[ecrea] cfp: Towards a Sociology of Popular Music in the Arab Region

*CALL FOR PAPERS *
__
*_Towards a Sociology of Popular Music in the Arab Region_*
/Conference organised by the/
*Arab Media Centre *
Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI),
*//*
*/Date: Friday 8 April 2016/*
Venue: University of Westminster, Regent Street Campus,
/309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW/
**
**
*_Keynote Speaker:  Thomas Burkhalter_*
**
The compendium of research into Arab popular music and music in the Arab
region, in general, remains very modest. While Arabic literature on the
topic is skewed towards historiographical and micro-sociological studies
of folkloric musical traditions, recent scholarship emerging from
Western academia is more in synch with the present tense of Arab popular
cultures, focusing largely on current, avant-garde and emerging musical
trends in the region.   The result is a polarised and fragmented field
of research that lacks coherence and systematicity. There is as yet no
sociology of Arab popular music, nor is there evidence of an overall
critical framework that lends itself to a conjunctional critique.
Movements of people and tunes across areas of conflict within the Arab
region and out to different diasporic locations have brought awareness
of new musical and creative energies, which demand our attention as
academics. Musicians in the Arab region and in the diaspora are making
use of musical and digital technologies to produce, collaborate, and
distribute new sounds in response to a new era. They are generating new
aesthetics by blending different genres, reconstructing old repertoires,
and reclaiming minority music heritage. Furthermore, the
over-commercialisation and lack of a legal framework to protect
creativity raises important and key political economy questions about
the Arab music industry, which have yet to be studied in a systematic way.
The Arab Media Centre’s 11^th annual international conference welcomes:
academics musicians, music industry and non-commercial music
organisations to engage in dialogue about the present concerns
(cultural, aesthetic, economic, political) of music in the Arab region.
Contributors will be invited to engage with one of the following themes:
·Theories of popular music: towards a critical analysis of Arab popular
music
·The political economy of music in the Arab region
·Histories of popular music in the Arab region
·Performing and making music in the time of revolutions
·Music as ethnography
·Migration and music
·Arab diasporic music and new hybridised genres
·Music as resistance
·Music as politics
·Music and subcultures in the Arab region
·Music and celebrity cultures
·Music audiences in the Arab region
·Music as memory
·Transcendental and experimental music in the Arab region
*PROGRAMME AND REGISTRATION*
This one-day conference, taking place on Friday, 8^th of April 2016,
will include *_a keynote address, plenary sessions and live music
performances_*. The fee for registration for all participants, including
presenters, will be £120, with a concessionary rate of £60 for students,
to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration
costs. Registration will open in February 2016.
*DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS*
The deadline for abstracts is Monday, November 30th, 2015. Successful
applicants will be notified early in mid-December 2015. Abstracts should
be 300 words. They must be accompanied by the presenter’s name,
affiliation, email and postal addresses, together with the title of the
paper and a 150-word biographical note on the presenter. Please send all
these items together in a single Word file, not as pdf, and give the
file and message the title ‘AMC 2016’ followed by your surname. The file
should be sent by email to the Events Administrator, Karen Foster, at
(journalism /at/ westminster.ac.uk) <mailto:(journalism /at/ westminster.ac.uk)>
*TRAVEL EXPENSES*
Participants fund their own travel and accommodation expenses.
*PUBLICATION*
There will be various openings for publication, including an edited
collection and a themed issue of the /_Middle East Journal of Culture
and Communication_/. Publication will be discussed further after the
conference.



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