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

Music – Sound – Radio: Theorizing Music Radio

Posted: June 2nd, 2016 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on Music – Sound – Radio: Theorizing Music Radio

University of Copenhagen 25-27 May 2017

In a year, the Danish music and radio research project Ramund will close. To mark this, we will organize a seminar focusing mainly on the theoretical aspects of the many different relations between music and radio and the meetings between the two in music-radio. The aim of the seminar will be to publish an anthology of articles.

The intention is not to develop a separate theory of music and radio but to apply and explore existing theory in the context of music, sound and radio. Within the project we have used theories of mediatization and genre theory as discussion ‘drivers’ in order to conceptualize the complex relations between music scenes, musical practices, media institutions, and media practices. Questions of historiography have been important as well. At the seminar and in the subsequent anthology we would like to develop the two main themes in conjunction with a third theme on radio and sound studies. We would thus like to develop the following three themes:

  1. Music, radio, and mediation

Music radio constitutes a crossroads of macro- and micro- sociological concerns. Among them are issues of cultural education, nation building, and the levelling of hierarchies through mass mediation. All of these are intertwined with issues of programming and listening practices inscribed in music and everyday day life. Various theories of media and musical milieus, affordance, mediation, and mediatization address these crossroads, which still call for further theorization and further studies of the social, cultural, practical, and material multiplicities of music radio.

  1. Music, radio, and genre

Notions of genre are key to both radio and music practices. Genre connects issues of style, formats, mediation, and social regularity, and genre manifests an element of stability within music culture. Simultaneously, genre may be regarded as a means of instigating difference and change – projecting teleologies in a context of contingence. Therefore, developing adequate theories of genre is a key task and an area of convergence for media and music studies.

  1. Music, radio, and sound

Music is a key component in radio’s sound, but there are of course many other sound sources and legions of ways to combine them in programs. From a sound studies perspective, it has become possible to study music as an integral part of a broader sound panorama and also to draw attention to the cultural embeddedness of such panoramas. Nevertheless, analytical perspectives and terminologies need to be developed further, and radio sound being such an important cultural factor for nearly a century is an obvious point of departure.

If you work with or plan to work with any of the above or related themes concerned with the more theoretical aspects of music and radio, we would like to invite you to a three-day seminar in Copenhagen in late May 2017.

We will adhere to a small seminar format with three keynote speakers (professors Kate Lacey (University of Sussex), Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama), and Alf Björnberg (University of Gothenburg)), 15-20 guests, and the Danish research group. There will be only one stream. The Danish research project will pay for accommodation and main meals but guests will have to cover their own travel expenses.

Presentations will be as follows: Each participant (or team of writers) will hand in a paper (ca. 6.000 words) six weeks before the seminar, which will be distributed to two commentators chosen from among the seminar participants. At the seminar, the author(s) will have 15 minutes to present main ideas followed by a 25 minute discussion beginning with comments from the two commentators.

We aim to publish with a major UK and/or US publishing house. Our ambition is to produce a tight and coherent volume.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract to Morten Michelsen at [email protected] before 15 September 2016. Please include name(s), affiliation, e-mail, and technical equipment required. You may expect an answer concerning acceptance within three weeks. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to phone or email Morten Michelsen.

On behalf of the Ramund research project

Iben Have, Aarhus University
Mads Krogh, Aarhus University
Steen Kaargaard Nielsen, Aarhus University
Morten Michelsen, University of Copenhagen