The Société Française d’Ethnomusicologie (SFE) and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) invite abstracts for our joint conference in Paris, 2-5 July 2015.

In recognition that this will be the first joint meeting of the two institutions (and the first time the BFE will be holding its annual meeting outside the United Kingdom) we have chosen the theme

Border Crossings/Boundary Maintenance

The theme identifies several areas of scholarly reflection and inquiry to be undertaken. For contemporary ethnomusicologists, ‘boundaries’ invoke a myriad of solid, porous and imagined lines to be negotiated, crossed, or dissolved. On the one hand, they suggest the national, legal and political borders – and the cultural and linguistic differences – that once largely determined our notions of Self and Other. On the other hand, they bring to mind the abstract binaries that shaped comparative musicology and early ethnomusicology, such as Western/non-Western, past/present, sacred/secular, rural/urban, traditional/modern, oral/written, and female/male.

It gives us great pleasure to announce the winner of the 2014 British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize:

Novak, David. Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

The BFE Book Prize recognizes outstanding scholarship in ethnomusicology written in English. This prestigious award was presented at the BFE Annual General Meeting during the BFE annual conference at SOAS (July 2014). We hope that you can join us to congratulate the prize recipient again at the BFE High Tea Party at the SEM conference in Pittsburgh in November.
 
The BFE book committee (Martin Stokes, Simon Mills, and Hettie Malcomson) worked long and hard during the selection process, and were impressed by the extremely high quality of many of the books. In total, 17 monographs and 9 edited volumes were received, totalling 26 books, published in 2012 or 2013. The books were written by authors from diverse institutional backgrounds on subjects spanning the breadth of the current ethnomusicological field. Over half of these books were published by UK presses, with entries also with Chinese, German and US publishers.

The BFE is grateful to all those who submitted books to this competition and looks forward to future contributions.  It especially wishes to thank the three judges who reviewed the submissions:

Martin Stokes (Kings College London)
Simon Mills (Durham University)
Hettie Malcomson, chair (Southampton University)

Dear BFE members (and friends),

Please save the following dates in your diary!

* The BFE committee is excited to announce that our annual conference will be hosted jointly with Société française d'ethnomusicologie in Paris, 2-5 July, 2015.

* Our next one-day conference will be hosted by City University, London, 29 November, 2014. The theme will be ‘ethnomusicology in the urban environment.’

* I look forward to seeing many of you at our joint conference with AAWM at SOAS, July 1-4, by which time, I will be able to share more details of both the 2015 Paris annual and November 2014 London one-day conferences.

Best wishes,
Amanda Villepastour
Chair

The Study Group for Mediterranean Music Studies of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) will hold its 10th Symposium at St John’s College, Cambridge, June 27–29, 2014, on the theme:

Mysticism, Magic, and the Supernatural in Mediterranean Music