** with apologies for cross-posting **
Call for Contributions
Africa Synthesized: Electronic music pre-MP3
25-26 June 2020
Stellenbosch, South Africa
From tape loops and mix tapes to boomboxes and turntables, early developments in sound technology shaped understandings of sound, space and sense-making in Africa. Coinciding with political struggles for independence after WWII, electronic music technologies created the potential to re-envision and rearticulate African modernities. These modernities played a formative role in the development of electronic music globally: not only was the postwar musical avant-garde heavily influenced by field trips to Africa and other parts of the developing world, the World Music and ambient music industries also relied heavily on exoticized sonic worlds extrapolated from Africa. Predating Pierre Schaeffer’s first work of musique concrete by four years, Halim El-Dabh’s tape compositions trenchantly remind us that the global north was not the exclusive harbinger of innovation. Electronic music not only highlights the dynamic between the global north and south, but also between genres and spaces. The same sound technologies and techniques animated music creation in diverse settings, from the formal studios of conservatoires and radio laboratories, to clubs and home studios, blurring distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow.
Africa Synthesized will address electronic music in Africa before the advent of MP3 (c. 1995). The conference will bring together scholars, artists, producers and archivists who work with electronic sound technology broadly defined. The theme cuts across the fields of art music and popular music, and invites dialogue between academics and music producers. Africa Synthesized aims to map 20th-century itineraries of electronic music in Africa, to consider the role of Africa in the development of electronic music in the Western world, and to seek out encounters with sonic artists and practitioners working beyond academia.
We invite 20-minute papers, panels consisting of 3 to 4 papers, panel discussions, as well as performances and artistic responses. Possible topics could include:
• Histories of electronic music studios in Africa
• The role of Africa in the postwar music avant-garde
• Electroacoustic art music from/about Africa
• Ambient music from/about Africa
• Afrofuturism
• Contemporary uses of analogue sound equipment/recordings
• Intersections between environmental sound recording and music
• Electronic sound archives in/from Africa
• Histories of vinyl and cassette in Africa
• DIY studios, synthesizers and other electronic instruments
• Electronic instrument builders and collectors in Africa
• The Moog in Africa
• Analogue nostalgia
Please send proposals to [log in to unmask] by 15 March 2020. Proposals should include:
• an abstract with title (250 words for individual papers, 400 words for panels)
• biographical note (not exceeding 50 words), e-mail address and phone number of presenter(s)
• audio-visual requirements
• any additional requirements (i.e. technical and spatial requirements in the case of performances)
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 1 April 2020.
The conference is organized by Willemien Froneman and Stephanie Vos (Africa Open Institute, Stellenbosch University) and Carina Venter (Department of Music, Stellenbosch University), and funded by the Interdisciplinary Forum for Popular Music (ifPOP) at Africa Open Institute.
The organisers envisage publishing selected papers in a peer-reviewed, edited volume after the conference.
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