CfP: Changing the Tune: Popular Music & Politics in the 21st Century From the Fall of Communism to the Arab Spring

International Conference – Strasbourg University, France - 7-8 June 2013

Conference organizers: Alenka BARBER-KERSOVAN, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik; Elsa GRASSY, Université de Strasbourg, International Association for the Study of Popular Music-branche francophone d’Europe; Jedediah SKLOWER, Université Catholique de Lille, Éditions Mélanie
Seteun / Volume! the French journal of popular music studies

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Martin Cloonan, University of Glasgow
Rajko Mursic, University of Ljubljana

Popular Music scholars have devoted considerable attention to the relationship between music and power. The symbolic practices through which subcultures state and reinforce identities have been widely documented (mainly in the field of Cultural, Gender and Postcolonial Studies), as has the increasingly political and revolutionary dimensions of popular music. Most studies have focused on the genres and movements that developed with and in the aftermath of the 1960’s counterculture. Yet little has been written about how the politics of popular music has reflected the social, geopolitical and technological changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, after the fall of Communism. Still, the music of the Arab Spring or of the Occupy and Indignados movements have been scarcely commented upon while they attest to significant changes in the way music is used by activists and revolutionaries today.

More information here: http://volume.revues.org/3050