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Special issue of Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture on Music and Discovery

Posted: November 16th, 2014 | Filed under: Calls for Papers | Comments Off on Special issue of Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture on Music and Discovery

Co-Guest-Editors: Tom McCourt (Fordham University) and Nabeel Zuberi (University of Auckland)

The editors of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture invite submissions for a special issue on the topic of Music and Discovery. We are aiming for a multi-disciplinary issue that draws on the many resonances of the word “discovery” in music as popular communication, and we welcome critical approaches in music education; musicology and ethnomusicology; film, television and cultural studies; media and communication studies; sound studies; popular music studies; global media, and other fields. We seek manuscripts that examine the politics and aesthetics of musical discovery, and how the tropes of discovery are invoked in disciplines, research methods and the production of knowledge related to music. How is “discovery” represented in musical production and sounds, in the uses and social meaning of music?

Experimentation and changes in music making are often understood through the language of discovery. Musical sounds and images embody and represent discovery in their textuality, intertextuality and para-textuality, from citation to product placement. Digital convergence and ubiquitous music raise questions about the interaction of distinctive media industries and technologies, as well as the modes of attention and play of senses involved in discovery. Social media and networks offer new ways of finding and sharing music, as well as new recordings, repertoires and performances. “Discovery” has long been organized in retail and leisure spaces; today, “discovery” often appears in discussions of digital platforms and algorithms that introduce unfamiliar music to listeners, who are then tagged and tracked as consumers.

The humanities, sciences and educational institutions devoted to music deploy the language of discovery in their rhetoric. The collecting and curatorial practices of institutions and tastemakers, amateur and professional, introduce us to archives and genealogies that may reaffirm or contest dominant music histories.  Enlightenment reason, colonialism, imperialism and tourism continue to inform the discovery of musical worlds, and affect the ways in which the objects and subjects of discovery struggle for and negotiate agency. “Discovery” mobilises desires and affective forces that are gendered, sexualized and racialized.  We welcome manuscripts on the theme of Music and Discovery in these areas of research, and others that we may have overlooked or have yet to speculate upon.

Submitted papers should be 6,000 words in length (inclusive of all elements). The deadline for submission is March 1, 2015. Tom McCourt ([email protected]) and Nabeel Zuberi ([email protected]) welcome email queries before this date.  Instructions for submitting your article can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hppc20/current. Some manuscripts may not be sent out for review if deemed inappropriate for the journal.

Popular Communication provides a forum for scholarly investigation, analysis, and dialogue on communication symbols, forms, phenomena and systems within the context of popular culture across the globe. Popular Communication publishes articles on all aspects of popular communication, examining different media such as television, film, new media, games, print media, radio, music, and dance; the study of texts, events, artefacts, spectacles, audiences, technologies, and industries; and phenomena and practices, including, but not limited to, fan, youth and subcultures, questions of representation, digitalization, cultural globalization, spectator sports, sexuality, advertising, and consumer culture.