2008 EMP Pop Conference

[Gazoo]

The call for proposals for next year's conference has just gone out.  I'm brainstorming now, will post ideas at some point.

Dear previous attendees,

 

Here is this year’s Pop Conference CFP. Should be a dynamic session. As a gathering committed to bringing in participants from all realms, we rely on your support and enthusiasm to spread the word far and wide. So please, pass this along to anyone you think should see it! See you in April I hope. Best, Eric

 

 

 

Call for Papers: 2008 Pop Conference at Experience Music Project

Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change

April 10-13, 2008,  Seattle, Washington

 

            How does music resist, negate, struggle? Can pop music intensify vital confrontations, as well as ameliorating and concealing them? What happens when people are angry and silly love songs aren't enough? The migrations and global flows of peoples and cultures; the imbalanced struggles between groups, classes, and nations: what has music’s role been in these ongoing dramas? We invite presentations on any era, sound, or geographic region. Topics might include:

            --In conjunction with the new EMP exhibit, American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music, how Latino musics have shaped the American soundscape and challenge black and white rock-pop paradigms, or more broadly, the unsettling effects of immigration, internal migration, displacement, assimilation, and colonization.

            --How music enters politics: social movements and activist responses to crises such as New Orleans; entertainment's connection to ideology and propaganda; music within "cultural policy" and as part of the public sphere; debates over copyright, corporate power, and cultural democracy; performing dissent

            --Social and musical fragmentation: segregation and constructions of whiteness, divisions of class and gender, versus musical categorization and niche marketing, from big genres to smaller forms such as "freak folk"

            --"Revolution" as a recurrent theme in popular music, a social or technological reality it confronts, or an association with particular genres and decades of music.

             --Clashes between communal, local, identity -- tradition, faith, nativism -- and  cosmopolitan, global, modernization

            --Music in times of war, economic crisis, adolescence, and other intense stress

            --Agents of change: tipping points, latent historical shifts, carnivalesque subversions, and accidents or failures of consequence

            --The sound of combative pop: what sets it apart?

           

Send proposals to Eric Weisbard at EricW@empsfm.org by December 17, 2007; please keep them to 250 words and a 50 word bio. Full panel proposals, bilingual submissions, and unusual approaches are welcome. For questions, contact the organizer or program committee members: Joshua Clover (UC Davis), Kandia Crazy Horse (editor, Rip it Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll ), Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh) Holly George-Warren (author, Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry), Michelle Habell-Pallan (University of Washington), Michele Myers (KEXP), Ann Powers (LA Times), Joe Schloss (NYU), RJ Smith (Los Angeles magazine), Ned Sublette (author, Cuba and its Music), and Sam Vance (EMP).

 

The Pop Conference at EMP, now in its seventh year, joins academics, critics, writers of all kinds, and performers in a rare common discussion. Our second collection, Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music, will be published by Duke University Press in November: email Laura Sell (Lsell@dukeupress.edu) for a review copy. The conference is sponsored by the Seattle Partnership for American Popular Music (Experience Music Project, the University of Washington School of Music, and KEXP 90.3 FM), through a grant from the Allen Foundation for Music. For more, go to http://www.empsfm.org/education/index.asp?categoryID=26

 

[Gazoo]

Reviving b/c I've got only a few weeks left to put together a proposal for this.  My default plan right now is to propose a history of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship and how they went from revolution to Top 40 to county fairs. That's kind of a bitter way to put it, but it seems worth noting that Paul Kantner devolved from acid and peace-revolution in '67 to coke and space-cowboy-ism in '70 to vodka and curmudgeonry today.

Any ideas, suggestions, etc. more than welcome.  I'd like to make it back for next year's EMP, whether as a presenter or not.

[ggould]

Reviving b/c I've got only a few weeks left to put together a proposal for this.  My default plan right now is to propose a history of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship and how they went from revolution to Top 40 to county fairs. That's kind of a bitter way to put it, but it seems worth noting that Paul Kantner devolved from acid and peace-revolution in '67 to coke and space-cowboy-ism in '70 to vodka and curmudgeonry today.

Any ideas, suggestions, etc. more than welcome.  I'd like to make it back for next year's EMP, whether as a presenter or not.

Yesterday, while packing boxes, I was listening to the tracks you gave me from the live at BB King's set.  For me, tracks like St Charles, Get Together, and Wooden Ships carry a strong spiritual content, that speaks to me.  Whether I hear it at Winterland, the Kabuki, The Greek, while I pack boxes, or at the county fair, it still resonates.

[Gazoo]

Reviving b/c I've got only a few weeks left to put together a proposal for this.  My default plan right now is to propose a history of the Jefferson Airplane/Starship and how they went from revolution to Top 40 to county fairs. That's kind of a bitter way to put it, but it seems worth noting that Paul Kantner devolved from acid and peace-revolution in '67 to coke and space-cowboy-ism in '70 to vodka and curmudgeonry today.

Any ideas, suggestions, etc. more than welcome.  I'd like to make it back for next year's EMP, whether as a presenter or not.

Yesterday, while packing boxes, I was listening to the tracks you gave me from the live at BB King's set.  For me, tracks like St Charles, Get Together, and Wooden Ships carry a strong spiritual content, that speaks to me.  Whether I hear it at Winterland, the Kabuki, The Greek, while I pack boxes, or at the county fair, it still resonates.

This perspective gives me much to chew on.  Perhaps I should instead pose this as a question: To what extent do their formerly idealistic notions live on?  Is Pooneil in our hearts even in the midst of the bullshit around us?  Does it matter whether Paul thinks so?

[Gazoo]

My proposal was unsurprisingly rejected.  But I'll nevertheless be attending the conf April 10-13 in Seattle.

[RGMike]

My proposal was unsurprisingly rejected.  But I'll nevertheless be attending the conf April 10-13 in Seattle.

Ha! I'll be in NYC April 9-15th!  (ABC Radio reunion on the 12th)

[Gazoo]

Try to keep the 14th or 15th open for dinner - I should be back in town that Sunday night.

[RGMike]

Try to keep the 14th or 15th open for dinner - I should be back in town that Sunday night.

You're pencilled in, bub. Hope there's good stuff to see, theater-wise. I was really lucky in June. 

[Gazoo]

Try to keep the 14th or 15th open for dinner - I should be back in town that Sunday night.

You're pencilled in, bub. Hope there's good stuff to see, theater-wise. I was really lucky in June. 

Can we shoot for dinner Monday night the 15th?  I'll be red-eyeing back from Seattle that morning.

And for anyone who does business in Chicago or Seattle, that's where I'll be April 6-14.  I'm already looking forward to the vacation (I don't take many of them).  Wish I could have fit in some time in SF, but that'd put me in runaround mode all week catching up with people and would defeat the point of vacating.

[RGMike]

Try to keep the 14th or 15th open for dinner - I should be back in town that Sunday night.

You're pencilled in, bub. Hope there's good stuff to see, theater-wise. I was really lucky in June. 

Can we shoot for dinner Monday night the 15th?  I'll be red-eyeing back from Seattle that morning.

Monday is the 14th, the 15th is Tuesday. Either of those nites is fine...

[Gazoo]

Try to keep the 14th or 15th open for dinner - I should be back in town that Sunday night.

You're pencilled in, bub. Hope there's good stuff to see, theater-wise. I was really lucky in June. 

Can we shoot for dinner Monday night the 15th?  I'll be red-eyeing back from Seattle that morning.

Monday is the 14th, the 15th is Tuesday. Either of those nites is fine...

Oops.  Monday's what I meant; Tuesday I'm back to work.