Experts, non-experts and participatory construction of knowledge: the case of research on popular music

(Dir. Christophe Pirenne and Christophe Levaux, U Liège, Belgium)

After four decades of institutionalising popular music studies, the subjects and objectives defined in several essential texts published from the end of the 1970s onwards (Frith 1978, Tagg 1982, Wicke 1990, Middleton 1990), seem to have been largely covered. Whether in terms of methodology, interdisciplinarity, decompartmentalisation or decentralisation; or even in terms of institutional recognition and integration into the academic sphere, the knowledge acquired has been considerable to the point of sometimes influencing, in return, the disciplines from which popular music studies originally drew its inspiration. However, many questions remain unanswered. Have popular music studies truly embraced all types of popular music? Have popular music specialists really succeeded in studying the repertoires listened to by all social groups? Hasn’t the initial struggle of popular music studies against various forms of cultural elitism actually been transposed to popular repertoires? Can we refer to over- or under-representation in the scope of styles, genres and communities associated with them? Can or should a balance be guaranteed and how? Do the studies relating to the participatory construction of knowledge offer new opportunities for the study of popular music? Is it ultimately a question of rethinking the role of experts and non-experts in the elaboration of narratives relating to the latter?

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Producing concerts, working in live music

Congress of the Swiss Sociological Association 2019
The Future of Work
September 10-12 2019, University of Neuchâtel

Live music has long been neglected by music scholars (Frith, 2007); however it is now subject to renewed interest. Recently, researchers have focused on the economics of live music (Holt, 2010; Guibert and Sagot-Duvauroux, 2013; Behr et al., 2016) and the work of musicians (Perrenoud, 2007; Bennett, 2017; Perrenoud and Bataille, 2017). However, the “support personnel” (Becker, 2010) needed in order to produce concerts is still not frequently studied. Little is known about the different occupations (technicians, bookers, programmers) and organizations (festivals, ticket
retailers, public funders) required to produce concerts, but also to market live music, and to exploit it in other formats (e.g. live broadcasting, recording). In order to address this gap, this workshop proposes to explore three areas of investigation.

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Music Heritage, People and Place

Home of Metal Symposium and Workshop
13-14th September 2019
Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University

PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM 

Friday 13th September 2019

This public symposium seeks to bring together researchers, policy makers, heritage and creative workers and musicians.

We welcome contributions from fans and heritage consumers in response to their experience of the Home of Metal exhibitions and events.

Home of Metal (HoM) is a heritage project created and led by the Capsule organisation. Launched in 2011, supported by volunteers, building a crowd-sourced archive and curating a range of popular public events in Birmingham and the Black Country, HoM seeks to highlight and celebrate the value of Heavy Metal music and culture and the role in it of founding artists from the English midlands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Judas Priest. In 2017 the project went international in its reach, exploring metal culture around the world with a particular focus on Black Sabbath. As a result, in 2019 a range of exhibitions and events will take place in ‘celebration of an artform created in Birmingham that maintains significant global reach and influence.’ The value of this approach is indicated by the Wall Street Journal that has described the genre as the real ‘World Music’, that ‘Heavy Metal has become the unlikely soundtrack of globalisation’ (2016).

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Music, Digitalization, and Democracy

Special Issue of Popular Music and Society

Guest-edited by Johannes Brusila, Martin Cloonan, and Kim Ramstedt

Popular Music and Society invites article proposals for a special issue that examines the connections between music, digitalization, and democracy.  The impact of digitalization on the production, dissemination, and consumption of popular music has been immense since the 1980s.  Scholars, artists, and policymakers have depicted this “digital turn” as being both a potential enhancement of, and a threat to, cultural life.  Business futurists have described increasing financial possibilities created by the new lower cost structures, and visionaries have predicted a greater cultural freedom for larger population groups.

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“One Nation Under a Groove”: ‘Nation’ as a category in popular music?

29th Annual Conference of the German Society for Popular Music Studies
GfPM, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
1 – 3 November 2019

The German pop star Xavier Naidoo, who appeared in the ZDF television studio for the 2006 World Cup Semifinal costumed in the colors of the German flag; the far-right “identitarian” group Les Brigandes, who ceremonially bury the French colors in the video for their song “L’heure de dire adieu”; the 12-point scoring system of the annual Eurovision Song Contest; U.S. “pop presidents” Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the “national” and “international” categories of the (now defunct) German ECHO awards; radio quotas in France and Germany; continuing references to the “British Invasion” of the 1960s; even the Global Popular Music Series published by Routledge since 2015, of which almost every volume is titled “Made In (insert country here)”: examples of pop music being saddled with symbols representing or affirming “national identity” are practically endless.

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21st Century Global Punk

Following the groundbreaking publication of The Punk Reader: Transmissions from the Local to the Global (now in its second edition through Intellect Books and the Punk Scholars Network) the series editors would like to invite proposals for a second volume in the book series Global Punk, to be published in early 2020. The publication will be part of an exciting collaboration between Intellect Press and the Punk Scholars Network, a partnership that has seen the development of a Punk Scholars Network imprint.

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Sonic Futures: Performing Identity in the ‘Global’ City

(25 April at London College of Communication, Elephant and Castle, London)

The idea for this one-day conference stems from a series of workshops, Sonic Futures: Identity and Sustainability through Music and Performance, supported by London College of Communication (Teaching and Learning Fund) in collaboration with May Project Gardens (Hip Hop Garden). Adopting a mixed-method approach, this pilot project sought to engage students from LCC in a series of workshops that explored the connections between social issues (e.g. social cohesion, participatory and sustainable practices and active citizenry, to name a few), politics and identity formations at the intersections of class, ethnicity, race, gender and the environment. Primarily, this project aimed to instigate critical thinking and reflections on cultural practices and genre through performance in general and Hip Hop music and culture in particular. Gardening is connected to questions of psycho-physical wellbeing, community building and sustainability in the global city. Overall, Hip Hop Critical Pedagogies provided a productive template that helped combine all these different aspects.Considering the nature and the objectives of these activities, the students who participated in the programme decided to actively work towards an event that could reflect on the critical questions raised during the workshops.

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The Road to Independence: the Independent Record Industry in Transition

Call for Chapters
Editor : Victor Sarafian.
Publisher : Presse de l’Université Toulouse 1 Capitole

Proposal submission: 1 July 2019
Full chapters due: 1 December 2019

We are inviting proposals for a book-length essay collection on all aspects of the independent record industry… it’s past, present and future prospects. Technology has changed how music is produced, distributed and consumed. From the advent of the gramophone to the advent of napster, technology has shaped the economic and cultural aspects of the music industry.

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Rhythm in Music since 1900

17-18 November, 2019
University of Colorado Boulder

Submission deadline: 1 June 2019

   Keynote (lecture-recital): Pierre Laurent-Aimard, pianist

   Invited speakers (and projected topics):

• Kyle Adams on rhythm in hip-hop
• Brian Alegant on pedagogy of rhythm in recent repertories
• Jeanne Bamberger on action and symbolic description
• John Roeder on post-tonal canons

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Street Music conference

UEA Norwich, 14-15 May 2019

This FREE conference, organised by the AHRC Connected Communities programme, seeks to explore an important but neglected aspect of public culture and community construction: street music. It aims to draw together the new knowledge and practice generated by funded research projects across Connected Communities with work across a number of academic disciplines as well as the creative sector. Following Connected Communities established practice, the conference seeks to function as a place for dialogue between academics, independent researchers, musicians, performers, and the arts and cultural policy sectors.

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