Proposals are invited by Dec. 31 for the “Changing the Tune: Popular Music & Politics in the 21st Century From the Fall of Communism to the Arab Spring” International Conference – Strasbourg University, France to be held 7-8 June 2013. This international conference aims to explore the new political meanings and practices of music and to provide an impetus for their study.
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 1960s 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.
Broadly the themes of the conference are divided into five main streams:
1. Music as a Political Weapon
2. Political Change, Musical Revolution? The Question of Artistic Legacy
3. Music, Identity and Nationalism
4. Aesthetics, digital practices and political significations
5. Marching to a Different Beat? Censorship, Propaganda and Torture
More details about the conference is available at the website.