The biennial IASPM conference in Liverpool organised by the current IASPM Executive and the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, was an enormously well-organised event, with well-linked papers in themed sessions. Papers were kept to time, making it easy to slip between rooms and flow with appropriate liquidity around the programme. The few sessions with three or four papers that had been grouped by their writers rather than the conference organisers worked especially well to dissolve the layers of mist disguising the intricacies of the chosen topics, and perhaps in future more such sessions will be proposed and encouraged.
Despite the British weather, which attempted to dampen the atmosphere, as one would expect, this was a friendly, open conference with well-planned social events. The nature of these events pointed towards the overarching themes emerging from the conference.
A phenomenological field study of mid-twentieth century performance of the authentically local, a trip to see a Beatles tribute act at the Cavern Club, was far more enlightening and enchanting than expected: the Beatles-esque band performing in the not-entirely-unlike-the-original Cavern Club replica gave the night-time economy delegate remnant present a feeling of what made the Fab Four so successful. The combination of real songs and fake band and venue confused the concept of authenticity, a recurrent theme at the conference. In many papers, a discussion of aura and the authentic was focused on a discussion of how audience perceptions of such concepts were constructed and performed. Presentations avoided the valuation of the live, performed, intellectual or rock as being of more interest than the mimed, recorded, physical or pop. Particular scenes or interests were studied with a broad and detailed methodology without privileging or valorising them, implying authenticity to be a performed construction, implicating it in the attempted regulation of taste by the music industry.
Engagement with music, as well as its study, was very much evident at the conference, as well as in the mock-Cavern. For example, the detailed musical analysis of Franco Fabbri's eloquent study of Beatles' song structure managed to problematise all those planning to use the term ‘chorus’ in subsequent papers. The combination of both musicological and sociological analysis was delineated as the new way forward, the centre of popular music studies moving out of its sociological cradle into a truly interdisciplinary field that includes purely musical study, and at this conference IASPM showed its willingness to take a lead in this kind of mixed study.
Another element pointed out by the social programme was a multicultural and pluralistic approach to national identity, evidenced through the suggested local conference food choices. The conference managed to avoid Anglo-American (AA) dominance, much like the Mediterranean, Japanese and curry meals I eat. UK and US delegates were more than balanced by participants from a wide range of other countries, and the programme covered a similarly broad range of musics from across the globe. The AA dominance of pop studies evident in the early years of the field is a habit that seems to have been kicked. The conference also reached out in time, to the future when investigating trends, and backwards far beyond 1955, to Keir Keightley's early twentieth-century tin pan allegories, and even the sounds of prehistory.
Another conference social activity that pointed toward intellectual trends was the six-stringed karaoke of the conference guitar hero video game competition. This brings us smoothly towards a number of papers focused on the changing nature of consumption trends in the music industry, and the impact of technological development. The music industry was shown to have cried wolf, as Martin Cloonan, for example, showed how music promoters' complaints about the state of things have been made many times in the past. A number of papers discussed the liminal in-between-ness of the current situation, and the impossibility of trying to predict or control changes affecting copyright and income. Reflecting this increasing influence of music technology, the technical development of tools for musical analysis was demonstrated within many papers. Karen Collins encouraged delegates to embrace their inner geek; Simon Zagorski-Thomas on the other hand illustrated the use of Sonic Visualiser to work out What's Going On with Marvin Gaye; while Hans Zeiner-Hendriken used sonograms to demonstrate the groove, kick and snare.
Finally, a visit to the Marion Leonard curated The Beat Goes On exhibition of musical Liverpool at the World Museum (developed through a partnership with the IPM celebrating its twenty-first year, and National Museums Liverpool) reflected a number of presentations about museology and popular music, as the opening of the doors of various museums to pop was explored and discussed. The exhibition was suitably based on the Liverpool scene, with subculture a word of the past, and the importance of locality discussed in many papers. Similarly, popular music studies itself stepped away from being a subculture. A number of projects, and even IASPM itself, stepped out of the academic shadows, to begin to offer information that can inform policy and practices of government and industry.
Overall, IASPM showed a maturation, comfortable in its skin, no longer needing to defend its precepts, but addressing its subject in a detailed, interdisciplinary, pluralistic, diverse manner appropriate to the last conference of the twenty-naughties. The next conference is IASPM 2011 in Grahamstown, South Africa, and will celebrate IASPM's thirtieth year.
In similar ways to the IASPM International Conference held in Mexico two years ago, the 2009 IASPM conference provided yet another occasion to feel the pulse of popular music research in the academic world. Despite the fact that IASPM conferences have a strong Anglo-westernised approach, they are undoubtedly the most important biennial meeting to understand what, how, where and why popular music is so important in the globalised world.
Around 230 papers by IASPM members from more than thirty-two countries were presented in a very intense programme averaging some forty papers a day, in parallel sessions of two, three or four papers, or in plenary sessions. I estimate that seventy-five per cent of conference papers came from the US, UK and European countries, although local participants (from the UK) introduced some distortion (see Graph, below), as did other Asian, Latin-Americans and Africans studying in Western or Northern universities.
Graph (based on book of conference abstracts)
This simple calculation shows that despite the fact that there is an increasing (if slow) decentralisation in the study of popular music, the main institutional centres, notably the UK and US, are still attracting students from the rest of the world. They therefore remain the driving force of popular music education, causing something akin to a brain drain from second- and third-world countries.
Despite this, at IASPM Liverpool the main issues of popular music study were discussed comparatively with similar case-studies from different regions of the world. A good example of this was the panel Places in context, where musical networks, creativity and performances from different countries of Europe (Spain, UK, Finland) and the USA were analysed through the urban codes of place, time and history of the city. This discussion was particularly illuminating because of the relationship between the cases in conjunction with other essential topics of popular music, such us history, nationalism, identity construction and place (sound, noise), memory, music mappings, music industry, authenticity, ethnicity and performance.
In addition, two other things in particular captured my attention: a tendency towards empiricism and different concepts of the city. I noticed a welcome tendency towards empirical collection of data using surveys with data measurement, presented with analysis of frequency distribution of statistical variables; as well as a tendency towards technical analysis of recording processes, broadcasting and acoustics, presented in particular quantitative – on occasion sophisticated – charts. Different collecting strategies, fieldwork methodologies, data sources and software to process information support this move towards an ‘empirical’ age of popular music studies, as we saw in Rupert Till's paper (‘Songs of the stones: an investigation into the musical history and culture of Stonehenge’), among others.
There were also diverging ideas about town and city in sessions relating to place (involving memory and place, Asian sounds, film music, covers, diasporas, sound and noise and jazz); and in particular differences that emerge in the analytical weight given to size, architecture, socio-demographic distribution, urban pathways, public/private spaces, locations of places. However, at times these aspects were discussed, as if they were static elements of urban phenomena without any detailed consideration of exactly what a city is, when in fact the concept of city could be very different depending on the region/town/country under consideration, differences which can substantially modify urban and social networks, and the circulation of music in everyday life, making such generalisations opaque. So perhaps it would be good to foster a renewed or new focus of study of the differences between towns/cities in order to understand more holistically the contextual environment of music making, and to facilitate possibilities of generalising from the local to the global.
The General Assembly approved the 2007 Minutes and the Financial Report, made recommendations for certain statute changes, and elected a new IASPM executive board: Jan Fairley (Chair), Helmi Järviluoma-Makela (General Secretary), Violeta Mayer (Membership/Treasurer), Carlo Nardi (Web/Publications) and Héctor Fouce (Member-at-Large). This seems a vigorous team with a bit of a Latin stamp!
As usual with these kinds of gatherings, much interesting knowledge circulated informally at coffee breaks, lunch time and informal meetings, revitalising the spirit of this association, characterised by a restless ambience of intense sociability and constant networking. As a Latin-American Branch member for over ten years, I found Liverpool a warm welcoming place to spend a week, particularly experiencing this stimulating intellectual atmosphere through the musical pathways of the Beatles and the Merseybeat. Without exaggeration, this congress was a really exciting experience where everyone attending could realise the human dimensions of an organisation that studies something also very human, popular music itself. Thanks to the conference organisers (Freya Jarman-Ivens) and everyone at IPM for a great conference.
The conference was organised around five streams: studying popular music: a reassessment; popular music and technology in an historical context; music, history and cultural memory; music, mediation and place; and musical struggles. Each day had a plenary session, which focused on each of the five streams, allowing people to collectively experience papers from all five streams. Some people, however, expressed disappointment that there were no keynote speakers. The wide variety of topics were explored, demonstrating just how broad and international the field of popular music studies has become. The conference was of a high calibre and ran very smoothly. It was great to be able to keep up-to-date with conference happenings via Twitter and Facebook.
Throughout the plenary sessions, themes developed around issues of difference and definitions. A sense that certain styles of popular music were defined as what they are not was evidenced in David Brackett's analysis of hillbilly music in ‘Fox trots, Hillibillies, and the classic blues: categorizing the 1920s’, and Keir Keightley's examination of the term Tin Pan Alley in ‘Tin Pan Allegory’. Keightley gave an interesting account of the various ways in which one could deconstruct the term ‘Tin Pan Alley’ and find possibilities of sources in a variety of places, including a street in Connecticut, which was filled with unruly women. Definitions regarding authenticity were present in Wendy Hsu's paper, ‘Rocking out and genre bending: Asian American musicians in indie rock’, in which she examined the perception and reception of Asian women in the American Indie rock scene, as well as Hildegonda Rietveld's paper, ‘(Dis)placing musical memory: the house sound of the Hacienda’, which traced the formation and spread of house music, and how it was affected by technology, geography and drugs.
The diversity of the 290 papers rendered an international spectrum of contemporary popular music. Personally, while I was glad to see such a range, I felt that this had both negative and positive aspects. On one level, it is important to hear different voices, demonstrating the universal nature of music and the listening experience, and for people to develop passionate relationships with their chosen research topics. On the other hand, though, there is an ongoing concern about falling into the trap of fandom – being able to adequately negotiate relationships between being a fan, while maintaining a subjective perspective.
The majority of the papers I attended focused on micro topics within the large field of popular music. After struggling to make popular music studies a legitimate field of study, I would like to have seen more papers focused on the mainstream, popular listening experience. As well, there seems to be a lack of research in the field of contemporary chart music – the ‘quintessential’ popular music category.
In general, though, the sense I got from the conference was that we are on the verge of an incredible change within the music industry – primarily due to changing technology and digitality. With this feeling of impending change came feelings of uncertainty for the future.
As my research interest tends towards the socio-technological side, I mainly attended papers concerned with technology. These included my own paper, ‘iPod culture: issues of democratisation and sociability’, on iPod culture and how it is promoting an aesthetic of eclecticism and democratisation of identity, and an interesting paper by Sara Jansson, ‘“Listen to these speakers”: Swedish audiophiles, gender, and listening’, on Swedish audiophiles: people obsessed with music technology, often with no regard to the actual music being played, The use of technology to manipulate, subvert and challenge pre-existing music, through sampling and mashups, was discussed by Liam Maloy in his paper, ‘“Stayin’ alive in da club”: the illegality and hyperreality of mashups', as well as Paul Harkins in his ‘The sampler as compositional tool’, in which he focused on the Scottish band Found and how they combined hip-hop sampling techniques with a rock aesthetic.
The social events allowed for more discussion and merriment. Hannah's Bar played host for the Monday night reception and Wednesday night guitar hero battle. The conference dinner, at Mayur, provided great food, company and table magic by Mark Carney. And, fittingly, the after-dinner entertainment included a Beatles' tribute band at the Cavern Club, followed by late night/early morning festivities.
