BCMCR Research
Seminar: Popular Music Studies – Creativity and the digital
1600-1730 Wednesday 5 October 2016
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link
Dr. Rob Strachan (University of Liverpool) - Sonic Technologies: Popular Music, Creativity and Digital Culture
From composition,
recording and production to distribution, communication and promotion, digital
technologies now play a central part in how we listen, how music is
commoditized and what creative individuals do. Robert Strachan’s forthcoming
monograph Sonic Technologies examines these significant developments by
focusing upon how digital recording and production technologies have had a
transformative effect upon musical creativity. Taking in a broad range of
digitally produced music, from globally successful pop through to electronic
dance music and more experimental forms, it argues that recent developments in
computer technologies and digital culture have been central in profound
transformations in the creative practices, aesthetics and political economies
of popular music. The presentation will outline some of the key areas of the
book with a specific focus on the way in which Digital Audio Workstations have
changed the way in which mainstream pop music is written and recorded, and how
the structures of their virtual environments have led to a restructuring of
musical thought and creative action.
Sam Cleeve (BCU) - Agency and Immersion in New Music Media
This paper
contemplates the changing role of participation, interaction, and immersion in
music production and consumption. Drawing heavily on the concept of the
‘post-digital’, and using a range of examples including virtual reality and
generative music applications, it presents a reexamination of the role of the
digital in such contexts: while it remains an important mechanism for
production and distribution, it has also begun to play an active role in
mediating both creativity and aesthetic experience. By interrogating a set of
emerging technologies and their applications, this paper seeks to unveil a new
more human, more intuitive and more tactile sense of the digital in music – one
that runs counter to a conventional wisdom which denigrates it as cold and
unfeeling.
About the speakers:
Dr. Rob Strachan is a lecturer based in the School of Music at the
University of Liverpool. He has published numerous articles on a variety of
aspects of popular music culture including DIY music cultures, electronic music
and creativity, the history of British black music and music and audiovisual
media (such as music video and documentary). He is co-editor of The Beat
Goes On: Liverpool, Popular Music and the Changing City (Liverpool
University Press, 2010). He is commissioning editor of the journal Popular
Music History which is published by Equinox press. Rob is also an active
musician and sound artist.
Sam Cleeve is a doctoral candidate at Birmingham City University. His
current research interrogates emerging media technologies such as virtual
reality and spatialised audio as modalities of musical immersion and
engagement; previous work on the phenomenology of musical immersion has been
published by Perspectives of New Music. He holds degrees in Musicology from the
University of Oxford (MSt) and the University of Birmingham (BMus).
For more information, see:
http://twitter.com/sam_cleeve
http://bcu.academia.edu/SamCleeve
BCMCR Research Seminar: Popular Music Studies – Methodological conundrums
1600-1730 Wednesday 12 October 2016
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link
Full abstracts at this link
Dr. Fiorella
Montiero, Keele University - ‘Ethnomusicology of the hegemonic’
Anthropology,
sociology and musicology started out as disciplines studying the ‘noble
savages’ or ‘primitives’. In 1972 anthropologist Laura Nader encouraged
scholars to depart from this focus and “study up”, that is to study people and
institutions with power, influence, wealth and authority in their communities.
However, there continues to be an expectation for studies of inequality and
racism to examine only one side of the social spectrum: the marginal.
“Studying up” at home among the powerful and influential, particularly without
belonging to these elite spaces, entails challenges including: How do I access
those circles? Do ethnographic rules apply unchanged when studying the upper
classes? How can I as an ethnomusicologist balance scholarly obligations
towards elite collaborators with obligations towards those whose lives are
profoundly impacted by upper class agencies? This presentation will explore the
ethnographic methodological dilemmas, mistakes/successes, approaches, and
strategies of studying up as a Peruvian in Peru.
Roy Wallace,
University of Northampton - Documenting musically influenced subcultures
In my presentation I
will outline some of the PhD research I have generated as a documentary
practitioner as my interest focuses on various subcultures and the musical
influences which underpin their philosophies. I will outline and explore some
of the key issues involved in DIY or ‘amateur’ approaches to documentary work
in comparison to some of the ‘professional’ work I have undertaken for the BBC
and Channel Four Television. In my recent research work I have been exploring
the immediacy of internet streaming and the historiographies of subcultures
with a particular emphasis on the Anarcho-punk scene, however I am currently
working on a project with punk legends the Buzzcocks which is due for release
2017 as part of the forty-year celebration of Punk in the UK.
About the speakers:
Dr. Fiorella Montero-Diaz is an ethnomusicologist, sound engineer and
educator. She is currently a Lecturer in Music at Keele University and the
Administrator and Archivist of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology. Her
research explores music hybridity, race, class, the elites and social conflict
in contemporary Lima-Peru.
Roy Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production at the University
of Northampton with a background as musician, art practitioner and tour manager
for various artists. Examples of his work can be accessed at: http://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/art-of-punk-conference-2016/
http://www.punkscholars.net (punkumentaries)
www.trans-states.org
www.uontv.uk
BCMCR Research Seminar: Popular Music Studies – Gender and popular music
1600-1730 Wednesday 26 October 2016
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link
Jenny McAlone (Lancaster University) - Androgyny in Kate Bush's Aerial
In popular music
studies androgyny is frequently used to describe the fusion of male and female
characteristics. But what does it mean to refer to a performance as androgynous
and how might this be musically articulated? The sonic landscape created by
Kate Bush in her album Aerial presents an opportunity to explore the meaning of
androgyny in relation to creative practice and articulation of androgynous
subjects. Re-engaging androgyny allows the development of a conceptual
framework through which androgyny may be reformulated, highlighting its
potential use in critically examining and revealing the significance of gender
and subjectivity in popular music.
Dr Lisa Palmer (BCU) - Between Lovers Rock and a Hard Place
Lovers rock music is a distinctive form of ‘romantic’ reggae performed in the British reggae scene where the cultural politics of blackness, the erotic, love and decoloniality converge within the discursive acoustic soundscapes of the blues party and pirate radio. Lovers’ rock emerged in the mid-1970s against the backdrop of tumultuous economic industrial disputes and successive urban uprisings in Britain. Lovers’ rock was an integral component of the reggae music landscape of that period. Nevertheless, in historical and cultural analyses of reggae cultures, lovers rock has a fleeting if not invisible presence and has often been obscured by the masculinised focus on its more raucous relatives, namely ‘conscious’ roots reggae and ragga ‘slackness’. This talk will explicate lovers’ rock as a distinctly Black political project in Britain that has been largely overlooked as an important genre of popular culture.
About the speakers:
Jenny McAlone completed a BA (Hons) and MLitt degree in Music at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University focussing on popular music and feminist theory. She is currently working on my PhD thesis - a study of androgyny in Kate Bush's album Aerial - at Lancaster University.
Dr. Lisa Palmer is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University and co-editor of the book Blackness in Britain. Her chapter, ‘Men Cry Too – Black Masculinities and the Feminisation of Lover’s Rock’ is published in Black Popular Music in Britain Since 1945. She has also published '‘‘LADIES A YOUR TIME NOW!’ Erotic politics, lovers' rock and resistance in the UK' which discusses the gendering of lovers' rock by suggesting that the genre was part of a much broader and complex political expression of love and rebellion amongst Caribbean communities in Britain.
For more information, please contact [log in to unmask].