Excerpts from the concert that opened the Rhythm Changes conference…
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Call for PapersCelebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Institute for Jazz Research
"Jazz Re:Search in 21st-Century Academia and Beyond"
13th International Jazz Research Conference, Graz (Austria)
18—21 November 2021
Hosted by the Institute for Jazz Research and the International Society for Jazz Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Founded in 1971, the Institute for Jazz Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) is a historic cornerstone of academic jazz research. Along with similar institutions, like the Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies (founded 1966), the Institute helped to pave the way for and profoundly shape the discipline known as “jazz studies”, bearing witness to its transformation from a decidedly musicological to an inter-, even transdisciplinary investigation into what has been understood as jazz in their respective times.
Not only have the people, practices, sounds and settings of jazz changed considerably since then, developments such as the increasingly capitalist character of academia, the globalization of knowledge and the blurring of disciplinary boundaries continue to influence the present and future of jazz studies.
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary and as host of the 13th International Jazz Research Conference, the Institute for Jazz Research invites the submission of papers that celebrate, reflect, enhance and advance the study of jazz, both within and outside academia. We welcome papers addressing the conference theme from multiple perspectives, including musicology, cultural studies, jazz history, media studies, sociology, music analysis and practice-based research. Within the general theme, we have identified several sub-themes; please clearly identify which you are referring to in your proposal.
Re: Fwd: Jazz Research
In recent decades, jazz research has developed into a broad, interdisciplinary field of research, encompassing a multitude of different research approaches. This strand covers global historiographies of jazz research, including the examination of writings about jazz (research), the work of jazz archives and private archival practices and the wider (political) role of scholars, jazz institutions and jazz practitioners in the field. It furthermore explores future perspectives, issues and methodologies (e.g. the digitalization of jazz research), as well as the status of jazz studies in academia and beyond.
The Jazz in Jazz Studies: Boundaries and Synergies
Historically, debates about the nature of the ‘real’ jazz, for study purposes, have shaped the contours of the discipline. But what happens once we widen our scope, including musics from ‘other’ people and ‘other’ regions in our research? Given the local contexts of KUG (e.g. ethnomusicology, popular music studies, music pedagogy, jazz practice and performance practice in contemporary music) and its networks into South-East Europe, this strand invites papers that discuss the synergies and challenges that musical border-crossing entails, from the standpoint of methodology, politics, aesthetics, stylistics, nationality, ethnicity or other related issues.
Jazz Studies and Gender
While research has characterized the jazz world as male-dominated, no sufficient solution for the achievement of gender equality has been formulated so far. To address this damaging gap in jazz scholarship, in cooperation with the KUG’s Centre for Gender Studies, this strand explores questions of jazz studies and gender, including historical and contemporary gender relations, (non-male) perspectives on gender-related jazz studies, and the work and significance of women and members of the queer community in jazz. This theme aims to raise awareness of women and people of non-binary gender in jazz and jazz research, and to generally increase sensitivity for gender issues among (male) scholars.
Sites of Jazz (Research)
Jazz takes place at a multitude of sites, ranging from the physical (clubs, concert halls, festivals, music schools) to the virtual (television, radio and the internet) to the conceptual (networks, collectives, aesthetics, sounds). Therefore, the sites for jazz research and its respective approaches are just as variable. This strand covers investigations about/at various public and private forums for jazz and discusses their impact on applied jazz research, such as artistic research (an international Artistic Jazz Research Network has been founded from within Austria).
Formats and Submissions
• Individual paper (20 min. + 10 min. discussion): abstract of no more than 250 words
• Joint panel (60 min. + 30 min. discussion): themed session with three individual papers of 20 min. each; abstracts max. 250 words per paper, plus a session overview of max. 250 words
• Round table session (60 min. + 30 min. discussion): outlining abstract of up to 400 words
Please submit proposals together with a short biography (max. 50 words) and institutional affiliation as a Word document to Christa Bruckner-Haring and André Doehring at jazzresearch2021@kug.ac.at, subject line “proposal jazz re:search conference”. Given the arrival of vaccinations in the first half of 2021 to bring the current COVID-19 pandemic under control, we plan to host the conference live and in person in Graz. Updates on the conference (including possible online or hybrid scenarios) will be communicated in a timely manner.
The deadline for proposals is 1 April 2021; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 15 May 2021. All submissions will be considered by the conference committee, consisting of Christa Bruckner-Haring, André Doehring, Magdalena Fürnkranz, Franz Krieger, Loes Rusch, Tony Whyton, and members of ISJ’s executive committee. Proceedings will be published as Vol. 52 of the institute’s publication series Jazzforschung / Jazz Research.
The conference will be held together with the 41st Radio Jazz Research Conference that discusses the work of internationally renowned musician and musicologist Ekkehard Jost, themed “Social History in Jazz”. Jost willed his musicological and musical estate to the Institute for Jazz Research, where the “Ekkehard Jost Archive” will be officially opened during the conference.
Updates on the conference and information about travel and accommodation will be available at jazzforschung.kug.ac.at/ and www.facebook.com/Jazzforschung/.
Institut für Jazzforschung - KUG
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Das Grazer Institut für Jazzforschung ist mit seinen Ursprüngen im Jahr 1965 eines der ältesten und bekanntesten Jazzforschungsinstitute weltweit. Zielsetzung unserer Arbeit ist die Etablierung und Entwicklung der Jazzforschung als ein eigenständiger, dabei interdisziplinär orientierter Bereich der Musikwissenschaft. Unsere Schwerpunkte liegen in der Beschäftigung mit Jazz und populärer Musik, die in historischer, sozialer, kultureller und theoretischer Perspektive erforscht werden. Eine weithin anerkannte Spezifität der hiesigen Arbeit stellt die auf Transkriptionen basierende strukturelle Analyse von Genres und Personalstilistiken dar.
Unser Archiv wird von internationalen ForscherInnen wie Studierenden geschätzt, denn es umfasst eine Fachbibliothek mit ca. 5.800 Druckwerken und eine Mediathek mit etwa 42.500 Ton- und Bildträgern (20.000 LPs, 20.300 CDs, 1.200 Videos, DVDs, Tonbänder und Schellackplatten).
Seit mehreren Jahrzehnten informiert das Institut die Fachwelt durch drei renommierte Publikationsreihen, die in Kooperation mit der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Jazzforschung (IGJ) herausgegeben werden: Das Jahrbuch Jazzforschung / Jazz Research legt seit seiner Erstausgabe im Jahr 1969 derzeit den 46. Band vor, die Reihe Beiträge zur Jazzforschung / Studies in Jazz Research hat seit 1969 14 Monografien veröffentlicht und der Newsletter Jazz Research News befindet sich seit seinem Start im Jahr 2000 in der 49. Ausgabe.
Unsere derzeitigen Forschungsinteressen zielen auf die Zusammenhänge von Jazz und populärer Musik mit sozialen und kulturellen Entwicklungen in verschiedenen Teilen der Welt, insbesondere Europa, Nord- und Lateinamerika. Um diese Forschungen voranzutreiben und die Erkenntnisse mit der internationalen Fachwelt auszutauschen, veranstaltet das Institut seit 1969 regelmäßig Konferenzen. Außerdem haben zahlreiche transnationale Projekte und Kooperationen zum Ruf des Instituts als ein Zentrum der Jazzforschung beigetragen. In der Tradition von grundlegender und innovativer Forschung mit einem internationalen Fokus bleibt unser Ziel, die zentrale Position in der nationalen wie auch internationalen Jazz- und Popularmusikforschung zu stärken und auszubauen.
Posted by request:Popular Music and Society
Call for Papers
Special Issue: Jazz Diasporas
Guest Editors: Bruce Johnson and Adam Havas
Submissions are invited for a special issue of Popular Music and Society on jazz diasporas. This special issue is about how jazz circulated beyond its accepted sites of origin. This can be both international and intranational; that is, jazz outside the United States, but also jazz outside New Orleans. The latter has received extensive coverage in jazz historiography through geographically based stylistic typologies: Chicago, New York, Kansas City, West Coast. While there is also a growing literature on the international diaspora, both are dominated by essentialist metropolitan and national taxonomies. These approaches elide the dynamics of micro-localized scenes, how and why they are formed, what sort of networks they emerge from and develop. So, by way of example, more might be learned about the circulation of jazz by the study of international port cities and shipping routes than by generalisations based on an individual nation, or by the study of sub-urban scenes than under the rubric of a large city. To understand jazz, one must understand its diasporic reinventions.
Jazz historiography has also taken for granted an aesthetics based on an implicit autonomous teleology, a steady self-generated evolution towards a form of perfection through a succession of neatly categorized stylistic movements crowned by the "masterworks" of "great men" in the form of sound recordings. But careful analysis of diasporic forms can instructively challenge these models by exploring the contextual forces that shape the music both locally and globally. The shift away from a self-contained aesthetics to a broader cultural landscape is disclosing the profound importance of jazz in the formation of late modern cultural distinctions, as manifested in its means of production, dissemination, and consumption and in global negotiation with the local: the first new music of modern glocalization.
We are also interested in recognising the bewildering range of musics that have been performed and conceptualised under that label of jazz as it has circulated internationally. Why was the word "jazz" applied to musics that we would no longer recognise as such? How did they serve their functions for the musicians and audiences who enjoyed it as such? How does race- and place-based domination intersect with global forms of inequalities? In asking such questions, we learn more not only about the history of the music but also about the various diasporic cultures with which it negotiated.
Possible areas of study include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
Syncretisms between jazz and local musical traditions
Jazz and local ethnicities
Transnational jazz networks
Jazz and propaganda
New taxonomies and approaches to the study of jazz migrations
Jazz and global structures of neoliberal hegemony
International mediations as both channel and filter
Jazz and localized gender politics
Jazz performance and climate
Jazz and local political formations
Free jazz, DIY cultures, and local political formations of jazz
Send proposals of up to 300 words in the first instance. Please note that Popular Music and Society uses US spelling, as well as punctuation: periods and commas at the ends of sentences and phrases go inside quotation marks, not outside; use double quotation marks, not single; the single quotation mark is only used for the possessive case and for quotes within quotes.
Contributions will be peer-reviewed for potential inclusion in the main section of the journal. Indicate the name under which you would wish to be published, your professional / academic affiliations, a postal address, and preferred e-mail contact. Deadline for submission of proposals is July 31, 2020. We would hope to commission articles by November 30, 2020, and the deadline for submission of the articles will be December 31, 2021. Please copy e-mail proposals to both Guest Editors: Bruce Johnson at brujoh@utu.fi and Adam Havas at havas@msinst.org.
Brought to you by…
Rhythm Changes was originally financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.