MUSIC, POLITICS AND AGENCY
A one-day conference presented by:
Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London
Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University
Media Industries Research Centre, University of Leeds
May 20th 2011
11:00 – 18:00
University of East London
Docklands Campus
Room EB.2.43
Permalink: http://culturalstudiesresearch.org/?p=694
Can music change anything, or does its potency lie merely in its exemplary status as an organised human activity? What are the effects of power relations on music and to what extent is music itself a site at which power relations can be reinforced, challenged or subverted? What are the economic, affective, corporeal or ideological mechanisms through which these processes occur? Has the age of recorded music as a potent social force now passed, a relic of the twentieth century; or with the music industry in crisis, is music culture in fact the first post-capitalist sector of the cultural economy, only now emerging from the long shadow of the culture industry? What historical or contemporary examples can we draw on to address some or all of these questions?
This conference is programmed by Jeremy Gilbert (Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London), David Hesmondhalgh (Media Industries Research Centre, Institute of Communications Studies) and Jason Toynbee (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Open University).
The conference is free to attend, but pre-registration is recommended.
To register email j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk with the subject “Music, Politics and Agency Registration”
For any further information, email j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk
UEL Docklands Campus is best reached via Cyprus DLR (Docklands Light Railway) station, which is literally located at the campus.
For information about the campus, see http://www.uel.ac.uk/campuses/docklands.htm
Room EB.2.43 is on the second floor of the main building (‘East Building’) which is to the left of the main square upon entering from the square from Cyprus DLR .
See http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en to plan your journey.
Speakers and Papers
Anne Danielsen
Power, mediation, and aesthetics in the music of Public Enemy
Anne Danielsen is Professor and Head of Research in the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo. Her publications include Pleasure and Presence: the Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament (2006) and Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2010).
Barry Shank
The political agency of music
Barry Shank teaches popular music, American studies and cultural theory in the department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is the author ofDissonant Identities: The Rock’n’Roll Scene in Austin, Texas and A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture. He is currently completing a book for Duke University Press entitled Silence, Noise, Beauty: The Political Agency of Music.
David Hesmondhalgh
Music and human flourishing
David Hesmondhalgh teaches and researches at the University of Leeds. His books include Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2011), co-written with Sarah Baker, and Western Music and its Others: Difference, Appropriation and Representation in Music (with Georgina Born, 2000).
Helen Reddington
The sound of women musicians in the punk era
Helen Reddington lectures in songwriting and production on the University of East London’s Music Cultures BA. Her research interests include the punk subculture and women’s engagement with music technology. Her book The Lost Women of Rock Music will appear revised in paperback in January 2012 and a double CD of archive material by her punk-pop band is due to be released by the label Damaged Goods later this year.
Jeremy Gilbert
Music after capitalism? Culture, creativity and markets
Jeremy Gilbert is Reader in Cultural Studies at the University of East London. His publications include (with Ewan Pearson) Discographies: Dance Music Culture and the Politics of Sound (Routledge 1999) and Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and Popular Politics (Berg 2008). He is co-director of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research, editor of new formations and a founder member of Lucky Cloud Sound System.
John Street
Music as political thought and action: the arguments and the evidence
John Street is a professor of politics at the University of East Anglia. His latest book is Music and Politics, which is due to be published by Polity later this year. He is a member of the editorial group of the journal Popular Music.
Martin Stokes
Scale, agency and music in religious movements
Martin Stokes is University Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Tutorial Fellow at St. John’s College, University of Oxford. Martin is an ethnomusicologist with a particular interest in social and cultural theory. His most recent book The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press (2010).
Tim Lawrence
Rhizomatic musicianship: Arthur Russell and after
Tim Lawrence is a Reader in Cultural Studies at the University of East London and the programme leader of the Music Culture: Theory and Production degree. He is the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-79 (Duke University Press, 2003) and Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92 (Duke University Press, 2009). He is a founding member of the Centre for Cultural Studies Research and Lucky Cloud Sound System.
Tuulikki Pietilä
Body politic: youth musics in the “New South Africa”
Tuulikki Pietilä is a social anthropologist and a research fellow in the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She has published a monograph and a number of articles on trade and gender in Kilimanjaro and the post-colonial Africa more broadly. Currently she is studying South African music and music industry.
—END—
‘I believe in the afterlife.
It starts tomorrow,
When I go to work’
Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)
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