-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:36:59 +0100
Von: Jed <[log in to unmask]>
An: Jedediah Sklower <[log in to unmask]>
Betreff: Volume! Call for Papers: Listening to popular music

Volume! La Revue des musiques populaires
Call for papers

Listening to popular music: practices, experiences, representations

Submission deadline: June 1st, 2011

Volume! (www.seteun.net) a French peer-reviewed journal dedicated to  
the interdisciplinary study of popular music seeks contributions for a  
special issue on listening. This issue will explore the premise that a  
focus on listening can be a fruitful basis for the analysis of popular  
music, one that can enrich our understanding of aesthetic  
relationships and signifying practices. Any scholarly essay on popular  
music and its listeners or how it is listened to is welcome. Here are  
some examples of approaches that have generated interest in our  
editorial discussions:

Listening practices: how do we listen to popular music?
We know that listening occurs across a wide range of contexts,  
involving different social rites and different technologies, from the  
jogger with an iPod to huge concerts in stadiums. How do these  
contexts shape the activity of listening? What forms of listening  
exist, and what assumptions, methods, goals, practices tend to  
characterize each type? We might also consider listening to encompass  
a range of subject positions or listener identities (the  
musicological, the sociological, a variety of aesthetic stances, etc.)  
A single individual may employ different listening approaches at  
different times, or create his/her own hybrid way of listening to  
“scrutinize” the music (s)he appreciates or analyzes. What effects on  
the listening experience do such choices create? How do sets of  
listening practices work to form communities that validate and may  
even entrench these auditive identities? How do these communities in  
turn shape listening practices?

The seeing ear and the listening eye.
Another productive approach might be to consider listening as a  
synthetic or synesthetic faculty, the imperialist ear also looking for  
what does not belong to the order of sounds, or the eye infringing  
upon the ear’s prerogatives. In popular music, visual elements have  
long been a key part of many artistic presentations, and this has been  
both increased and transformed in the internet and multimedia age.  
Auditory attention can be grafted onto a network of correspondences  
between the senses: what effects do looks, styles, gestures, images,  
dancing have on listening? What would Elvis have been if we could not  
have seen him? How do the representations of “race”, gender or style  
influence our perception of a specific band or musical genre? While  
musical emotion may always depend in part on musical factors (quality  
of the performance, of the sound reproduction etc.) it is also  
typically conditioned by extramusical circumstances. How then do the  
environment, the historical context, the collective or individual  
moods, the listener’s personal history inform the perception of a  
specific musical moment? How has our perception of music evolved, and  
could we write a “history of our ears”?

Ears under surveillance: perceptions and identifications of auditive  
communities.
Listening can become the base for a discourse focused on the meaning  
of music and music use, for example, the influence that certain forms  
are expected to have on the taste, emotion and attitude of youth  
(Satanist proselytism in extreme metal, sexism and crime in “gangsta”  
rap, violence in punk etc.). Discursive attacks from the outside  
(moral, political, scientific authorities) are typically countered by  
discursive defenses or celebrations from the inside. While some  
listening practices may be valued for promoting activity, creativity  
or originality, others are stigmatized for engendering passivity,  
vulnerability, or even servitude or perversity. What type of listening  
subject is thus constructed? How can we analyze the issues raised in  
these debates from a scholarly perspective informed by research and/or  
theory? What can we learn about listening itself and the uses and  
meaning of popular music in general by studying these discourses,  
their moralized aesthetic prescriptions and proscriptions, their  
ideologies?

Other, more general, possible categories:
- listening practices, uses of
- listening and technology, multimedia
- the musical experience
- musical education via listening
- listening on stage, interactive forms of listening
- listening and the other senses
- the activity and productivity of listening
- listening and meaning
- listening and subcultures
- fans, fandom and listening communities
- identifying listeners
- cultural history of listening
- the science of listening
Again, these are meant to be suggestive, not to define boundaries.

Submission deadline: June 1st, 2011. Contributions should be sent by  
email (30.000 to 50.000 characters, Harvard system of referencing,  
in .doc – Word 2004 format) with an abstract, a set of key words and a  
short biography of the author, to the following addresses:
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] & [log in to unmask]
  
-- 
Dr. phil. des. Rainer Brömer 

Fatih Üniversitesi
Philosophy Dept./Felsefe bölümü A-341
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Turkey

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