accepted. However, it is expected that authors bring some cases into the text in order to support their main ideas. Submission guidelines in http://ppct.caicyt.gov.ar/index.php/oidopensante/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.

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Locating Imagination: Popular Culture, Tourism and Belonging

Posted: September 14th, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

April 5-7, 2017
Erasmus University Rotterdam

 Keynote Speakers:

David Morley
David Crouch
Marie-Laure Ryan

When the small Dutch seaside village of Urk was announced as a filming location for superstar director Christopher Nolan’s historical drama Dunkirk, featuring One Direction star Harry Styles and other big names, it was unsurprising that reports of fans traveling in hopes of catching a glimpse of the production followed. Indeed, it would have been more surprising if they hadn’t. Visiting places connected to media is increasingly mainstream – from searching for film locations of popular TV shows to taking part in literary walking tours to traveling around summer music festivals. Popular culture sets the touristic identity of regions, while fan conventions and festivals draw increasing numbers (and prices) year after year. These developments, and others like them, point to a growing interest in bridging the gap between reality and imagination through physicality, intertwining them in new ways. They also illustrate new ways in which place, and its role in creating a sense of identity and belonging, matters in a globalized and digital world in which popular culture plays an integral role.

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Music and Audio-Visual Culture (MUCA IV)

Posted: September 12th, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

From 16-18 February 2017, the University of Murcia will host the Fourth International Congress: Music and Audio-Visual Culture MUCA, to provide a forum to scientific exchange with participation of composers, visual artists and researchers from several national and international universities.

We welcome proposals for individual papers (in English or Spanish) in order to promote new perspectives and dialogue about the main topics. Proposals should include:

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The Velvet Underground (academic book collection)

Posted: September 6th, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Editors – Sean Albiez and David Pattie

Though, relatively speaking, The Velvet Underground were critically and commercially unsuccessful in their time, in ensuing decades they have become a constant touchstone in art rock, punk, post-punk, indie, avant pop and alternative rock. After the band’s initial demise, in their solo work and live and studio collaborations, ex-band members continued to create music that variously drew from the literary, experimental and pop heritage of the band. In particular Lou Reed, John Cale and Velvet Underground associate Nico produced a number of works that travelled a liminal path between art and pop. However, original members Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison, and Doug Yule (who joined the band after Cale left in 1968) in their own way sporadically pursued more low key musical activities. In 1993 the original band members of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker briefly reunited for live appearances. After the reformation petered out, Reed until his death in 2013, Cale, and briefly Tucker, continued to produce music that travelled the idiosyncratic path that began in New York in the mid-1960s.

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Sign o’ the Times: Music and Politics

Posted: September 2nd, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

2017 EMP Pop Conference
April 20-23, 2017
EMP Museum, Seattle WA

“I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote,” the Congressman says in Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” Music, especially pop music, tends to anticipate politics—young people give a dress rehearsal of what’s to come, building movements or prefiguring new worlds. No less powerfully, music is shaped by politics, from rules of copyright, drinking ages, and noise volumes to crises of war and social injustice, rents in the fabric. Music’s connection to politics goes beyond sloganizing lyrics; it organizes, stirs, performs possibility.

For this year’s EMP Pop Conference, we invite presentations that relate music, of any styles or era, to politics, however that’s defined. Topics might include:

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