Members' news

Dear BFE members, please do share your news with us. Whether it be news about your latest fieldwork trip, your media work or your performances, the release of your new book, your new academic appointment or PhD completion, your success in contests, prizes and grants or any other achievement, we would like to hear about it.

To share your news, please write a short announcement, attach a picture or two and send them to our BFE Administrator: adminatbfe.org.uk (Fiorella Montero Diaz)

Older news are in news archive.

New book from former BFE Chair Carole Pegg on the music of Altai-Sayan peoples



12 Jan 2024

We are thrilled to announce the publication of the book “Drones, Tones, and Timbres: Sounding Place among Nomads of the Inner Asian Mountain-Steppes” (University of Illinois Press) by Carole Pegg, former BFE chairperson and co-founder of the British Journal for Ethnomusicology (now Ethnomusicology Forum).

Carole says: "I’m grateful to the Indigenous Altai-Sayan peoples - including musicians, spiritual specialists (shamans, epic performers, White Way practitioners, Tengrists), instrument makers, herders, hunters and colleagues - in the republics of Altai, Khakassia, and Tyva who participated in my ethnomusicological/ anthropological project. It is available as cloth or ebook from the Press’s website, which also houses supplemental video, audio and illustrative materials, as well as from Amazon and hopefully all good bookshops.."

360 pages, 30 black & white photographs, 1 chart, 4 table.

BFE member Razia Sultanova publishes new book on music in Afghanistan



5 Dec 2023

BFE member Razia Sultanova is delighted to announce the publication of a new book "Afghanistan Dispossessed: Women, Culture and the Taliban" (Pen & Sword History, 2023). This the most recent ethnographic research, coupled with deep fieldwork, extensive eye-witness accounts, and personal conversations with a diverse range of Afghan men and women, tackles fundamental questions of gender, identity, nation, tradition, history, popular culture, and notably, the pivotal role of music—ranging from classical to popular, modern, and contemporary—as a vital element for survival. However, this narrative is overshadowed by the return of the Taliban, with an ongoing threat of terror and repression, especially for women and girls. It unfolds as a classical story of a people's struggle for everyday normality and the preservation of cherished traditions in a war-torn society.

BFE member Stuart Young looks to the future with climate working group



30 Nov 2023

BFE member Stuart Young is working alongside Kate Lock to support the Brass Bands England (BBE) climate working group. Learning from the BBE working group will help inform resources, training and advice that will be available to the BBE membership to support their own work to become increasingly environmentally sustainable organisations.

Kate Lock works professionally as a climate policy communicator based at Leeds University and Stuart’s architectural practice focused on green developments and building resilience for the future as well as developing climate tools and advice as part of the Sheffield Brass Network where he is Secretary.

BFE member Jonathan Stock co-edits new volume on Chinese musical cultures



10 Nov 2023

Jonathan Stock is delighted to announce publication of a new book, The Oxford Handbook of Music in China and the Chinese Diaspora (New York: Oxford, 2023). It’s a set of 24 innovative essays by an international team of contributors, each of which advances new knowledge and understandings on Chinese music studies through new research and by developing fresh theoretical models and perspectives into key musical genres and contexts. The largest single-volume book on Chinese musical cultures in English to date, it was co-edited with Professor Yu Hui (Yunnan University) and represents a unique cooperative approach that strongly features authors from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and diasporic Chinese communities worldwide.

BFE member Thomas Graves joins the BFE Podcast team



15 Mar 2023

We are thrilled to welcome Thomas Graves as our new BFE Podcast Manager! Thomas holds a degree in Popular Music from the University of Kent and a master’s degree in Ethnomusicology from SOAS, University of London. He is currently a PhD candidate at Durham University studying musical emotion and qawwālī. His primary research interests lie in musical emotion, particularly in relation to lyrics, social context, and religion. His approach is multidisciplinary, with the aim of using ethnographic knowledge to inform psychological research in musical emotion, as well as adapting quantitative methods from music psychology to the ethnographic field.

Thomas joins the podcast team to help develop our expanding range of BFE podcasts, which now encompasses regular podcasts, student podcasts, and a Special Edition podcast series that focuses on the personal stories of individual people and calls for a rapid response from our discipline in relation to issues raised by BFE members.. To find out more about submitting a podcast, please visit the BFE Podcast Project webpage.

BFE member Jo Miller publishes new book



7 Nov 2022
We are thrilled to announce that BFE member Jo Miller has just published her new book, Community-based Traditional Music in Scotland: A Pedagogy of Participation with Routledge (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series). The book draws on research from the fields of ethnomusicology, music education and community music to examine the community-based learning and teaching of ‘traditional’ music in contemporary Scotland, with implications for transnational theoretical issues. It offers a historical perspective on educational formats emerging from the mid-twentieth century folk music revival in Scotland. Ethnographic detail and musical transcriptions illustrate the practices through which participants encounter and perpetuate the idiom of traditional music: social music-making, learning by ear and participatory and presentational aspects of performances. Individuals also develop their own learning strategies to participate in the contemporary community of practice of traditional music. The work discusses how such experiences contribute to identity formation, including the role and practice of ‘tutors’ of traditional music. The author proposes conceptualising the teaching and learning of traditional music in community-based organisations as a ‘pedagogy of participation’. Further details can be found on the Routledge website.