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

Measures, Steps, Spaces: the places of music

Posted: May 27th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

14th International Meeting of Music and Media, Sao Paulo, 10-12 September, 2018

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me…” The instigating quotation from Pascal’s Thoughts refers to the new order of the universe in the seventeenth century as geocentrism is abandoned to adopt heliocentrism. The thought dividing the world into two parts: “from the heavens” (upper) and “from the earth” (lower, corruptible) was broken. The beliefs instituted by the Church were shaken. From then on, the closed celestial world, which was ending, becoming giant, infinite … As it is well known, from then on the world began to be perceived and felt in other contours. For centuries we have seen that both concepts and perceptions of time and space expand their boundaries, arousing curiosity and giving rise to important concerns in the field of science and art. Thinking in the very particular case of the forms of creation, appreciation and musical performance, we verified that these dimensions space-time passed, through the centuries, by different forms of conception. Concerning to musical composition, space has gradually become a parameter, giving rise to other categories (environment, sound landscapes, etc.). Gradually, aesthetic appreciation was also conditioned by the various technical means that emerged (devices, listening places, sound territories) and their possibilities of use. These same conditions would imply changes in performance (a drama to three, Zumthor would say) irreversibly. In another aspect, space unfolds its physical dimension into symbolic, scrutinizing itself in places and territories. Songs, practices and repertoires are limited to their propagation capacity and to the groups that produce them, configuring acoustic communities. According to the Brazilian geographer Milton Santos, space allows the construction of territories: practiced, lived, disputed. Their constructions of meaning are guided by the uses and appropriations that groups and subjects make, in a complex elaborated between fixed and flows.

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Arts and Power – Policies in and by The Arts

Posted: May 25th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Working Group Sociology of the Arts of the Cultural Sociology Section in the DGS (German Sociological Association)

Conference at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, November 22 and 23, 2018

Concepts of power and domination are central for sociology since its beginnings. Classical theorists such as Marx, Weber, Gramsci, Adorno, Foucault, Bourdieu etc. developed these concepts as fundamental sociological terms; there is almost no (macro-)sociological discourse that does not draw from these notions.

In general sociology, more abstract and theoretical concepts of power and domination are discussed, divesting from empirical explorations. Dispositifs, constraints and violence are relational concepts that are defined by the enforcement of volition against resistance (Weber). We are convinced that this „enforcement of volition“ is also well suited for the explanation of structures and processes in the arts, in their production, imagination, communication, distribution, critique, and consumption. In addition, the arts are means for enforcing power and domination (see among others Adorno’s notion of cultural industry more than 70 years ago, or Bourdieu’s theory of distinction).

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The Present and Future of Electronic Music

Posted: May 24th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

University of Central Lancashire, 14 November  2018

Electronic music was once seen as the future of music. Is this still the case? Is the very term ‘electronic music’ useful in industrial and academic context? And if so, what differentiates today’s electronic music from non-electronic music and are these differences between these two types of musics likely to remain in future?

The Present and Future of Electronic Music seeks to answer some of these questions or at least help to clarify their meanings. We hope to bring together insights and ideas from a range of disciplines in music studies, including musicology, composition, performance, cultural theory, computing and  philosophy, as well as industry, to examine the evolving field of electronic music.

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Punk and Marginalised Identities

Posted: May 23rd, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

This is a call for submissions for a special edition of the Punk and Post Punk Journal on Punk and Marginalised Identities

Punk is subversive, providing a platform for the disenfranchised to ‘shout back’. Throughout its history – and in the present – the punk scene has been shaped by its DIY ethos and spirit of self-invention and empowerment. Punk has helped many from marginalised groups to discover and enact revolutionary politics.

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The Spotification of Popular Communication

Posted: May 23rd, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture
Editors: Patrick Burkart and Miyase Christensen
Guest editors: Cecilia Ferm Almqvist, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and Patrick Burkart, Texas A&M University, USA

This special issue considers the various meanings of the “Spotification” of music and other media. We are especially interested in Spotification in reference to the changes in media cultures and industries accompanying the transition to streaming media and media services. Streaming media services have become part of daily life all over the world, with Spotify, in particular, inheriting and reconfiguring characteristics of older ways of publishing, distributing, and consuming media.

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Turns and Revolutions in Popular Music Studies

Posted: May 16th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers, IASPM Conferences | No Comments »

XX Biennial IASPM Conference
School of Music, The Australian National University
Canberra, Australia, 24–28 June 2019

As certain songsters and songstresses have noted, seasons turn, turn, turn, even if you are talking about a revolution. While global warming alters seasonal cycles with the aid of neoliberal and (pseudo)socialist forms of capitalism, and waves of societal turmoil follow each other with varying degrees of authoritarianism in different parts of the world, popular music studies remains committed to critical enquiry of music of the masses, the everyday, a variety of subcultures, the megastars, all with their revolutionary potential. Faced with the increasing worldwide austerity in the humanities and social sciences, caused by short-sighted research funding policies that purportedly aim at revolutionary technological and business innovations, popular music studies also struggles with its future directions. Whither popular music studies and where to turn?

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Mapping spaces, sounding places: Geographies of sound in audiovisual media

Posted: May 12th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | 1 Comment »

Cremona, 19-22 March 2019
Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia (Cremona)

Sound design, film music and music editing in general exert a primary function in conveying senses of space and place in audiovisual media. Strategies for connoting space and place in film sound and music vary with cinematic practices across history and according to transnational patterns of negotiation between global and local modes of production. At the same time audiovisual communication, when rich in local connotations, allows insights into specific socio-historical contexts and the documentation of human geographies.

This conference aims to bring together scholars interested in mapping geographies of music and sound practices in audiovisual media (e.g. film, television, video games, interactive art). We invite fresh perspectives on film music and sound that are willing to embrace aspects ranging from individual approaches to space and place to collective geographies, also considering industrial trends and intermedia connections. Cultural, ethnographic, historical, analytical, data-driven and aesthetic approaches are welcome, as well as research on industrial and commercial practices.

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Epistrophy: Jazz, philosophy and philosophers

Posted: May 11th, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

Call for papers for issue #4
Coordination : Joana Desplat-Roger, Thomas Horeau, Édouard Hubert
Translation : Pauline Ridel

This latest issue of Epistrophy suggests interpolating jazz through a specific prism : that of philosophy.

Now, philosophy is a discipline that is characterised not so much by its subject, because that is not restricted to a specific area, but by the very particular way in which it conducts discussion of its subject. Philosophy, by taking throughout its history a suspicious attitude to language in general, and to artistic terminology in particular (what does « playing » music mean ? Do musicians « express themselves » through their art ?, etc.), has made music a fully fledged philosophical issue [1].

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Groove the City

Posted: May 3rd, 2018 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | No Comments »

‘Groove the City’ – Urban Music Policies between Informal Networks and Institutional Governance is the 1st international conference of the Urban Music Studies Network that will be held from Nov. 23rd to 25th, 2018 at Leuphana University of Lueneburg. We would kindly like to remind you that the deadline for the conference´s call for papers is approaching and – again like to encourage the submission of paper presentations, panels and posters.

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