From Death to Democracy: Music and the Politics of Memory in a Transnational Perspective

A special issue of IASPM@Journal edited by Barbara Lebrun (IASPM-bfE, University of Manchester) and Catherine Strong (IASPM-ANZ, Monash University, Melbourne). 

IASPM@Journal is planning a special issue for publication in 2015, focusing on popular musicians hailing from countries with dictatorial or military regimes, whose deaths coincided with moments of dramatic political change and became instrumental in efforts of national reconstruction towards democracy. The visiting editorial team, Barbara Lebrun (University of Manchester, UK and Francophone branches) and Catherine Strong (Monash University, Australia, ANZ branch) are concerned with the historical and cultural processes by which the songs and media images of these artists have become, posthumously, sites of tension for the expression of a new national, sometimes diasporic, identity.

The ways in which death affects the production and reception of popular music have been much studied in recent years. However, publications in the field are mostly centred on Western music culture, bypassing the analysis of similar phenomena occurring outside Western Europe and the Anglophone world. This special issue will thus provide a non-Western perspective on these issues, with a real and renewed interest in the interaction between death and popular music, due to the historically pivotal times at which the deaths of popular singers and musicians took place, and to their nation-wide (and sometimes international) repercussions.

Abstracts of no more than 200 words in English or in the language of any local IASPM branch may be submitted to the special issue editors:

• Barbara Lebrun – [email protected]
• Catherine Strong – [email protected]
  

Submission deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2014 
Submission deadline for articles: 30 May 2014