A symposium hosted by the CHASE and the Goldsmiths Popular Music Research Unit
Room RHB 137, Goldsmiths, University of London
11 May 2019 | 0930 – 1730
This one-day symposium will explore the forms of expertise, the perceived senses of intimacy and ownership, and the power relations inherent in claims to ‘know’ music – claims that are routinely made by musicians, educators and listeners alike. What is musical knowledge, and who has it? How is musical knowledge theorised and embodied? How do we share musical knowledge?
The day will include discussions led by Anne Danielsen (University of Oslo), Marie Thompson (University of Lincoln) and Byron Dueck (Open University), and a roundtable featuring musician-theorists Corey Mwamba and John Harries.
Presentations from CHASE students will address (among other things) electronic dance music, post punk, and grime, and will discuss popular music’s institutionalisation, its aesthetics, and the ways it is experienced by listeners and music-makers.
More broadly, we hope to address the following themes:
Expertise: How do claims to musical knowledge and expertise measure up in a popular music field – and in a contemporary political climate – where that kind of status is seen as highly dubious?
Knowledge beyond words: How do we think and talk about the ways that musical knowledge is held or experienced in the body, whether in the muscle memory and bodily expertise that lets us navigate an instrument, dance, or enjoy a whomp of bass or a fizz of brass; or in the intuitive, non-symbolic knowledge that often seems to lie behind the listening experience?
Disciplined knowledge: How far has the recent institutionalisation of popular music and jazz studies transformed the kinds of musical knowledge formally acceptable in those fields? What have been the benefits and costs in this transformation of technique? Are scholars of popular music producing knowledge that legitimates specific patterns of power and domination?
Registration information
Twenty student places are available. There is no charge for registration. Refreshments and lunches are provided. Reasonable travel expenses to and from the event will be covered.
Schedule (subject to change)
|
9:30 |
Registration, coffee, welcome |
|
10:00 – 11:30 |
Session 1: Institutional knowledge Chair and respondent: Byron Dueck Ben Assiter: Electronic dance music, institutionalisation and cultural value Fiamma Mozzetta: The (Non) institutionalisation of Italian pop music studies |
| Coffee | |
|
11:45 – 13:00 |
Session 2: Roundtable. Translating, transferring (and maybe transcending) musical knowledge Chair: Tom Perchard Anne Danielsen, Corey Mwamba, John Harries |
| Lunch | |
|
14:00 – 15:30 |
Session 3: Practices Chair and respondent: Anne Danielsen Alex de Lacy: Understanding group creative practice in grime music Maria Perevedentseva: Enter the void: Timbre as knowledge in Electronic Dance Music |
| Coffee | |
|
16:00 – 17:30 |
Session 4: Politics Chair and respondent: Marie Thompson Kit Ashton: Major questions in a minor key: music ideologies under surveillance capitalism Bruno Verner: The Politics of Anti-Music through DIY Post Punk |