Call for papers
GO! MUSIC AND MOBILITY
EMP Pop Conference
24-27 April 2014, Seattle, Washington
We turn to music to put the world in motion. Music on mobile phones, music over the airways, communication by talking drums: these sounds have accompanied the voluntary and involuntary movement of people, alleviated work and pulsated leisure, animated borderlands and virtual spaces with patterns that root and are made material. As rites of charivari and Pink Floyd songs demonstrate, when music stops conveying mobility we bang on pots and walls.
For this year’s EMP Pop Conference, back in Seattle after three years roaming, we seek writing that connects music of any style or period to mobility. How can we map existing and potential geographies of musical movement? There are many places to take this theme (surprise us!), but here are some suggestions:
–Musical migrations: the travel of people and sounds, physically and ethereally
–21st century forms of global mobility and the millennial mood of impermanence
–Bodies in motion: dancing, parading, grooving; negotiating disability
–Music and upward, downward, and bohemian/lumpen mobility
–Mobile identities, as performed or embraced through music
–Political and social movements and the democratic mob fuelled by music
–Automobility: Motown to car subwoofers
–Nomadism, from wandering minstrels to sampling
–Immobility: chain gang songs, noise laws, and amplified responses to barriers
–iPhone and boombox flaneurs and pedestrian psychogeographies
–Field & stream: sound and music patterned out-of-doors; stillness
Proposals are due 15 November. Email eric.weisbard@gmail.com
Individual proposals for 20-minute presentations (plus 10 minutes of questions) should be 300 words, with a 75-word bio. Three-person (90-minute) or four-person (120-minute) panel proposals should include a one paragraph overview and individual statements of 300 words plus a 75-word bio. For roundtable proposals, outline the subject to be discussed in up to 500 words, include a 75-word bio for each panelist, and specify the desired panel length. We welcome unorthodox proposals: contact the organizer for how best to submit these. Please include email information for all participants.
The annual EMP Pop Conference, first held in 2002, mixes together ambitious music writing of every kind, in an attempt to bring academics, critics, musicians, and dedicated fans into a collective conversation. This year’s program committee members are: Jayna Brown (University of California, Riverside), Daniel Cavicchi (RISD), Jessica Hopper (Rookie), Jacob McMurray (EMP Museum), Ali Colleen Neff (College of William & Mary), Ann Powers (NPR), Sonnet Retman (University of Washington), Salamishah Tillet (University of Pennsylvania), Eric Weisbard (University of Alabama), and Carl Wilson (Slate). For more, visit the Pop Conference page at http://www.empmuseum.org/.