Conference reports

BFE Study Day: Sounding Ethnicity

BFE Study Day: Sounding Ethnicity, 30 April 2016

Report compiled by Stephanie Ford and Christina Homer

The BFE Sounding Ethnicity Study Day was a wonderfully stimulating and diverse event for students and experts alike of ethnomusicology and other related disciplines. Showcasing the interdisciplinarity of the field and its wide variety of approaches, papers presented by the eight invited speakers and a keynote address delivered by Professor Martin Stokes provided a myriad of new perspectives and considerations on the topic of music and ethnicity.

Organised by Dr Lonán Ó Briain, Assistant Professor at the Department of Music at the University of Nottingham and supported by both the BFE and the British Academy, the day got off to a promising start. Topics covered in the first session included concepts of resistance and resilience in Hmong musical and cultural identity in Vietnam (Dr Lonán Ó Briain), the representation of song and dance in Uyghur and Muslim transnational identity in China (Dr Rachel Harris) and the emergence of ‘sonic icons’ and the charting of soundworlds in Korea (Professor Keith Howard).

There were abundant opportunities for participants to learn from one another and find points of commonality, as well as the opportunity for lively and intelligent debate. This was the case in the following session on Laz musical culture and ethnicity in Turkey, with speakers Professor Thomas Solomon and Dr Eliot Bates engaging with various opinions and questions from the floor after their illuminating presentations on different aspects of Laz musical ethnicity.

A break for lunch offered the chance to chat about the day’s presentations and hear about the interests and research of other participants. The variety and liveliness of these conversations once again demonstrated the wonderful diversity that currently exists within the field. It must also be noted that the quality of the catering and the service provided by staff at the University of Nottingham was exemplary. There was no shortage of choice nor any need left unattended throughout the course of the day.

After lunch, the fascinating keynote speech delivered by Professor Martin Stokes (King’s College London) neatly summed up the reflective and discursive nature of the whole day. Acknowledging the changing and evolving nature of the discipline itself, Martin expounded on the necessity to revise and update considerations of ethnicity, identity and music, with reference to his own work on the subject and in light of more recent theorizations of affect, materiality and voice. Personal insights into the origins of his 1997 text, including the influence of Oxford anthropologist Edwin Ardener, gave new perspectives on this seminal work.

Following this, a session featuring Professor Jason Stanyek and Professor Henry Spiller offered illuminating insights into the relationship between iterations of musical identity and the place in which they are situated. In the first case, Brasiliadade/Brazilianess as expressed by idiosyncratic and entrained metrical fluctuations, particularly among diasporic and non-Brazilian sambaistas; in the second, the Sundanese gamelan musicians of Java and the links to their environment via bamboo anklung instruments. The relative proliferation of players of Sundanese gamelan in the audience made for a lively ensuing discussion.

The last paper of the day - delivered via Skype by Dr Nomi Dave from her office at the University of Virginia - demonstrated the influence (and wonders!) of modern technology, and tied in nicely with some of the other presentations of the day which addressed the influence of technology and media in sounding ethnicity. Nomi's exploration of the fluctuating nature of power relations, resistance and the state neatly referred back to the first paper of the day.

Indeed, several themes wound their way through the various sessions, regardless of methodology or geographical region: the multiplicity of musical expressions of ethnicity; the dichotomy of defining oneself against others and promoting continuity and connectedness; protest and resistance in parallel with sustainability and resilience. The recurrence of these themes exemplifies the common ground that we find in these disparate iterations of musical identity.

Delegates took advantage of the opportunities to socialise at the wine reception and conference dinner, both of which were again extremely well organised. Congratulations to Dr Lonán Ó Briain and his colleagues for a thoroughly enjoyable and well-run event are very much deserved. The collegiality and openness of the event and the diversity of approaches to the area were some of the many highlights of this successful study day.

BFE Annual Conference (Kent) 2016: New Currents in Ethnomusicology

Report from the 2016 BFE Annual Conference: New Currents in Ethnomusicology.

School of Music and Fine Art, University of Kent, Chatham Dockyard Campus, 14th-17th April 2016

Report compiled by Liam Barnard

The sun shone on at least the first and final days of this four-day gathering, the weather being typically British for the Friday and Saturday! Of course this made no difference to the fun and relaxed atmosphere that presided over this year’s annual conference. The quality of the papers was more than consistently excellent, and some unexpectedly deep conversations were initiated in question times, enabled somewhat by experimenting with maintaining a degree of anonymity beyond the review process, even through the process of grouping successful papers into sessions based upon themes.

Despite the minor hiccough of lunch arriving half an hour late on Friday, the quality of the catering and the service provided by their team was exemplary, including organising the inaugural Society for Ethnomusicology Ice Cream Social, so successful an idea developed by Stephen Stuempfle of the SEM that Kent Hospitality have decided to offer this as a catering option for other conferences in the future! The evening wine receptions, one sponsored by T & F publishers and the other, in honour of the great Prof. David Hughes, added to the smiles and happiness that was a feature of our annual gathering this year. A favourite Facebook quote of mine regarding the conference read “It feels like I’ve just been on a holiday with all my friends!”. And smiles there were a-plenty during and after Prof. Jonathan Stock’s excellent and hugely entertaining keynote speech - “Sounding the Bromance”. After a long but rewarding three days of papers, Saturday night was party night in Coopers Bar, across the road from the Dockyard Campus, where the musical collaborations and the display of talents stretched on until closing time at midnight. Who could forget David Hughes’ performance of his JapRap, or the surprising versatility of Ruard Absaroka’s beatboxing! From Ceilidh Folk to Argentine Tango to Chicago Blues, the musical globe kept spinning throughout the evening.

Keynote: Prof. Jonathan Stock Wine reception in honour of Prof. David Hughes

By the time the plenary session commenced late on Sunday morning, with Tim Cooley’s take on the Shipping Forecast, accompanied by strains of the classic Radio 4 callsign, “Sailing By”, the sun was shining again, bathing our dockyard in golden morning light. This was a conference which took over a year to organise, and I must please extend my thanks to Byron Dueck, Barley Norton, Kevin Dawe, Jonathan Stock, Richard Lightman, Ruth Herbert, Alan Payne, Tom, Philippa, the BFE volunteers, Sam Cunningham, Jacky Olsen and everybody else who made this joyous celebration of ethnomusicology happen, and that includes everybody who came down to Chatham and shared our dockyard with us!

Now it’s all over until Sheffield in 2017 it seems like a bit of an anticlimax for us to return to our daily academic lives. We hope you have as many happy memories to take with you as we have of hosting our four days in April, and that you take the Sunday sunshine with you wherever you go over the next year!

Some pictures of our BFE AGM at Kent University. Including some wonderful music provided by Liam Barnard and ShzrEe Tan. Thank you to all our membership for being there! See you next year in Sheffield!

All that jazz! BFE AGM is about to start

Joint BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference 2016, University of Bangor

Report from the Joint BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference, University of Bangor, 6-8 January 2016

Report compiled by Liam Barnard and Byron Dueck

10 January 2016

2016 got off to an auspicious start with the first Research Students’ Conference to be jointly convened by the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Royal Musical Association. As a vision of future conferences – the collaboration is set to be repeated annually – it shone.

Sessions were organised by theme, rather than geographical area or historical period, and this enabled interdisciplinary discussions of issues of interest to ethnomusicologists and musicologists alike, including diaspora, gender, and identity. There were accordingly abundant opportunities for attendees to learn from one other and find points of commonality (as one of us found while discussing polyrhythmic traditional styles from the African continent with a scholar of Beethoven). At the same time, there were occasions to focus on more discipline-specific issues, for instance in the panel on fieldwork methods, featuring input from the BFE’s Laura Leante and Stephen Wilford.

The keynotes by Nanette Nielsen (University of Oslo) and the BFE’s own Keith Howard (SOAS, University of London, pictured) were not only of exceptionally high quality, but acknowledged the interdisciplinary character of the conference. The student presentations were also excellent, as the conference chair, Chris Collins, acknowledged in his closing words. Collins himself deserves congratulation for a thoroughly enjoyable and well-run event.

All in all, the Bangor gathering bodes well for the future of joint RMA/BFE events. Next year, Canterbury Christ Church University will host the conference. Be sure to seize the opportunity to present your research!

Christian Congregational Music 2015: Local and Global Perspectives

“Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives”

Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, 4-7 August 2015

Report compiled by Laryssa Whittaker (Royal Holloway, University of London)

The third biennial Christian Congregational Music Conference was held again at Ripon College Cuddesdon, a location that previous and new attendees cite as instrumental in creating a stimulating sense of community among participants. The organising committee, Martyn Percy (Dean, Christ Church, Oxford), Monique Ingalls (Baylor University), Mark Porter (Max-Weber-Kolleg Universität Erfurt), Tom Wagner (University of Edinburgh), and Laryssa Whittaker (Royal Holloway, University of London), were pleased to welcome 90 participants from 20 different countries.

New this year was the addition of a study day, held the first day of the conference, with seminars led by invited speakers creating opportunities for in-depth, small group discussion. Participant feedback indicated that the readings selected by speakers and the opportunity for discussion was invaluable and rewarding. Participants also enjoyed the addition of organised music workshops this year – a Sacred Harp and Convention Gospel workshop run by Joshua Busman, Deborah Justice, Stephen Shearon, and Sue Gray, and a Gospel choir workshop led by Donna Cox.

Ethnomusicologists again represented a large proportion of participants and special guest speakers, but the growing interdisciplinarity of the field was also evident by a healthy representation of theologians, historians, and anthropologists, in particular. This interdisciplinarity provoked new perspectives, suggesting that the musicological and ethnomusicological fields that have been key contributors to Christian congregational music scholarship may fruitfully gain new insights about both their research subject and their disciplines.

In addition to the rich seminars they led on the first day, the seven invited speakers focused on the conference theme of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches for the study congregational music, contributing a wide historical, geographical, and disciplinary range of perspectives. These included singing as a bodily discipline in charismatic Nigerian churches (Vicki Brennan, University of Vermont); the potential of Christian music to promote wellbeing amongst Yolngu people in Australia (Fiona Magowan, Queen’s University, Belfast); the perceptibility of ‘a common faith’ through the theoretical juxtaposition of religious conviction and ‘the ethics of style’ in Trinidadian musical practices (Timothy Rommen, University of Pennsylvania); the methodological approaches of liturgical scholars studying Christian hymns as historical texts (Lester Ruth, Duke Divinity School); theoretical intersections of gender, musical practice, and liturgy (Teresa Berger, Yale Divinity School); affect and the ineffable in early church music traditions (Carol Harrison, Oxford); and a film screening on the documentation of Aramaic (Syriac)-language Christian liturgical traditions in India (Joseph Palackal, Christian Musicological Society of India).

Another new and very welcome feature this year was an outing to Oxford. Participants had the opportunity to take a guided tour of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, or a walking tour of the city, and to participate in an intimate choral eucharist held at the cathedral in the evening. The service was followed by a reception generously hosted by Martyn Percy in the gardens of his residence, the Deanery of Christ Church Cathedral. Participants soaked in the history of the college and the deanery, from its establishment by Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII to its history as the home of Dean Henry Liddell, father of the real-life Alice of Lewis Carroll fame.

The reception also celebrated the launch of the Ashgate Congregational Music Studies Series, noting the volumes previously published and announcing the addition of new projects in development. Following in November, conference participants received a complimentary copy of Congregational Music-Making and Community in a Mediated Age, an edited volume of papers focused on three themes of the 2013 conference. Also launched at the conference was The Spirit of Praise, edited by Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong, and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Music & World Christianities, edited by Jonathan Dueck and Suzel Ana Reily, was previewed.

Participants once again enjoyed the opportunities to socialise on the beautiful campus grounds or in the village, and cited the community and collegiality of the event and the interdisciplinarity of the themes and the new perspectives yielded as highlights. The next conference, already in planning, will be held 18-21 July 2017 in the same location.

View conference details at: http://congregationalmusic.org.

View information about the Ashgate Congregational Music Studies Series at https://shar.es/16pFMG.

To join the conference listserv, visit https://groups.google.com/group/christian-congregational-music.

Any additional questions can be directed to conferencecongregationalmusic.org.