News archive

The BFE Committee is seeking a new co-editor for Ethnomusicology Forum (EF)

15 May 2016

The BFE committee invites applications for a new co-editor for Ethnomusicology Forum (EF).

Role of Co-editor

EF is the academic journal of the BFE, published by Taylor & Francis. Each yearly volume has 3 issues, of which at least one is a Special Issue with a specific focus, curated by a guest editor. Each issue has around 168 pages and contains 5-7 articles plus a range of reviews. For the BFE, this output is produced and managed by two co-editors, a Reviews editor and an administrative assistant. There is an International Advisory Board with 24 members who offer advice to the editors and are kept informed of developments in EF.

The editorial appointment is normally for a period of at least 3 years and may be extended by mutual consent and is unpaid. Working with the current co-editor, Abigail Wood, and liaising with the reviews editor (Lonán Ó Briain) and Editorial Assistant (Emma Brinkhurst), the new co-editor will share the workload of reading submissions, proposing reviewers, advising guest editors and producing fully edited copy according to the designated house style for online submission to T&F. The journal is currently in a strong condition, and we anticipate new development over the years ahead as the relationship between print and online publishing evolves and issues of Open Access are addressed. The typical workload is the equivalent of 6–10 hours per week throughout the year. There is some degree of flexibility about the timing of work but also copy and production deadlines that need to be met in order to maintain academic credibility. The role will commence from October 2016 and will have a handover period until the end of 2016 as the current co-editor, Jonathan Stock, completes his term of office.

Skills and attributes required by the co-editor:

· High standard of written English and the ability to edit consistently to house style.

· Engagement with the academic community in ethnomusicology worldwide, with knowledge of current issues and the ability to identify future possibilities.

· Ability to offer considered advice in support of authors to improve the academic standard and communication of their writing and to make decisions about the acceptability of submissions for the aims and scope of EF.

· Ability to work online using MSWord and other software to comment, edit, insert symbols and diacriticals in Unicode, format and submit work.

· Good interpersonal skills in communicating with authors, reviewers, the Advisory Board and T&F staff.

Expressions of interest for the above role are invited. If you are interested in the role, you are encouraged to informally contact either of the current co-editors Abigail Wood (avigail.woodgmail.com) and Jonathan Stock (J.Stockucc.ie).

Formal letters of application should be sent by email to B.Nortongold.ac.uk by 27 June, 2016. Your letter should state why you are interested in the role, and your relevant skills and experience. It should of course also contain your contact details.

We aim to make a decision as soon as possible and may wish to arrange interviews with candidates by telephone or Skype.

Barley Norton

Chair, British Forum for Ethnomusicology

BFE Student Prize 2016

23 Apr 2016

Submissions are invited for the BFE Student Prize that is awarded annually for the best student paper presented at the BFE annual conference. All students who presented papers at the BFE conference at the University of Kent (14-17 April 2016) are encouraged to submit their papers for consideration. Only papers from students who are BFE members are eligible. This initiative is designed to support and recognise the work of student members of our scholarly community. The papers will be reviewed by a BFE subcommittee.

Please note that your paper should not be significantly revised prior to submission. The text should be as for your 20-minute presentation. Please do not submit a longer version of your paper as submissions that are clearly over length will be disregarded. If it is important for audio or audiovisual materials to be considered with the text of your paper, please include web links to these materials (on youtube, vimeo etc.), along with any necessary passwords to access links if they are private.

Papers should be sent (as a Word or RTF attachment) to b.nortongold.ac.uk The deadline for submissions is midnight Friday 13 May 2016 and the result will be announced by July.  We look forward to reading your paper.

Barley Norton

Chair, British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE)

New Committee Members

19 Apr 2016

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology is delighted to announce that Liam Barnard (Ph.D candidate at Kent University) has been elected as our incoming Student Liaison (2016-2018). On behalf of our membership, we offer warm congratulations to Liam. We thank Lyndsey Hoh for her service as Student Liaison on the BFE committee (2014-2016). We wish her the very best for her future professional ethnomusicological ventures.

We are also delighted to announce that Steve Wilford (Ph.D candidate at City University) has been elected as our incoming Conference Liaison Assistant and Andrew Killick (Sheffield University) will join the BFE Committee as our forthcoming Annual Conference organiser. Congratulations Steve and Andrew!

Our sincere thanks goes to Amanda Villepastour and Hettie Malcomson, who will be stepping down this year as their terms conclude. Thank you for all your hard work and support.

Website migration and upgrade

23 Feb 2016

Exciting news! As part of implementation of a new and comprehensive integrated website and membership system to be rolled out in stages, we need to migrate the website. This starts from Wednesday the 24th of February, and although the website will be back very shortly, there will be temporary inconvenience for users who want to log in to the Members section. Please accept our apologies, we will be communicating further to keep you informed of the progress. This move will bring substantial long-term benefits both for the organisation and the membership.

2016 BFE Committee Elections - Student Liaison

22 Feb 2016

2016 BFE Committee Elections – Student Liaison

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology is seeking nominations for the position of ‘Student Liaison’ on the BFE committee. This is an important position in the organisation, providing a valuable link to our student membership while offering significant professional experience to the successful candidate.

It is expected that you are a current BFE member, a graduate student resident in the U.K. (preferably undertaking a PhD), and that your term will last for two years from April 2016.

In order to stand for election you must be nominated by a BFE member (other than yourself) and your nomination must also be seconded by another BFE member.

Responsibilities include:

attending 2-3 BFE committee meetings each year;
staying in email contact with the committee;
liaising between the student membership and the BFE committee;
helping to organise the annual BFE/RMA graduate student conference (this involves attending 3 conference committee meetings and the conference itself each year)
helping to organise other events;
liaising with student representatives from other learned societies;
sourcing and updating information on the BFE website about ethnomusicology provision in UK higher education.

The role averages approximately two hours per week, though some times are substantially busier than others. All positions on the BFE committee are on a voluntary basis but related expenses such as travel are paid by the BFE or the local arrangements committee of the BFE/RMA graduate student conference.

If you wish to stand for election you must send a proposal of no more than a single side of A4, which will be forwarded to the BFE membership prior to online voting. The proposal should include:

your name;
your institution;
the names of two BFE members, one who has agreed to nominate you and one who has agreed to second the nomination;
a statement outlining why you think you are the right person for the position of ‘Student Liaison.’

It is recommended that applicants not be absent from the country for long periods during the time in post. However, if any significant absences due to fieldwork etc. are foreseen, please provide details of how duties will be carried out during this time. If the liaison is unable to see to responsibilities personally during the term, the appointed student liaison would be expected to find a deputy.

Nominations must be emailed to the BFE Chair, Barley Norton (chairbfe.org.uk) by midnight on Monday 7 March.

Should you have any enquiries, please email the current Student Liaison, Lyndsey Hoh (Lyndsey.hohmusic.ox.ac.uk) about the role, or our administrator Fiorella Montero Diaz (adminbfe.org.uk) regarding the application process.

First BFE Fieldwork Grant recipients!

1 Feb 2016

The BFE recently launched a Fieldwork Grants Scheme to support the fieldwork of doctoral researchers in ethnomusicology. We are delighted to announce that three fieldwork grants have been awarded under the 2016 Scheme. Many congratulations to Tamara Turner, Saeid Kordmafi and Maya Youssef, who are the first grant recipients. Tamara, Saeid and Maya introduce their research projects below and we look forward to hearing more when they are back from the field.

Tamara Turner

My research provides the first ethnomusicological study of Algerian diwan, a music ritual tradition that coalesced out of the trans-Saharan slave trade through the segregation of displaced sub-Saharan populations. These communities were heavily influenced by the local religious practices and socio-political organization of Sufi lineages. Consequently, diwan developed into a syncretic, Afro-Maghrebi ritual practice predicated on saint veneration, trance, and ritual healing. I approach diwan by attending to the "heavy lifting" that music does in ritual and consider the dynamics of music and transe though the agency of public emotionality and the aesthetics of illness and healing.

Saeid Kordmafi

The project proposes a descriptive theory emerging out of what classical Arab musicians currently do in their metric practice. I plan to carry out ethnomusicological fieldwork in Beirut to examine library-based studies and musicological analyses of metric materials of the classical repertoire. Moreover, working with musicians and scholars, I will be seeking a deeper understanding of their theoretical approaches to the rhythmic-metric system, as well as the ways which metric cycles are perceived by musicians.

Maya Youssef

In a time of deep suffering for my homeland, Syria, words have fallen short of offering refugee children a way to touch on and come to peace with what they have seen and witnessed. Music stands out amongst all mediums in its ability to go to the heart of human emotion. I will take my kanun, my music and a story on fieldwork trips to the refugee camps in Germany, Lebanon and Denmark, where I will facilitate workshops in the hope of bringing an opportunity for these children to begin a process of healing whilst also contributing to the humanist line in ethnomusicology.

The BFE Committee is seeking a Conference Liaison Co-Officer.

29 Jan 2016

The main tasks of the Conference Liaison Co-Officer include:

Being responsible for organizing specific BFE conferences, study days and other events in conjunction with the other Conference Liaison Officer (post currently held by Dr Byron Dueck) and local conference arrangement committees.
Contributing proactively to BFE strategies and initiatives, especially in regard to conference activities and the BFE conference handbook.
Providing oral reports on conference activities at BFE committee meetings (2-3 BFE Committee meetings are held each year).
Contributing to the written report on past conference activities as part of the annual Chair’s Report.
Engaging in regular email communication with the Committee.

Please email an expression of interest with a brief CV to B.Nortongold.ac.uk by FRIDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2016. The Conference Liaison Co-Officer would be a member of the BFE Committee and the standard term of service is three years. Once expressions of interest are received it will be necessary for candidates to stand for election to the Committee.

Barley Norton,

Chair, British Forum For Ethnomusicology

BFE members: Moshe Morad and Hettie Malcomson receive honourable mentions at SEM

12 Jan 2016

BFE member Moshe Morad received an honorable mention in the 2015 Alan Merriam Prize for his monograph "Fiesta de Diez Pesos: Music and Gay Identity in Special Period Cuba".

Here is the text of the announcement:

An honorable mention for the Merriam prize goes to Moshe Morad’s book, Fiesta de diez pesos: Music and gay identity in Special Period Cuba. Fiesta de diez pesos is a brilliantly rich and vivid ethnography of (male) gay musical spaces and identities in Cuba, exploring underground or conveniently unnoticed worlds and the centrality of music and dance to their existence and operation. It spans an impressive range of contexts: the precarious yet irrepressible world of underground fiestas, dance parties held in changing secret locations; the national ballet, which Morad terms the ‘most obvious discreet gay space in Havana’; Santeria ritual performances, an indigenous arena that embraces space for gay and transgender performance and performers; and the ordinary domestic worlds of music and queer identification.

In all these contexts, Morad draws the reader into vibrant experiential accounts of the use of music and dance by gay men that open up interlocking meanings and functions of performance, performativity, gender and sexuality. Working in the period from the 1990s, the book explores the rapid economic, social and cultural changes in Cuba arising in response to the crisis following the loss of support from the Soviet Union. One such development is the opening up of the country to tourism, with the book growing from an initial visit by the author in 1994.

Fiesta de diez pesos is both a distinguished contribution to the ethnomusicological literature on sexuality, and an outstanding example of ethnographic fieldwork that is warm, human, engaged, unpretentiously reflexive, and strikingly perceptive. It is informative and compelling, and succeeds in analysing its subjects and their musical behaviour in close detail, but without ever othering them.

Congratulations to Hettie Malcomson (University of Southampton) whose article ‘Aficionados, Academics, and Danzón Expertise: Exploring Hierarchies in Popular Music Knowledge Production’ (Ethnomusicology, 2014) received a special mention for the Bruno Nettl Prize at the 60th annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Austin, Texas. The purpose of the Bruno Nettl Prize is ‘to recognize an outstanding publication contributing to or dealing with the history of the field of ethnomusicology, or with the general character, problems, and methods of ethnomusicology’.

The abstract of the article reads as follows: Amateur scholars, such as aficionados, fans, intellectuals, are rarely valued in the twenty-first-century academy, despite their often-encyclopedic knowledge. In this paper, I focus on Mexican aficionados of the popular Cuban music danzón to explore how these mostly older men manage social contexts where they are often marginalized. Drawing on Bourdieu, I examine how danzón aficionados negotiate their field of expertise by employing overlapping strategies: accumulating myriad “facts” and “truths”, creating the possibility of ignorance in others, and competing for hegemonic masculine capital. I analyse danzón aficionados’ relationships with musicians and dancers, consider power dynamics between these aficionados and academics, and draw on Léon and Romero to discuss relationships between regional and hegemonic scholarship more broadly. I argue that beyond reflexivity and criticism, collective activism is required to reconfigure value systems and symbolic economies, and to fight institutional pressures to reproduce existing power structures.

Award for best AHRC funded film goes to SOAS Ethnomusicologist!

20 Nov 2015

By Liam Barnard, lab43kent.ac.uk

2015 marks the 10^th Anniversary of the foundation of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and its predecessor, the AHRB. As part of the commemorations, the Anniversary Research in Film Awards were held to great fanfare in the plush surroundings of the BFI South Bank on the 12^th November, where delegates from across academia and beyond were gratefully wined and dined. Out of a field of over 200 entries, BFE stalwart, SOAS Ethnomusicologist and Radio 3 broadcaster Lucy Duran’s film, ‘The Voice of Tradition” triumphed in what was probably the most prestigious of the five categories, claiming the ‘Anniversary Award for Best AHRC/AHRB-Funded Film Since 1998’. Although Lucy was not able to attend the awards ceremony in person to collect the not insubstantial glass trophy, the applause suggested that hers was a popular winner. The evening proved to underline the AHRC’s commitment to the wider field of ethnographic documentary, with Anna Sowa’s gorgeously shot film, ‘Kanraxel: The Confluence of Agnack’ taking home the title of ‘Best Research Film In the Last Year’, a double endorsement for SOAS.

Other award winners included Northumbria University Jacqueline Donache’s ‘Hazel’, picking up ‘The Doctoral Award’, the entertaining animation ‘The Adventure of the Girl with the Light Blue Hair’ earning Ronan Deazley and Bartolomeo Meletti from Create University of Glasgow ‘The Innovation Award’ for best film in the last year, and the public award of ‘Inspiration Award’ for best film inspired by Arts and Humanities Research was awarded to Myriam Rey’s ‘This Island’s Mine’.

The success of ethnographic documentary films with exotic locations and the resultant first class cinematography in this competition should bring some comfort to those of us who work and train as ethnomusicologists, worried by the squeeze in funding for research into the Arts and Humanities in general. Hopefully this interest in supporting ethnographic inquiry will guarantee the place of ethnomusicology in the pantheon of AHRC funding commitments beyond the near future.

All in all, a fantastic evening of quality film, quality networking, and a genuinely friendly party atmosphere was had by all. Let’s raise a glass to the next ten years and indeed, beyond…

Congratulations to Noel Lobley and Fiorella Montero Diaz

22 Oct 2015

Congratulations to Noel Lobley who began a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia. Also, many congratulations to Noel for being invited to give the RAI Curl Lecture 2015. Great achievement Noel!

Congratulations to Fiorella Montero Diaz who in September took up a position as Lecturer in Music at Keele University. Many congratulations!