Creating music across cultures in the 21st Century

Istanbul Technical University, 25-27 May 2017

In the context of one of the world’s most organic melting pots, Istanbul, The Centre for Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul Technical University, will host an international conference, in partnership with the European Research Council funded project “Beyond East and West,” May 25-27, 2017.

No music is an island.  Since time immemorial, cultures have traded and mixed musics across their domains, yet only in the 21^st century have people around the world gained instant and virtually free access to musics beyond those of their neighbors.  The history of these mixings has been marked by a plethora of descriptors, some benign and others acerbic.  Depending on one’s perspective, the “other” musics span the gamut of primitive (“first”), Oriental, classical, art, learned, popular, etc.  Their mixtures have been termed synthetic, syncretic, trans-traditional, trans-cultural, intercultural, cross-cultural, borrowed, or globalized.  The oral and the literate have been contrasted, while the exotic has been vilified.  Quests for musical beauty and knowledge have been shaped by political, economic and social, hegemonic forces.  We are now at a point where, for the first time in history, the playing field has reached a new level of equity, with widespread access to a majority of the world’s traditions, on a scale radically different from a mere generation ago.

We invite proposals for papers (20-minute presentation plus 10-minute discussion) on any topic related to the mixing of musics from different musical traditions.  In addition to mixtures of maqam, raga, and other art traditions, we encourage proposals concerning the incorporation of “folk,” “traditional,” and “low-technology” musics in our 21^st-century milieu. Our conference will be Interdisciplinary, and we welcome proposals from composers, performers, improvisers, musicologists, critical theorists, music philosophers, ethnomusicologists, and—especially—etcetera.  While springing from a notated art music tradition, we welcome other perspectives, oral traditions, and boundary stretchers.

Deadline: Please send a 250-word abstract to Robert Reigle, [email protected], with subject heading “Creating Music across Cultures-Abstract,” by 6 March 2017.  We will announce acceptances by 20 March.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Münir Nurettin Beken, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Programme committee: Prof. Amanda Bayley, Prof. Şehvar Beşiroğlu, Prof. Sandeep Bhagwati, Dr. Michael Ellison, Dr. E. Şirin Özgün, Dr. Robert F. Reigle.

Website: http://www.miam.itu.edu.tr/cmac2017/index.html

Conference Fee: Full conference, 3 days: €60 / 200-Turkish Lira; 2 days: €40 / 140-TL; 1 day: €20 / 70-TL.

(€ international/TL local rates).  Free for students, both international and local.

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant no. 648810), and MIAM Centre for Advanced Studies in Music.