RMA Study Day
Call For Papers

Caribbean and Latin American Music Study Day

Saturday 12 November 2011
University of Huddersfield
School of Music, Humanities and Media, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH

Guest Speaker Dr Henry Stobart (Royal Holloway, University of London)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The study of music from the Caribbean and Latin America has tended in the past to remain the preserve of ethnomusicologists and those writing on popular music. This study day intends to extend this area of academic research by also focussing on practice-led research in this area. In addition to historiographic and ethnomusicological studies on Caribbean and Latin American music forms we hope to incorporate performance as a main element. Alongside paper presentations we encourage submissions for lecture recitals and short performances. The aim is to bring together researchers from the fields of performance, musicology and ethnomusicology to enable new ways of researching this subject.

Possible music areas in a range of national settings could include:

• Tango in Buenos Aires or elsewhere in the world
• Cuban musics
• Brazilian musics
• English-speaking Caribbean forms (such as pan, soca, reggae and calypso)
• Salsa (in all its manifestations)
• Traditional and Modern Latin American forms from Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia etc
• Jazz from the Caribbean

Although not restricted to specific themes, possible topics could include:

• Performance as research
• Exoticism in Latin American music
• Approaches to the analysis of world musics
• The influence of Latin music on popular Anglo-American styles
• A critique of participant-observer methods of ethnomusicological fieldwork
• Film music
• The spiritual in the secular
• Migration and trans-cultural exchange
• Cultural policy and how it affects musicians’ lives on the ground
• The African aesthetic in New World forms
• The relationship between Iberian and New World musical forms
• Latin American music in the global marketplace

Abstracts of no more than 200 words are invited for papers (20 minutes duration followed by 10 minutes for questions) and for lecture presentations or performances (30 minutes with 15 minutes for questions).

Abstracts need to be submitted by the 15 of September 2011 to Sue Miller s.miller@charangasue.com for consideration by the programme committee. Proposals from those pursuing practice-led research are particularly welcome.

Conference committee:
Jessica Quiñones (University of Huddersfield),  Sue Miller (University of Leeds), Rachel Hayward (City University)

See http://www.rma.ac.uk/conferences for further details