British Forum for Ethnomusicology Online Autumn Conference 2024 (hosted by the University of Southampton): ‘Creative Writing, Music and Ethnography’

Report by Hettie Malcomson (University of Southampton; conference convenor)

Autumn 2024 is marked by war, climate disaster, and crises in the academic world: funding cuts, departments being closed, battles about what constitutes valuable knowledge. It is increasingly clear that knowledge is not enough to change people's views about the world. Conventional academic writing is hard to read; barely read. Yet, stories … stories are creative, fun, sensory, emotional. Stories move people, bring hope. Writing creatively can help us, academics, communicate knowledge to academic communities, to other audiences, in ways that can be heard. 

This BFE Autumn conference focused on aesthetic, epistemological, methodological and phenomenological and ethical issues that experimental writing engenders in musicological and ethnographic texts. As convenor, I introduced the conference, pointing to significant milestones in the history of experimental ethnographic writing – Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men (1935); the "literary turn" of the 1980s and 1990s, which questioned boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity, reality and fiction; work exploring embodied experience, and form. Since then, awareness of positionality and power has increased, and privileged scholars generally do less ‘naval-gazing’. Of note, is how many researchers who have experimented with forms of representation are people of colour, particularly Black women, older white women, queer folks, and/or people working in violent contexts.

The conference included three panels: the first two papers were cancelled at the last minute, so instead participants wrote and spoke about aged and musical sensory experiences. Then Yusheng Lei sonic ethnographied in Xi’an, reflecting on sensory loss and field-noting to reimagine urban historiography and ethnographic writing. Steve Wilford moved us with his autoethnographic writings on grief and his Romani heritage. Jiaxi Xie zoomed in from the Thai-Burmese border to share fragments of research on music and war. Gunseli Naz Ferel Ucar soundscaped an experimental composition, incorporating field recordings and autoethnographic writings interrogating affect in Istanbul's electronic dance music scene. Thomas Hilder storied on vulnerability and LGBTQ+ choral activism, exploring voice, positionality, and queer politics. Samantha Sebastian uttered analytical transcriptions to analyse the embodied and material qualities of voice in intercultural choral settings. Joe Browning guided us along a mountain path, sharing intersubjective possibilities of walking and listening; eco-art, embodiment and affect. Discussions were rich: thought and soul provoking.

Led by BFE Chair, Fiorella Montero Diaz, we then all came together to chew over how writing creatively can challenge and complement conventional academic writing. Five-minute interventions were offered by Sean Williams around poetry and ethnography; me, Hettie, on point of view in ethnographic writing; Liz Gre, who conjured their experimentation with ‘endarkened storywork’ and composition;  Richard Wolf, who explicated how his writing on dream emerged; and Amanda Hsieh, who shared centring dialogue when curating reviews. A really rich discussion ensued, moving from apotropaic magic to critical forms of empathy to ‘slap’ our audiences.

The online format facilitated a mix of 171 Masters and PhD students, early-career researchers, and more experienced scholars from 28 countries to register for the conference. 102 people attended, spanning several time zones, and there were around 50 participants at any one time throughout the day. Despite some technical glitches, feedback was positive, with participants expressing gratitude for the opportunity to share work in a supportive, thought-provoking and trusted environment.

The conference was co-organised by Cassandre Balosso-Bardin (KU Leuven), the BFE’s current Conference Liaison Officer, and I, and the programming committee consisted of: Cassandre Balosso-Bardin, Erin Johnson-Williams (University of Southampton), Liz Gre (University of Southampton), Lea Hagmann (University of Bern) and Stina Homer (Open University) and me. Support was provided by Morgan Davies (BFE), Peter Underwood (BFE) and Fernanda Muñoz Salazar (University of Southampton). A massive thanks to all for another fabulous BFE event!

Report by George O. Speck

Running from 10-12^th January at Cardiff University, the collaborative nature of the BFE-RMA Conference always leads to an environment of fruitful interdisciplinarity. This year was no different, and a wonderful way to kick off the new calendar year. Whilst presenters unable to travel were able to make use of Zoom, 2024 also adopted a fully in-person format for attendees, allowing us to all benefit from free-flowing conversations in coffee and lunch breaks. Not to mention a fabulous trip to Tŷ Cerdd (Music Centre Wales) and the Wales Millennium Centre for those on-the-ball enough to sign up in time!

Over 3 days the conference played host to a staggering 80 postgraduate papers, 4 electroacoustic performances (music by Stephen Jackson Banks, Jérémie Martineau, Rachael Gibson and Juan Hernández), 4 training discussions, 2 keynotes, musical workshops and panels, and one captivating evening concert (the wonderful Trio Anima, performing music by John Dowland, Nathan James Dearden, Hilary Tann and Claude Debussy). The presentations and recitals were divided into 30 sessions by theme, all tied together by the common concept of ‘Identity’.

There was a clear sense that the quality of student research on show was outstanding, and a number of sessions that I attended tied in to ‘Identity’ in especially interesting ways. At one of the opening sessions, the methodological contrast between Anna Tharia’s (University of Liverpool) historically grounded investigation of the ‘Relationship Between Place and Class Identity in the Beatles’ Ascent to Fame’, and Luigi Monteanni’s (SOAS, University of London) ethnographic deep-dive into the connection between ‘Extreme Metal Ideology’ and ‘Countryside Imagery in West Java’ showcased the advantage of the broad theme, with the resultant discussion benefitting from the input of multiple backgrounds.

Dr E. Falade, presenting on “Queering the Black Musical Atlantic”. Photo by BFE/RMA Twitter page.

A personal favourite was the session grounded by our geography and dedicated to Welsh Perspectives, in which Isabel Grace Thomas (University of Newcastle), Fenella Briggs (Cardiff University) and Roddy O’Keeffe (MTU Cork School of Music) delivered papers on the ‘Tensions between Industrial Heritage and Music Practices in Working Men's Clubs of the South Wales Valleys’, ‘Welsh National Identity, Music and the Master at the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, 1969’ and ‘The Guinness Choir at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod, 1964 and 1967’, respectively. As we return to fully in-person conferencing, special mention must also go to those who travelled from afar to be with us this year. For instance, Kelwin Mateus Monteiro (University of Aveiro) travelled all the way from India to present on the construction of a New Historical Identity of Goa in Dulpods.

This year’s evening keynotes were given by Dr Gabrielle Messeder (City, University of London) and Dr Saeid Kordmafi (SOAS, University of London). Reflecting the interdisciplinary setting, the presenters had diverging approaches to their musical study. On the Wednesday, Dr Messeder showed us the continuing value of ethnography as explorations of the praxis of musical communities. The explored cases of samba musicians in the Lebanese wedding industry are stark examples of both the musical and practical issues that performers working in diasporic communities continue to face, from the need to ‘tropicalise’ their work to the pressure they can face from immigration regulations.

Dr Gabrielle Messeder, delivering the Jerome Roche Keynote Lecture. Photo by BFE/RMA Twitter page.

The day after, Dr Kordmafi provided sharp insight into the value of Artistic Research as a means of exploring and transforming a musical style and community. In his case, this was a move to revive an Iranian classical style perceived as stagnant by incorporating ‘transnationality’ and increasing rhythmic interplay in improvisations. Both presentations were grounded in the scholars’ own experiences and were supplemented with useful video examples to directly highlight the phenomena under discussion. This contributed to an impressive clarity of message in both keynotes, aided further by the speakers’ impressive responses to questions from their audience.

Dr Saeid Kordmafi’s BFE Keynote. Photo by BFE/RMA Twitter page.

On top of the excellent scholarly content, the presentation skill level on display was also noticeably high. I would personally reserve special commendation for those who were doing so for the first time in their careers, all of whom took to the task of delivering their research naturally. I wouldn’t have been able to work out who the first-timers were, such was their ability to deliver their research like an experienced speaker!

Jimmy Goeijenbier, playing as a part of a lecture-recital on Performing the Commissioned Works of the Dublin International Piano Competition. Photo by BFE/RMA Twitter page.

Another highlight were the two practical workshops of Javanese Gamelan and Collective Improvisation, providing a delightful contrast to the surrounding presentations and grounding the conference through their focus on practical music-making. We also benefitted from four training sessions, a great forum for postgraduates to hear the practical expertise of established scholars in areas such as academic resilience, the path to successful publishing and chairing sessions at conferences. The final day also included an insightful panel discussion on the challenges that scholars can face freely expressing viewpoints within the field, notable for its focus on the realistic action that can be taken in this area. All of these discussions were incredibly useful for early-career scholars as they look to enter and contribute to the academic industry in meaningful ways.

Javanese Gamelan workshop. Photo by BFE/RMA Twitter page

The warmest of thanks must be given to all the students and staff at Cardiff University who worked tirelessly to help deliver a wonderful three days of idea-exchange for the postgraduate musical community. Thanks also goes to the technology team, both for their role in facilitating the smooth running of slides and their facilitation of online presentations, without which several of us would not have been able to share our research. They now pass the BFE-RMA torch on to the University of Aberdeen, who are due to host the 2025 edition.

Bio: George Speck is a second year PhD candidate at City, University of London. His research focuses on the experiences of jazz musicians participating in Networked Music Performances.

Report by Ellen Stokes

The annual BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference, a collaborative event between the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Royal Musical Association, was held at the University of Plymouth from 6-8 January 2022. The conference is always a wonderful opportunity for graduate researchers to present their work, with a wide array of topics and approaches to music facilitated through the combined interests of the organising associations. The conference ran in a hybrid format, allowing for researchers who were unable to travel to attend, as well as fostering the in-person conference feeling that we have all been missing in the last couple of years! Both the staff and students at the University of Plymouth worked hard across the conference to ensure a smooth running of this hybrid set-up, which made for a largely successful interaction between those in the room and those on Zoom.

Over the course of the three days, there was an extraordinary array of topics presented, with 35 sessions comprised of 88 student papers, compositions, and lecture-recitals. Topics ranged from eighteenth-century music and opera to country and pop music, performance practice, current compositional outputs, responses to the pandemic, and the Porthcawl Elvis Festival. Complementing these student-led sessions were keynote lectures and training sessions that gave further insight and support regarding academic life and ECR trajectories. Finally, two composition sessions with the Hermes Experiment and electroacoustic composers showed the wide range of research carried out in the field.

Two keynote lectures were given at the conference:  Dr Amanda Hsieh’s ‘From Hasegawa’s Terakoya to Weingartner’s Die Dorfshule’, and Dr Lyndsey Copeland’s ‘On Touching: Techniques of the ear in online genres’. Both papers presented contrasting topics and approaches to research, reflecting the interdisciplinary setting fostered by the collaboration of the BFE and RMA. I found the breadth of these topics particularly engaging in their approaches to the subjects, presenting work that was stimulating both in terms of content and research strategies. Hsieh’s RMA keynote used Hasegawa and Weingartner’s works as anchors for a wider discussion on Japanese-German relations in the early twentieth century, weaving together aspects of politics, cultural exchange, and gender studies to present a fascinating insight into the musical and historical links between these two nations. On the opposite side of the research spectrum, Copeland’s BFE keynote focussed on the contemporary topic of digital media for private listening. Inspired by the rise in ASMR and its associated genres throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Copeland guided her audience through this online world and the technologies utilised to combine social and scientific studies focussed around the auditory role of the ear in such intimate settings.

We were fortunate to have the expertise of these keynote speakers not only for their own research presentations, but also for a Q&A training session. It was a great opportunity to hear about the career trajectories of both academics, and ask our own questions as to pursuing academia and for the advice of two researchers who have both been through the post-doctoral/ early career stages recently. Other training sessions organised throughout the conference included a session on mental health for research students, which included the official launch of the new RMA-affiliated Music and Mental Health Group, run alongside a session about the EDIMS Parenting and Caring Working Group, as well as training on Articulating Practice Research. These training sessions covered a wide range of focusses, and it was good to see attention on the holistic as well as academic across the conference.

Due to the wide-ranging parallel sessions that ran across the three days, I am not able to comment on all sessions, however will focus on some of the papers and panels that particularly stood out to me. Two sessions on women musicians presented important research being carried out into a number of performers and composers, including Clara Wieck-Schumann (Ning Hui See, Royal College of Music) and Czech women composers (Barbora Vacková, University of Huddersfield). In the first of these sessions, Rachel Watson (King’s College London) gave insight into an organisation active in the late-nineteenth century in her paper ‘Imitating Vienna? The Baden-Baden Lady Orchestra at the Royal Aquarium’. The focus of female musicians active in London organisations was picked up again in the second of these sessions by Anastasia Zaponidou (Bangor University) whose research centres upon May Mukle in ‘A Life in Paper: Exploring the Activities of the Female Cellist in the Society of Women Musicians’. A session on Music and Authorship provided insight into these issues across a number of historical and contemporary settings, with papers by Céleste Pagniello (Princeton University), Clive Mead (University of Plymouth) and Eirini Diamantouli (University of Cambridge) covering topics of authorship in ballet, composing without credit, and Soviet Union songs in the Greek resistance. These threads of historical and contemporary research into issues of gender, identity, and theatre were also addressed in research concerning operatic settings. Tomos Watkins (University College Dublin) presented on ‘White self-fashioning in Les Indes galantes’, addressing eighteenth-century representations of race and gender in France. In the same session, Ali McGowan (Edinburgh Napier University) presented current thought on expression and self-actualisation as realised in new perspectives on operas in ‘Queering Carmen – telling trans and nonbinary stories in the current operatic canon’.

On Thursday 6^th, The Hermes Experiment were the ‘in house’ ensemble (on ‘The House’ Stage) for a composition workshop, allowing for the professional performance of a number of student works. The composers received a filmed recording of their piece as well as valuable feedback from the members of the prestigious ensemble. On Friday 7^th, electroacoustic composers assembled in the House to listen to and discuss their pieces in a session led by Dr Archer Endrich and Dr Núria Bonet (University of Plymouth). A poster competition also ran throughout the event, which was sponsored by Cambridge University Press. The winning entry by Yanyi Lu (University of Hull) was titled ‘Second language singing curriculum design: learning Mandarin through singing’.

As always, this year’s BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference was a wonderful way to begin 2022, and special thanks must be given to Dr Núria Bonet and all at the University of Plymouth for hosting so successfully, and facilitating a warm and welcoming environment for new and returning students alike. Looking ahead, the next conference will be held at Northumbria University from 10-12 January 2023.

Report by Ellen Stokes (University of Huddersfield)

Ellen Stokes is a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Huddersfield, whose work focuses on the instrumental manuscripts of Antonio Salieri.

Additional information by Núria Bonet (University of Plymouth)

Report by Rowan Bayliss Hawitt

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that 2020 was a disorientating year to be a research student. Imagine my delight, then, at remembering that there are others out there doing excellent work, even if we haven’t come together in person for many months. Such was the effect of the 2021 BFE-RMA Research Students’ Conference, which took place (online) from January 12^th–14^th. Hosted by the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, the conference brought together students from a wide array of institutions (and time zones) for three days of paper presentations, professional development sessions, and keynotes.

After a welcome address from chair Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth (representing the BFE) and co-chair Professor Katharine Ellis (representing the Faculty of Music, Cambridge), the paper presentations began. Needless to say, with four or five sessions at once, the diversity of topics and issues was enormous. Panels themed on postcolonial perspectives, music and wellbeing, and performance studies sat alongside those on digital musicology, queer musical methodologies, and composition workshops.

The reclamation of untold musical stories and suppressed agencies was a recurrent theme across several of the sessions. Alice Masterton (University of York), for instance, invited us to explore how we remember female musicians after they have died, pointing out that posthumous narratives of Janice Joplin’s career framed her as especially vulnerable to substance abuse and hedonism in a way her male colleagues were not. Attending to the often moralising way in which Joplin was characterised after her death, Alice argued that taking such characterisations at face value risks further undermining Joplin’s agency. Meg Hyland (University of Edinburgh) drew on ethnographic sound archives to explore the Gaelic songs of Scottish female herring gutters in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She showed that this repertoire was excluded from contemporary accounts of Gaelic work song, in turn emphasising the central role oral histories can play in redressing the balance of canonical social history.

The disruption of hegemonic ideals was a stimulating and important thread throughout the conference. Irfan Rais (Bangor University) sketched out the limitations of Western notated musical theory; his compelling alternative theory of musical grammar employs sound recordings and concepts from descriptive linguistics as part of efforts to decolonise music studies. Like Irfan, Alex Ho (Royal College of Music) explored the tensions (productive and otherwise) which can emerge in cross-cultural music-making. Facilitated by a collective listening of his piece …chinese whispers… Alex outlined the reciprocal relationship between his own identity and creative processes, while also highlighting the ongoing racism experienced by British-Chinese communities.

Interspersing the fascinating paper sessions was a well-curated series of professional development panels. From insights into getting published (always know your audience) to applying for postdoctoral positions (build upon rather than extend your PhD topic), these discussions covered issues which everyone seems expected to know about, but nobody seems to talk about. Refreshing indeed! While the intended Gamelan workshops could not go ahead, a pre-recorded performance with commentary was provided to watch at delegates’ leisure. Coaching sessions with researchers were also made available; I gained many brilliant nuggets of knowledge from Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, up to and including her thoughts on Arab-Andalusian cosmology. An eye-opening panel on careers beyond academia showcased just how useful a postgraduate degree can be in many professions – ever since the panel, I have been intensely jealous of Dr Janet Topp Fargion’s job at the British Library.

This was a conference which very much responded to events of the last year; not just in the necessity of an online format, but in the attention given to structural hierarchies and inequalities which have recently come further to the fore. Dr Emily MacGregor gave the keynote on behalf of the RMA, focussing her paper on the symphony in 1933. She demonstrated that the reception histories of symphonies by the likes of Kurt Weill and Florence Price indicate that it is a genre which remains implicated in racial hierarchies and questions about who is ‘worthy’ of being a symphonist. The BFE keynote, delivered by Dr Thomas R. Hilder, dealt with the hierarchies which pervade academia itself. In a moving autoethnographic ‘storying’ of his experiences as a queer music scholar today, Hilder outlined the ethical stakes at play in teaching and learning from students, especially in light of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. According to Hilder, storytelling is not ‘telling’, but ‘sharing’, not ‘authority’ but ‘involvement’; this is certainly what he and MacGregor achieved in their keynotes, which both invited listeners to investigate their own positionality. A most fitting end to the conference, then, came in a discussion session hosted by the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group and the recently-formed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network (EDIMS). Representatives from each set out the urgent and important work to be done on decolonisation and equality in music education. The ensuing conversation with students in attendance underscored the need for intersectionality and offered compelling practicable insights into how these goals might be achieved.

The BFE-RMA Conference, I feel, continued many vital conversations, while also opening up new ones – I very much look forward to hearing more about these at next year’s conference, hosted by the University of Plymouth. For three days this year, though, I found myself forgetting I was sitting at the same desk I’ve been stuck at for months, such was the spirit of warmth and social and intellectual company. I, for one, owe a great deal of thanks to the conference committee and all who took part for brightening what was an otherwise decidedly odd start to 2021.

Rowan Bayliss Hawitt (University of Edinburgh)

Report by Rashel Pakbaz

Images by Gerard Giorgi-Coll

The 2020 annual BFE-RMA Research Student Conference sponsored jointly by the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Royal Musical Association was hosted by the Open University’s Music Department from 9 to 11 of January 2020 at the OU’s Walton Hall campus in Milton Keynes.

UK and international graduate and post graduate students presented their research in an inclusive, welcoming, and encouraging atmosphere. The conference also comprised of other events such as training workshops, informal performances and social events.

Participants were offered an array of interesting topics including papers in relation to music and pedagogy, opera, analysis, instruments, history, health and wellbeing, popular music, place, religion, politics, autoethnography, technology, identity, gender, women, fandom, film, and dance. The conference programme also included lecture-recitals and sessions on compositional processes, as well as composition workshops. Each presentation concluded with a conversation. Highlights included the session on music and politics, which surveyed the music making scene in twenty-first century China, and music and fandom, which focused on the audience and their activities in relation to popular music songs and artists. Both of these sessions were followed by a lively discussion.

Katherine Butler Schofield

Keynote lectures were given by Katherine Butler Schofield from King’s College, London and Sean Curran from the University of Cambridge. In the BFE Lecture, “Archives Differing: The Practice of Global Music History and the Paracolonial Indian Ocean, c. 1760-1860”, Dr Butler Schofield presented the trials and benefits of bringing different types of colonial archives from the Bay of Bengal and Malay together in order to investigate the ways in which music and sound were produced. The RMA Roche Lecture by Dr Curran, “Music Writing and Music History in a Thirteenth-Century Song”, discussed ideas around power and the documenting musical works in the thirteenth century.

Sean Curren and Simon McVeigh

Training sessions at the conference involved discussions about how to explore and plan careers, publication, funding applications and resilience-building. A career consultant and an expert on research grant applications from staff at the Open University led the workshops on career planning and finding funds. These sessions helped attendees to explore different industries outside academia where music graduates can seek jobs and how to write a successful bid for funding for postdoctoral programmes. Four music academics shared their valuable experiences with the attendees at workshops on “Thinking about Publication” and “Resilience-building for Research Students”.

During the day, participants engaged in informal conversations at tea and coffee breaks and continued socialising and networking during wine receptions in the evening. The 2020 BFE-RMA Research Student Conference provided participants with a friendly environment to present their works, learn from each other’s research experiences and meet new scholars. Congratulations and many thanks to the conference committee and the Music Department at the Open University.

Report by Nuria Bonet Filella

The Music, Wellbeing and Mental Health Study Day and Workshop Day took place at Hereford College of Arts on 11 and 12 May 2019; it was organised between the Royal Musical Association, Hereford College of Arts, the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, and the National Association for Music in Higher Education. The Saturday programme included a range of papers by students and early-career researchers, which displayed the latest research around the effects of music on wellbeing and mental health, as well as musicians’ health. On the Sunday, the delegates took part in different workshops that explored similar themes practically.

Following on from the success of the event at York St John last year, Hereford College of Arts and popular music lecturer Rosario Mawby welcomed the event to their institution with open arms. The technical set-up was carried out by undergraduate students who actively participated in the event; it was great to have them participate in important conversations around music and mental health!

Study Day on Music and Health

The first session of the study day was centred around the theme of the wellbeing of musicians. Marriana Cortesi (University of York) discussed the effect of competitions on musicians’ mental health. Davinia Bailach Cabrerizo (University of Derby) presented her excellent undergraduate dissertation for which she examined the effect of wellbeing session for young musicians at a local conservatoire in Spain. Finally, Nellinne Rannaweera (Royal Northern College of Music) showed her study into musicians’ leisure activities. While the session flagged up the potential risks to wellbeing and mental health that high-performing music students incur, there is also a high rate of personal satisfaction among conservatoire students, for example, and musicians’ health can be improved through specific interventions and leisure activities.

Session 2 included a paper on the therapeutic use of music in care home settings by Anthony Mangiacotti (University of Padua and Middlesex University) and a paper by Sara Clethero (Brunel University) on the benefits of musical activity for autistic people. Finally, Rosario Mawby (Hereford College of Arts) used her own experiences of music in academia to launch a discussion on what individuals can do to lead positive change in wellbeing and mental health.

After a tasty and regenerative lunch, Lucinda Heyman (Royal College of Music) kicked off the third session with a paper focusing on the health of popular musicians. She explained, for example, that while younger artists might be more aware of and willing to talk about this topic, younger music students are also increasingly worried that a career in the arts would negatively affect their health. A possible answer to this conundrum might lie in Alfia Nakipbekova (University of Leeds) and Caterina McEvoy (University of Sheffield) presentation. The cellist and composer, respectively, showed the relationships between music performance and martial arts, and how their own practice in both fields interact with each other. The paper was illustrated by a performance of their piece of Flux and Flow. Caterina’s captivating soundscapes accompanied Alfia’s performance on an electric cello; including Qi Gong movements and strings played by a sword!

The study day concluded with Claudia Nader’s (University of York) paper on the potential use of the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) to treat mental health conditions. This is the sensation that we might get when hearing someone whispering or crunching a piece of paper, for example; often described as a ‘tingling’. The presentation included live performances of sounds intended to provoke an ASMR experience in the listeners. The lively discussions that were initiated during the study day were continued during the dinner at an excellent local curry house.

Workshop Day

The Sunday was reserved for practical sessions around some of the topics that had been explored the previous day, with some of the presenters also delivering a workshop. Case in point, Sara Clethero ran a singing session like the ones that she runs for autistic adults. The participation of one of her regular attendees proved insightful as he gave us an ‘inside’ perspective to the sessions. Then, Alfia Nakipbekova – a Tai Chi champion as well as a cellist - delivered an energising Qi Gong session during which she explored movements that are both accessible but useful to musicians and their wellbeing. We made the most of the beautiful weather and the session took place on the lawn of the College’s Edwardian building!

Before lunch, Claudia Nader taught the delegates how to record sounds that might produce an ASMR sensation. Armed with individual headphones, many of the delegates joined in and explored the close micing of everyday sounds; they included keys, zips, paper clips, etc. After an inspiring morning, the delicious lunch gave everyone a chance to continue debating issues around music, wellbeing and mental health.

They ‘keynote’ workshop was led by Sarah Brand (Guildhall School of Music and Drama). The experience trombonist and music therapist introduced us to teaching music therapy students how to improvise in a therapeutic setting. The fascinating hands-on session was also a chance for the undergraduate HCA students to improvise and engage with the event. Sarah was able to answer the delegates’ many questions and overall was an excellent workshop leader. Energised by Sarah’s session, the day’s last workshop was introduced by Greg Leutchford from the Hereford-based mental health services provider Oak House, who gave an introduction to music therapy sessions currently running in Hereford. This led to a final discussion during which all delegates were asked to give any feedback or thoughts they wished to. The overwhelming feeling was that the discussions that we had during the weekend need to be continued. We also need to find ways to talk to a wider public who might not be aware of issues around wellbeing and mental health, or what can be done about them.

This was another successful edition of Music, Wellbeing and Mental Health and we hope that it will continue to happen. Hereford College of Arts was a very welcoming host institution which set the perfect scene for a weekend of music and discussions.

Report by Andrew Green

Images by Stephen Wilford

The theme of this year’s BFE One-Day Conference was Beyond Memory and Reconciliation: Music, Conflict and Social Manipulation in Post-Conflict Contexts. It was held at Keele University – where ethnomusicology has only recently become part of the Music curriculum – and organized very smoothly by Dr Fiorella Montero Diaz. The conference was highly international, with speakers travelling from France, Spain, Japan and the United States, as well as the UK.

This year was a highly enjoyable and informative conference which showcased some of the excellent research being done on music and conflict across the world. Equally, it served to highlight for this attendee the enormous challenges that ethnomusicologists face in seeking to address the often desperate, fragile situations conflict leaves behind, and keep up with the frighteningly complex new forms that conflict can take.

The impetus for focusing on conflict and post-conflict from an ethnomusicological standpoint is very clear: we have long observed music’s use as a means of processing grief, for coming to terms with otherwise inexpressible experiences of social breakdown, and for trying to heal divides and get along together after conflict. More recent research has also highlighted music’s role in driving conflict and constructing out-group enemies. Yet this is also an area of study whose comparative absence from the literature has historically frustrated some ethnomusicologists, so it’s heartening to see how much new research is being carried out on music, conflict and post-conflict.

The day opened with a panel on “Musical nostalgias and nationalisms in conflict and post-conflict”. Violeta Ruano (Independent Scholar) spoke about musical creativity as a means of constructing national identity in the Saharawi diaspora, in an ongoing ceasefire which had left Saharawi in a state of uncertainty. Marta Amico (University of Rennes 2) then gave a detailed paper on the ways that Tuareg groups in urban Mali perform nostalgia for nomadic desert life. In the context of a conflict involving the Malian state and Saharan nomadic peoples, such performances allowed Tuareg to construct a community which resisted the frames of the national state. Finally, Eric Schmidt (Boston University) talked about his research in Niger, where the government sought to promote “ethnopreneurialism” and a “culture of peace” through an annual festival that presented nomadic forms of cultural expression to international tourists. It will be apparent that the papers of this panel were related in multiple ways – most notably through the common connection to the Sahara, but also with the underlying themes of mobility and marginality at the edges of state influence.

Panel 2, “Music Interventions in Post-Traumatic Contexts”, contained reflections both on applied ethnomusicology into post-conflict and on social research that drew ethnomusicologists uncomfortably close to conflict. Maya Youssef (SOAS, University of London) talked about her applied work with Syrian child refugees in Europe; she was followed by Yasuko Harada (Tokyo University of the Arts), who presented a critical perspective on musical interventions into conflict in Acholiland, Uganda. Hettie Malcomson (University of Southampton) concluded the panel by discussing rappers hired to write music for Mexican drug cartels. These scholars had wrestled with thorny methodological issues resulting from proximity to conflict. Youssef talked about her project to use music to help Syrian refugee children in Europe with post-traumatic stress disorder. Here practical challenges emerged relating to child-specific triggers for trauma. Malcomson’s research had, for a time, drawn her into dangerous territory, into a position of reliance on musicians deeply involved in cartel activities. These challenges pointed to a conclusion elaborated more directly during the evening session – that ethnomusicological interventions into situations of conflict or post-conflict are only likely to be effective if they pay attention to the distinct experiences of particular groups and individuals.

The day’s third session was entitled “The Role of Music in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies”. Kelso Molloy (New York University) looked at the ways that Roger Waters has adapted live performances of the album The Wall to new political contexts – from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the emergence of far-right politics in the present-day United States. Maria Rijo Lopes da Cunha (SOAS, University of London) provided an in-depth focus on one song, “Autism” by Mustafa Said, which “noisified” contemporary Lebanese music and, Lopes da Cunha argued, subverted traditional notions of state and nation in the process. Focusing on a venue rather than a piece, Stephen Millar (Cardiff University) spoke about The Rock in Belfast, a centre for republican “rebel music” used to cultivate identities of resistance and construct a sense of (unified) Irish nationhood. As Millar told us, this venue has found itself the target of attacks from across the sectarian divide, including an attempting bombing. Ariana Phillips-Hutton (University of Cambridge) concluded the panel on a more theoretical note, focusing on the aesthetics of testimonies about conflict – and prompting critical discussion on the role of empathy in motivating ethical action.

An ongoing point of debate is the use of music to commemorate victims of conflict and come to terms with traumatic histories. This was the subject of two of the contributors to the keynote roundtable at the end of the day. John Morgan O’Connell’s (Cardiff University) paper analysed a contemporary musical commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign sponsored by the Turkish Navy, based on a folk song, “Çanakkale Türküsü”. These performances constructed both a sense of unison and presented navy members as “regular Turks”. Yet ultimately, O’Connell concluded that such performances were rather duplicitous: they used musically presented reconciliation to conceal resurgent nationalism and dissimulate dissent within present-day Turkish society. Commemorations are especially complicated when one’s own community is identified as the perpetrator of atrocities. Felicity Laurence (Newcastle University) spoke about her role in a musical commemoration of the Holocaust in a small town in Germany in the 1990s. They recreated Brundibár, a children’s opera written in 1930s Czechoslovakia whose creators, along with most children performing in it, were sent to a concentration camp in Terezín; many were subsequently murdered in Auschwitz, including composer Hans Krása. The recreation represented an attempt to cope with a horrific past in a constructive fashion sensitive to the needs of the present.

Discussed during the morning session, and referenced during the evening, was the creation of a series of European military bases in the Sahara – something which could be interpreted as a new European frontier within Africa. In recent years refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa have been used by the far right in Europe in order to gain a political foothold, even as European governments’ hostility to refugees has been reflected in, for example, repeated instances of European coast guards opening fire upon refugee boats in the Mediterranean. This formed the background for the roundtable talk given by Rachel Beckles-Willson (Royal Holloway, University of London). Discussing an applied recording project with refugees on the island of Sicily, Beckles-Willson showed us how WhatsApp had been used not only to co-ordinate these activities, but to allow participants to openly express their feelings about this process. It was yet another example of meeting survivors of conflict on their own terms: in this case, by embracing individuals’ “cyborg” status, and moving beyond popular notions of technological alienation.

Throughout the day, the temporality of conflict was a recurring theme. There’s certainly a need to move beyond temporally bound notions of “conflict” and “post-conflict” in a world in which cruelty has become increasingly normalized. While it’s very difficult to keep research up to date with recent political developments, the recent year has been full of instances of apparent “post-conflict” driving new conflict: during the conference a caravan of refugees fleeing Central America was making its way through Mexico, something that was leapt on by the US President to send the military to the US-Mexico border in an act of apparent political opportunism. Indeed, I also attended the conference thinking about recent news relevant to questions about “pre-conflict”. October’s report by the Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change concluded that dramatic action is needed in the next 12 years to mitigate the worst effects of global warming: flooding, more extreme weather events, and collapses in the food and water supply almost guaranteed to drive a long period of conflict over resources. The grief felt at the corresponding rapid disappearance of global biodiversity may be negotiated and expressed by participating in music, but we are also aware of contexts in which emotion itself is codified or expressed in musical dialogue with the natural world.

The ecocide brought upon by human overconsumption and (corporate) exploitation of our surroundings perhaps ought to broaden our definition of conflict: this is a violent process, but its long-term victims don’t yet exist, and its immediate victims are apparently voiceless creatures excluded from definitions of the term ‘music’ which are normative within our discipline. Well, there’s enough ethnomusicological literature that can tell us this: creatures under threat are only voiceless if we choose not to listen to them.

Andrew Green is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the University of Glasgow’s School of Culture and Creative Arts. His research focuses on music, politics and social change in Mexico.

Report by Helen Gubbins

Tea break in the foyer (Image by Morgan Davies)

The 2017 BFE One-Day conference, 'Listening to Difference': Music and Multiculturalism, was hosted by the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge on the 21^st of October 2017. Energised by a clear theme and a helpful preliminary literature review in the Call for Papers, the conference aimed (amongst other things) to examine the terms ‘multicultural’ and ‘intercultural’ in the light of recent immigration and increased political attention to migration and difference. Specifically, the conference aimed to explore the relationship of music to these terms. The conference focused its attention on how, in the UK and beyond, music ‘unveils social relations in multicultural societies at the level of day-to-day experiences’ (CFP).

The conference organisers asked for presenters to consider how music transcended or reinforced difference in settings we describe as multicultural, and they were rewarded with a diverse and engaging set of responses. The papers presented across the day covered both contemporary and historical contexts and methods, and took us on intellectual journeys across multiple countries and political and economical contexts. The day’s first speaker, Dr Toby Martin (University of Huddersfield), utilised a social media platform’s video chat facility to perform live with his musical collaborator, and to demonstrate some of the principles of their collaboration which he had introduced in his paper. This sparked a discussion amongst the delegates about tuning negotiations and other challenges presented by the interaction of musicians and instruments with different aesthetic systems, getting to the heart of the question of how music transcends or reinforces difference in multicultural settings.                                                                                   

In their co-authored paper, Dr Laudan Nooshin and Professor Amanda Bayley discussed how the term multicultural could mean many different things in diverse contexts; this became a recurring theme throughout the day’s proceedings. Indeed, several of the presentations that followed reiterated the idea that multiculturalism as a term is not always sufficiently clear in its meaning or use to be as effective as we need it to be in our research. A group of cosmopolitan musicians from different countries may have much more in common, Dr Nooshin argued, than they might have with musicians from rural areas of their own respective countries. She thus questioned the use of the term ‘multicultural’ as a marker of difference when commonalities of greater significance may exist.

Dr Phil Alexander (Image by Stephen Wilford)

Dr Victor Vicente (Chinese University of Hong Kong) considered Macau’s Lusofonia multicultural festival, its ethnically diverse audience, and the festival’s resultant expressions of both collective affinity and cultural alterity. He also reiterated some of the recurring challenges of ethnographic work; festival ethnographies are formed from large and necessarily incomplete data sets, and are accompanied by the age-old issues of coding, storage and maintenance. Dr Phil Alexander (University of Glasgow) put contemporary conceptualisations of the multicultural into relief with his historical descriptions of music and immigrant identity amongst Glasgow Jews of the early 20^th century.

Kate Walker (University of Sheffield) spoke about how music can be used expressly as a tool of soft power. Her presentation discussed how Wadaiko is used to promote British values in Japan and how these values are articulated with other state conceptualisations of Britishness. The paper of Luke Fowlie (University of Montreal) highlighted the use of music as a tool for retaining and transmitting cultural heritage, for increasing visibility, and for fostering conviviality in the intercultural context of Cameroonian cultural and development associations in Montreal. Dr Ulrike Präger (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) focused on a Syrian peace choir and their performance of a song, 'Janna', and its expression of resistance to the current political leadership in the country. This provided the context for her examination of the voice of the individual refugee and their motivations in the use of music to negotiate difference.

Raquel Campos Valverde (London South Bank University) presented a theoretical discussion of how music exemplifies difference, and how it has the potential to act as a tool for the articulation and contestation of regional and national identities. She asked why people post music online using social music and what others made of these postings. She placed her discussion in the context of recent political events in Catalonia and Spain, and examined the responses of research participants to these events online. Dr Laryssa Whittaker (Royal Holloway, University of London) discussed how musical and linguistic differences were 'accommodated' in the context of a post-apartheid South African church. She proposed that, in their drive beyond mere multicultural ‘coexistence’, linguistic differences sometimes created greater tensions for worshippers than musical differences.

Prof. Tina K Ramnarine and Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth (Image by Morgan Davies)

Our conceptualisations of the relationship between ‘indigenous’ and ‘immigrant’ and how a celebratory musical multiculturalism might be usefully calibrated formed one of the core themes of Professor Tina K. Ramnarine’s (Royal Holloway, University of London) keynote paper. In a talk full of musical examples, Prof. Ramnarine highlighted the challenges that music scholarship faces from contemporary political discourses and presented ‘multiculturalism’ as a term under pressure in contemporary times. By probing the idea of the ‘stranger’ – a figure she described as marking the intersection of multiculturalism and postcolonialism – she drew together several theoretical disagreements regarding the term ‘multiculturalism’. Moving us towards an 'analytical calibration of difference, xenophobia, and immigration', her paper resonated with points raised throughout the day.

Over the course of the day, it became clear that speakers found the term 'multicultural' to be useful, complex, but sometimes troubling. Many conference discussants agreed that the term can transmit multiple meanings in different musical contexts. While the conference set out to explore those meanings and contexts in greater depth, discussions after paper presentations returned to the question of the efficacy of the term ‘multiculturalism’ and whether other terms (such as ‘culturalism’) may instead perform a more effective role. Future publications from the research presented at this event will likely provide further conclusions in this regard.

Congratulations are due to conference host Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth (University of Cambridge) for organising such an interesting and engaging conference. Thanks are also due to the conference committee members and administrators: Dr Byron Dueck (The Open University), Dr Stephen Wilford (City, University of London), Dr Thomas Hodgson (King’s College London), Dr Rachel Adelstein, James Gabrillo and Daniel Jordan (all University of Cambridge); and to the BFE and the University of Cambridge for their support of the event.

The day ended with a conference dinner where organisers, speakers and attendees continued the discussion in a more informal setting over food and a glass of wine.

Helen Gubbins is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Sheffield. Her research investigates the mediation of music on Irish radio

Report compiled by Christina Homer and Hannah Marsden

The second joint Research Students’ Conference continued in the spirit of last year’s collaboration between the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Royal Musical Association. The sessions were grouped by theme, thereby encouraging discussion and sharing commonalities between our various subjects. The conference theme, “exploring musical practice”, threaded its way through many of the sessions, with lecture-recitals being a particular feature.

Two plenary training sessions offered advice from senior academics about archival sources and working with communities. Additionally, a plenary round table focussed on “practice and your PhD”, with expert practice-based academics offering valuable insights into their experiences.

Our two keynote speakers were Dr Kate Guthrie (University of Bristol), recipient of the 2015 Jerome Roche prize, and Prof. Anna Morcom, winner of the 2014 Alan Merriam Prize. Kate gave a fascinating historical paper about music education in boys’ grammar schools in 1950s’ England, with emphasis on the educational work of Sir Peter Maxwell Davis. She played a few examples of Maxwell Davis’s avant-garde pieces for the boys in his charge, which were very interesting to hear. This was a very accomplished paper with lots of well researched historical references; it was impressive especially in the light of how recently she qualified as an academic. An inspiration for all students!

Anna’s paper explored the performance of gender in Bollywood musicals and face-to-face dance contexts, drawing on ethnographic research conducted in India. As well as framing her research in gender and performance theory, Anna gave honest accounts of her own fieldwork experiences. It was clear she had thought about her audience of students, and it was appreciated. This was a thoughtful and fascinating keynote, with a seemingly effortless balance between theory and ethnographic experience.

The extra-special performance events provided by Canterbury Christchurch were particular highlights, and they couldn’t have been more different. An evening of installations and wine was provided by the Canterbury Christ Church University centre for practice-based research, and featured student work based around music and visual art. This was much appreciated and gave us a chance to visit the Sidney Cooper Gallery in the city centre. The following day, the Cantuar quartet gave a fun lunchtime concert full of quaffing and conviviality. Their repertoire comes from the historic Canterbury Catch Club, which was active in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Both events emphasised the scope for practice-based research across disciplines.

Congratulations are due to Vanessa Hawes and the rest of the committee, and we look forward to next year’s conference in Huddersfield.