Soundscapes of the South

Macon, Georgia
September 28-29, 2023

“Precisely how and why the American South has shaped and nurtured so much successful art is something sociologists and anthropologists will still be bickering about a half century from now,” Amanda Petrusich wrote in It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music (2008): “All I know is that it is mostly true.” Fifteen years on, her musical travelogue remains a vital exploration of the ways in which place may infl¬uence “the sounds we make.”

Soundscapes of the South welcomes papers on southern music and its diverse contexts, themes, places, and moments for a Symposium taking place at the Museum at Capricorn in Macon, Georgia, on September 28-29, 2023. Aiming to cover a plethora of artists, genres, periods, topics, expressions, and perspectives, we invite presentations that range from the analytical and the re¬active to reminiscence and anecdote, by scholars, critics, journalists, authors, artists and musicians, on the theme of “Southern soundscapes.”

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

• Genres such as Bluegrass, Blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Jazz, Honky-Tonk, Rockabilly, Rock, Hip-Hop, Rap, Gospel, Sacred Harp, Folk, Country, Dance Music, Tex-Mex/Música Tejana, R&B, Ragtime, Swamp Pop
• Specific artists and bands
• Case studies of albums and shows
• Maps and topographies
• Traditions, revisions, innovations
• Labels, recording studios, venues
• Landscape and the poetics of place
• Musical hotspots
• Race
• Gendered subjectivities
• Historical events and moments
• Protest music
• Music and the literary tradition
• Weather and climate
• Travel and mobility
• The relations between the regional, the national, and the global
• The dynamics of the rural and the (sub)urban
• Recurring tropes and metaphors

Keynote speaker: Stephen Deusner
We welcome abstracts (max 250 words) to [email protected] and [email protected].
Deadline: April 10th, 2023