Archive for June 2011

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[ecrea] Volume ! CFP : Music & counterculture(s)

Sun Jun 12 10:13:10 GMT 2011


Volume ! The French journal of popular music studies


 Music and counter-culture(s): Rock, the Sixties, the US and beyond

 Submission deadline: November 1st, 2011

 Volume! La Revue des musiques populaires (www.seteun.net), the one and
 only French peer-reviewed journal exclusively dedicated to the
 interdisciplinary study of popular music, seeks contributions for a
 special issue on music and counterculture. Any scholarly essay on
 popular music and counterculture, focusing on link to the "central"
 period of the sixties and seventies, is welcome. Here are however a
 few first elements that have generated debate in our editorial
 discussions:

 Download the CFP here:http://www.seteun.net/spip.php?article258

 During the sixties in the U.S. and more globally in the West, a new
 generation proposed – apparently – a culture radically opposed to the
 traditional American Way of Life, which expressed itself via a set of
 cultural references, ideas, lifestyles and, emblematically, of musics
 – a heterogeneous movement baptized "the" counterculture. It marked
 the generations that lived it and the ones that followed, transforing
 the political and cultural landscapes as well as the global musical
 spectrum. Its legacy has constantly been reactivated since by "new"
 musical subcultures, be it polemically (punk, metal) or not, that
 claimed for themselves its spirit (Goa trance, Kosmische Musik,
 alternative hip-hop) and/or its material features (freak folk,
 neo-hippies, stoner), and appropriated former musical elements, as
 well as techniques, gestures, identities (style, hexis) or rituals
 (protests songs, alternative festivals, forms of activism etc.) to use
 them in new ways with new medias.

 A certain progressive hagiography insists on its multicultural,
 multiracial, feminist, militant and egalitarian aspects. However, many
 signs suggest that things weren't that homogenous. If we usually
 identify the movement with rock'n'roll (and its subgenres: blues-rock,
 pop, psychedelic music, prog rock, hard rock) and folk – which were
 mainly listened to by white youth – to define exactly which musics
 were part of the phenomenon is a complex task: how did, for example,
 previous subcultures, or free jazz and Jamaican music and other
 "minority" musicians and fans relate to the counterculture? The proud
 funk and soul music of a champion of individual success and American
 capitalism like James Brown paradoxically helped cement the protest of
 the Afro-American youth. The counterculture developed in the heart of
 the West, but it also triggered a somewhat caricatured passion for the
 exotic other – what is it that can be said, musically (raga rock,
 neo-orientalism), politically and culturally of the echo of the "Third
 World" within this movement? To take a final example of the
 phenomenon's ambiguity, it was the era of the Summer of Love, of
 sexual freedom and so forth, but it also glorified its manly
 heterosexual singers and guitar heroes, while the female and
 homosexual figures were rare on stage.

 For this special issue of Volume!, the editors seek submissions coming
 from the whole spectrum of social sciences, that will reflect upon the
 heterogeneity of this/these music(s), its ambiguity, scattered
 identity, its worldwide circulation, its origins, influence and
 legacy. How can we define, aesthetically, culturally, politically,
 historically and chronologically the music of the counterculture? what
 is it that cements it? "formal" characteristics (musical elements,
 style), ideology (militancy, lifestyles) or its nemeses (the system,
 the American values and cultural hierarchies, war, the State,
 capitalism)?

 Other, more general, possible categories:
 - the musical genres ("San Francisco sound", jazz-rock, prog rock,
 psychedelic music, hard rock, free jazz, soul, funk…);
 - the role of technology (instrumentation, recording technologies,
 sound systems…);
 - the period's subcultures, their stars, grandiose moments,
 signification, themes and mythologies;
 - their legacies: permanence and ruptures (punk, techno, free parties,
 freak folk…) and the contrary ("merchant hijacking" by the dominant
 culture…);
 - the countercultural circulations between music, arts, politics,
 social movements;
 - questions of gender, class, race, sexuality and identity;
 - influence of the "Third World" on the counterculture (orientalism,
 africanism…), the geopolitics of counterculture and its new centers of
 gravity;
 - the actual perceptions and representations of the counterculture:
 celebration and condemnation in the media, intellectual&  art worlds;
 - the "counter"-countercultures, the "reactionary" subcultures, back
 then and since (conservative revivals, extreme right-wing skinheads,
 rock against communism…):
 - the margins of counterculture.

 We strongly recommend authors sending us an early 500 word maximum
 proposal when possible.

 Final submissions should be sent by October 15th, 2011, by email,
 - in English or French,
 - with an abstract, a set of key words and a short biography of the
 author,
 - 30 000 to 50 000 characters (spaces included),
 - Harvard system of referencing,
 - .doc – Word 2004 format or .rtf;
 (detailed instructions here:http://www.seteun.net/spip.php?article229
 – respecting these requirements speeds up the editorial process.)

 to the following addresses:
 editions[at]seteun[dot]net, fredericbob[at]aol[dot]&
 jedediah-sklower[at]hotmail[dot]com

 They will first be evaluated by Volume's editorial board before being
 blindly peer-reviewed by specialists.

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