From the Department of Forthcoming Music-Related Conferences

The two biggies have recently sent out their CFPs.  One (EMP) is much more tailored to my interests than the other (IASPM), which means I’ve got a better chance at going to LA than Cincinnati.  So.  If you’re interested, though: EMP is much easier to get into (I’m told) than IASPM, which typically wants academics (unless you want the strange “independent scholar” tag).

The calls for both conferences are after the jump.

Time Keeps on Slipping:  Popular Music Histories || 2011 IASPM-US conference || Mar. 9-13, 2011 || Cincinnati, OH

We invite proposals for individual papers or panels of three or four presenters.  Alternate presentation formats, such as lecture/performances and roundtable panels, will also be considered. We welcome proposals concerning all facets of popular music in the U.S. and abroad, but especially encourage submissions that address the following themes:

Canonical Histories:  What aspects of the popular music past have assumed greatest authority, and why?  What sort of power do canons (of music, of scholarship, of criticism) exert over the writing of popular music history?

Alternative Histories:  What parts of popular music’s past have gone unrecognized?  How can we re-imagine popular music history through the lenses of:
- Race and ethnicity?
- Gender and sexuality?
- Nationality and colonialism?
- Cultural hierarchy (high, low, middlebrow)?
- Bodily ability and disability?
Conversely, how can the study of popular music in historical perspective help to shed new light on these critical subjects?

Archival Approaches:  What sources can we use to uncover popular music’s many pasts, and where can we find them?  How are musical archives changing in the digital age?

Historical Methods:  What counts as history, and what role does history play, in the various disciplines and sub-disciplines that comprise the field of popular music studies?

Local Histories:  How can we decipher popular music’s connection to specific places at specific points in time?  How can we use the location
of this year’s conference–Cincinnati, Ohio–as a starting point for reflection on aspects of popular music history?

The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2010.  Proposals should be submitted electronically to Steve Waksman, chair of the program committee, at iaspmus2011@gmail.com.  Individual presenters should submit a paper title, 250-word abstract, and author information including full name, institutional affiliation, email address and a one-page c.v.  Please send abstract and c.v. as separate MSWord attachments.  Panel proposals should also include a panel title and abstract for the whole session.

All presenters at the conference are required to be current members of IASPM-US.  For membership information, go to www.iaspm-us.net.

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Cash Rules Everything Around Me: Music and Money || 2011 EMP Pop Conference at UCLA || Feb 24 – 27, 2011 || Los Angeles, California

Jointly sponsored by Experience Music Project and the UCLA Department of Musicology

“The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I need money!” Motown founder Berry Gordy co-wrote it, Barrett Strong sang it, and John Lennon’s vocal in the Beatles cover offered a fervent affirmation. By the time Wu-Tang Clan recorded “C.R.E.A.M.,” however, chasing bucks in pop found kinship more with high stakes gundowns and teens behind bars.  For this year’s Pop Conference, the tenth annual meeting and first outside of Seattle, we invite presentations on a matter Los Angeles knows well:  the relationship between song and paycheck–or, to invoke the O’Jays hit “For the Love of Money,” bass line and bottom line.

Topics can cover any era or style of music and may include, but are not limited to:

Selling out:  self-objectification and compromise, but also selling out as breaking out– codebreaking and innovation

The music industry, past, present, and (?) future, from records to radio and retail; impresarios in idolatry; the current slump and pop through boom and bust, affluence and scarcity

Money, bling, “Life in the Fast Lane,” etc. as a topic in song and discourse: how different genres view commercialism differently; charity and social consciousness as rival impulses

Class as operating force; profitable music and blurred hierarchy, the working class and “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’”– how class-bound assumptions affect musical valuation

Los Angeles  in the pop imaginary, a place that has never pretended music is a solely artistic enterprise

“Capital (It Fails Us Now)”: payola blues, the pervasive sense of the business as (to quote Hunter S. Thompson) a “long shallow money trench” and distillation of capitalism’s inequities

Globalization and monetization: pop as international product, differing national and regional approaches to music merchandising

Patronage: sponsorships, institutions as  support structures for pop, music in advertising

Financing musical production: the aesthetics of hi-fi — as David & David once sang, “all that money makes such a succulent sound”

The EMP Pop Conference, launched in 2002, joins academics, critics, performers, and dedicated fans in a rare common discussion. The conference is jointly sponsored in 2011 by the Department of Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and by the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. This year’s program committee members are: Jasen Emmons (EMP/SFM), Robert Fink (UCLA), Gaye Theresa Johnson (UCSB), writer Maura Johnston, Josh Kun (USC), Katherine Meizel (Oberlin), filmmaker Jim Mendiola, Ann Powers (Los Angeles Times), writer-musician Tim Quirk, Jeffrey Rabhan (NYU), and biographer David Ritz.

Please send proposals of 250 words, with 50 word bio, to organizer Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama). Deadline for proposals is Friday, October 15.  Panel proposals, specifying either 90 minutes or 120, should include both overview language and individual proposals/bios, or overview and bios only for roundtable discussions. We welcome unorthodox proposals and proposals aimed explicitly at a general interest audience. Registration is free for presenters and the public.  For more information, go to http://www.empsfm.org/education/

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