Conference report

Within the field of popular music studies it is relatively rare to have a conference dedicated to analysing popular music. From this perspective it was very welcome that a UK-based Society for Music Analysis (SMA, http://www.popmac.org.uk), which regularly organises music analysis conferences (MACs), put together this popMAC. The conference was hosted at the University of Liverpool, School of Music, whose Institute of Popular Music is the first academic centre in the world dedicated to the study of popular music. This extremely well organised conference was itself dedicated to the memory of recently passed Adam Krims.

More than one hundred scholars from every corner of the globe presented a huge diversity of themes and methodologies. Considering we were in Liverpool, the Beatles naturally had their fair share of attention – several dedicated papers, many references to their music, and two out of three keynote lectures. Walter Everett's keynote was a good example of the kind of technically specific music analysis that is more than worthwhile for understanding the historical and stylistic development of music. On this occasion Everett, faithful to his style, gave an intriguing and detailed description of the main musical influences and borrowings of the Beatles in 1963. On the other hand, Allan Moore as a scholar represents a more philosophical approach: music analysis is important, but not self-sufficient; analysis should serve the study of musical meaning. In his keynote he called for a better dialogue between popular musicology and popular music cultural studies. While addressing the problem of different analytical languages, the possibilities of combining the two disciplines were illustrated with a practical example (the ambiguity of who sings the lead melody of ‘Love me do’?) that must have been rewarding for representatives of both parties. Indeed, dialogue and collaboration between disciplines is very important – division and dispute ultimately work against both. This of course needs the will, at the very least, to try and speak a language that both sides understand. Philip Tagg's lifetime work, some of which he presented (surprisingly not as a keynote speaker), is a good example of this sort of effort.

The presentations covered a variety of music styles ranging from mainstream and controversial pop to jazz, various folk music traditions, hip-hop, punk, progressive rock and heavy metal. However, Western popular music, aka global pop, was not totally dominating due to the presence of participants from all round the world. Themes included Japanese, Andalusian, Cuban, South American and African musics, just to mention a few.

Speaking about methods, according to the papers presented at the conference, traditional theories and analyses of music still seem to have their place in popular music studies. Popular music analysis is a young academic discipline and it still lacks a commonly approved analytical methodology. Traditional tools are there, so why not use them? Theories such as those of Schenker and Riemann offer a common and convenient vocabulary, although it has to be admitted that this is true mainly for musicologists. Many of the speakers seemed to share this line of thinking. Traditional methods are, of course, most suitable for analysing the kind of popular music that in its vocabulary has much in common with the so-called common practice Western art music. Personally I enjoyed Julian Horton's analysis of Genesis and Maxime Cottin's paper about symmetrical formations in the music of King Crimson. Another fine example of style analysis was Christopher Doll's use of commonly accepted tools of harmonic analysis to very effectively describe the conventions of pop-rock harmony. As Mark Johnson showed, traditional analytic tools may also illuminate the compositional structures of Norwegian black metal – once you get over the overwhelming sonic chaos of extremely distorted guitar sounds. In some cases a theory of music was clearly the starting point. Ben Curry's analysis of Robert Johnson and David Heetderk's analysis of postmillennial rock were based on neo-Riemannian theories. While I am not totally convinced about their outcomes, I strongly think that for a detailed historical and stylistic analysis of music we need tools, which is where the need for developing new theories and analytical tools comes in. In this work both Curry and Heetderk succeeded very well. My overall impression is that a delightful trend seems to be that scholars nowadays readily admit that there might be shortcomings in a particular theory.

A growing trend seems to be the use of computer-assisted music analysis. Rhythm and timbre are the most understudied musical parameters, mainly due to the lack of proper analytical tools. Relatively new tools such as spectral analysis, which has not been widely used or even easily available until rather recently, will certainly improve the understanding of difficult rhythmic concepts such as groove. This was very effectively shown by the third keynote speaker, Anne Danielsen, who happily seems to have her share of followers. Furthermore, computer-assisted analysis will certainly benefit timbre quality research. As in the case of heavy metal guitar distortion as presented by Ciro Scotto, hard data provides effective means to understand the stimulus (‘what?’) that creates the various responses (‘what does it mean?’). Indeed, these and other technically oriented presentations can be seen as invitations for subsequent socioculturally oriented analyses.

Popular music education also made an appearance. Ralf von Appen, André Doehring and Markus Frei-Hauenschild addressed a fundamental question of the value of popular music in music education – is this deceptively simple music worth teaching? Most certainly it is, as was seen in a plenary session and roundtable ending the conference that suggested we should ‘start with what you know’ in music education. Even if the constructivist approach was not ground breaking for those who have extensive experience of music pedagogy, it is extremely important to keep this topic visible. This is especially true in the field of popular music studies which nowadays is as legitimate an academic field as any other. As far as I know, humanities in general have three main purposes: to know culture, to preserve culture and to create culture. For this we need detailed historical and stylistic knowledge, and education based on that knowledge.

In this kind of short report it feels unfair to mention only a very limited number of papers but, as always happens, you can only be present at one of four parallel sessions, and hence miss a lot of presentations. For a scholar from a small country such as Finland, even an opportunity to meet colleagues sharing an interest in both popular music and music analysis is a rare delight indeed.