[ecrea] CFP: EMP Pop Conference 2016

Call for Proposals, 2016 EMP Pop Conference

April 14-17, 2016, Seattle, Washington

*From a Whisper to a Scream: The Voice in Music*

The voice in music goes beyond singing: “The ‘grain’ is the body in the
voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs,”
Roland Barthes wrote. Voices insert the self into music, Billie Holiday
stopping poet Frank O’Hara’s breath with choices of tempo and timbre,
Neil Young transfixing rock fans with his “Old Black” Gibson electric
guitar tone,the sentimiento expressed in the sung bolero resonating
across the Americas. Finding their voice, performers – on stage and
camera, recording in studios – make us identify, naturalize change. But
voices embody community too, as in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the
“Black National Anthem” written by (pioneering popular music scholar)
James Weldon Johnson, and they are the foundation of protest, the
megaphone for social change. A switch in voice, from croon to rasp to
rap to Auto-Tune, alters meaning and social statement.

For this year’s EMP Pop Conference, we invite presentations that
explore, across all styles and time periods, the role of voice in music.
This might include:

--*Vocalization*: the technical, theatrical, and technological
underpinnings of bringing out the voice in music; creating vocal
“characters” and characteristics

--*Vocal Chords*: the body in music; sonic materiality; medical and
scientific factors

--*Communal Voices*: group singing, from choirs and quartets to karaoke;
choices of accent and identity

--*Instruments as Voices, Voices as Instruments*: talking drums, crying
guitars, wailing horns; vocal breathiness, sound but not words,
articulate inarticulacy

--*Voces*: speech, song and noise outside Eurocentric sound making;how
voices carry U.S. pop styles around the globe and forms from beyond the
U.S mainstream are woven into that fabric

--*Challenging Voices*: naturalized ideals or expectations of race,
gender, sexuality disrupted by the androgynous, post-human,
transcultural, “freak”

--*Voices of Protest*: The noisy voice in politics and as an expression
of dissent

--*Writing voices*: methodology; finding a voice as a music
writer;authorial voice developed in relationship to singing voices

--*Vox Populi*: fan and audience voices, reality TV singing
competitions/,/ new media platforms, amateur/professional divides, good
and bad singing, listening

*Proposals are due November 16*. Email conference organizer Eric
Weisbard (University of Alabama) at (Eric.Weisbard /at/ gmail.com)
<mailto:(Eric.Weisbard /at/ gmail.com)>. Individual proposals for 20 minute
presentations should be 300 words, with a 75 word bio. For three person
(90 minute) or four person (120 minute) panel proposals, include a one
paragraph overview and individual statements of 300 words with 75 word
bio. For roundtables, outline the subject in up to 500 words, include a
75 word bio for each panelist, and specify desired panel length. We
welcome unorthodox proposals: ask for submission advice. Please include
emails for all participants.

The annual EMP Pop Conference, first held in 2002, mixes together
ambitious music discourse 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: Christine
Bacareza Balance (University of California, Irvine); María Elena Cepeda
(Williams College); Jasen Emmons (EMP Museum); Jack Halberstam
(University of Southern California); journalist Jewly Hight; Mark Katz
(University of North Carolina); Chris Molanphy (/Slate/), Charles Mudede
(/The Stranger/), Ann Powers (NPR Music); Zandria Robinson (Rhodes
College); and Steve Waksman (Smith College). For more, visit the Pop
Conference page at www.EMPMuseum.org <http://www.EMPMuseum.org>.
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