1st & 2nd December 2012, Cambridge, UK

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce that the Third Symposium of the ICTM Study Group for Music of the Turkic Speaking World will take place on    1^st & 2^nd December 2012 at the University of Cambridge, UK.

The title of the Symposium is:

"Popular Culture in Turkic Asia and Afghanistan: Performance and Belief"

The popular culture of this area is unique and contains many specific genres. Even though in the past many traditional forms of music culture had been adapted to religious purposes, during latter centuries, they have taken on a different appearance. Today when the development of TV and radio is global, influencing daily life and transforming the original practice of local performances, music has become an enclave where features of the past and present are intertwined. Popular music conveys a number of references to previous music and its religieous connections, and our task is to focus on such cases.

Papers are invited to address the following themes:

– What is the definition of popular culture at the beginning of the 21st century?

– What role does music play in it? How important are religions and beliefs in this process?

– What are the main forms of music and religious connections in 21st century music performance?

Focusing on the theoretical and practical issues, the event will be illustrated by the performance of the invited musicians, turning into a Conference and Workshop.

Abstracts of 200-300 words in English may be submitted to Dr Razia Sultanova, rs588@cam.ac.uk, before 20th February 2012, to be reviewed by our Programme Committee (Siddarth Saxena, Firuza Melville, Razia Sultanova, from University of Cambridge; Dorit Klebe, from Germany, and Janos Sipos from Hungary). The Conference will be hosted by the Cambridge Central Asia Forum.

We look forward to seeing you in Cambridge. With best wishes,

Dr Razia Sultanova

Member of the ICTM Executive Board, Co-chair of the Study Group for the Music of the Turkic Speaking World, Fellow, Cambridge Central Asia Forum, University of Cambridge, Director of the Centre for Central Asia Music

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

WORKSHOP: CHINESE INSTRUMENTS AND WESTERN MUSEUMS
LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS, 13-16 SEPT 2012

From 13 to 16 September 2012 The CHIME Foundation and Leiden University in The Netherlands will host a workshop on the topic of Chinese Instruments and Western Museums. The aim is to share and exchange information in the realm of Chinese musical instruments, in an open, informal atmosphere. The meeting should be of interest to museum curators and others who work with instrument collections, and scholars active in the realm of Chinese instruments and instrumental music.

The meeting takes place in the wake of the initiation of the MIMO project (Musical Instrument Museums Online) which was started in September 2011. MIMO opened a public online access point to the musical instruments catalogues of the project’s affiliated museums in Europe (http://www.mimo-international.com/). This massive body of information will serve as a useful resource for the study of world music cultures. The database will hopefully benefit a wide group of users, including the source communities, music and creative industries and the general public. The MIMO project raises important issues related to music research, such as the relationship between academic study and the public exhibition of musical instrument collections, as well as the links between specific instrument collections in European museums, and how these items can continuously reshape the understanding of musical pasts and can open potential possibilities for future musical practices.

To facilitate exchange between museum curators and academic researchers, the CMA (Chinese Music Archive) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the CHIME Foundation in Leiden (European Foundation for Chinese Music Research) and Leiden University jointly organize the upcoming meeting in Leiden, which will feature individual papers, practical demonstrations, discussions, films and some performances. Museum curators, academic researchers and independent scholars are invited to submit proposals on, but not limited to, the following topics:

1.  The relationship between Chinese musical instruments and European museums

2.  Biographies of individual Chinese musical instruments and/or a special collection of Chinese instruments currently housed at European museums

3.  Chinese musical instruments within and beyond museum display

4.  Potential collaborative research and database creation projects

5.  Chinese musical instruments and European (post)colonialism

The languages of the meeting will be English and Chinese. Please submit your abstract proposal for 20- to 30-minute presentations in English (max. 350 words) to  ciwm2012@gmail.com on or before 15 April 2012. There are possibilities for early acceptance of papers for those who need to rely on this for grant applications (please indicate need for urgent reply when you submit your abstract). The final result of our selection will be announced by 30 April 2012. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the organizers, Tsai Tsanhuang (thtsai@mac.com) and/or Frank Kouwenhoven (chime@wxs.nl).

Extended Call for Papers for the Soundtracks: Music, Tourism and Travel conference

Additional abstracts that address the following themes are welcomed:

·     Musical memory - the role of music in narratives of touristic experience

·     Fans, pilgrimage and performances - motivations, behaviours and meanings

·     The tourist's involvement in preserving and creating musical traditions

·     Managing tourists at musical sites

·     Musical imaginaries - representing places, peoples and pasts in music

·     Dance tourism and embodied practices

·     Designing ambience - mobilising music in touristic spaces

·     Music festivals as opportunities for tourist encounters

·     Inspirations - travelling musicians

·     Music as intangible heritage - touring through traditions

·     Challenging musical traditions - tourist 'noise'


Please submit a 300 word abstract including title and full contact details as an electronic file to d.carl@leedsmet.ac.uk. You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than 6th February 2012.

For more details on this conference including a list of accepted abstracts, keynotes, registration etc, please visit the conference's blog: http://soundtracksconference.wordpress.com/

Pour celles et ceux qui souhaiteraient proposer des communications au congrès de l'EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists, Nanterre, juillet 2012), la date limite est le 28 Novembre.

La liste complète des panels se trouve ici. Trois d'entre eux sont (co-)organisés par des membres de la SFE: 

• Saying the unspeakable: the uses of voice in the narration of traumatic events (par Estelle Amy de la Bretèque et Alexandra Argenti-Pillen)
• Sound environments: forms, perception, and meanings (par Christine Guillebaud et Heikki Uimonen)
• Sonic beings? The ontologies of musical agency (par Victor A. Stoichiţă et Bernd Brabec de Mori)

Cape Breton University (CBU) is located on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia’s tourism centrepiece and home to rich Celtic, Mi’kmaq, and Acadian culture. CBU has a reputation for small class sizes, strong community involvement, and strong internal support for faculty research.

The Department of History and Culture in the School of Arts & Social Sciences at Cape Breton University invites applications from outstanding candidates for two Canada Research Chairs (Tier 2) in the areas of Folklore and Traditional Music. Appointment to a faculty position will be conditional on the selected candidates being awarded a Canada Research Chair. The tenure-track appointments will be made at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, with a start date of January 1, 2013 or later. The appointments will have reduced teaching responsibilities during the tenure of the CRC appointment.