April 20-21, 2024
"Beyond Genre"
Program:
Chair: Daniel Goldmark
Alyssa Mehnert – “Choose Your Favorite Dance Orchestra—Now!”: The Pittsburgh Courier’s Write-In Contest
Aaron Johnson- In the Mix: Jazz’s Tenacious Presence on Black Appeal Radio
Jonathan Gomez- Genre is not a Black Thing: Jazz, Popular Music, and the Lost Nationalism of Black Music
Chair: David Ake
Andrew Berish – Bing Crosby is Too Romantic: Popular Music, Hollywood film, and Sentimentality in Wartime America
Gretchen Carlson- From Gramophone to Grammy: Jazz as Popular Music in
the Boardwalk Empire Compilation Soundtracks
Ken Prouty- Not a Hint of Jazz: The Politics of Selling Out in La La Land
Chair: Brian Wright
Charles Carson- Jazz and the Quiet Storm
Zach Diaz- “…they flipped it like Madlib did a old jazz standard…”: Reinterpretation and Interpolation in Madlib’s Shades of Blue
Hannah Judd- Solange, Sun Ra, and Afrofuturist Lineages at Radio City Music Hall
Keynote
David Brackett, McGill University
Between R&B and Jazz: Gentrification and Cultural Prestige in African American Music, 1966
Chair: Charles Hersch
Mikkel Vad- European Jazz Voices in the American Pop Landscape: The Case of Alice Babs
Sean Lorre- “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”: Reassessing the Role of Women and the Popular in Early 1960s’ British R&B Revivalism
Catherine Tackley- Jazz as Unpopular Music
Chair: Steve Waksman
Todd Decker- “Start All Over Again”: Fred Astaire Re-routines his Film Songs as Jazz Pop Records
Christopher Wells- “Bop Fiends”: Bebop Dance, Afro-Modernity, and Black Youth at Mid-Century
Sarah Town- NG La Banda, “The band in charge”: Jazz meets pop on a Caribbean dance floor
Chair: Ken Prouty
Adrianne Honnold- “Unacknowledged Ubiquity”: The saxophone in popular music
Brian Wright- “These Jazzers Think They Own Jaco”: The Posthumous Legacy of Jaco Pastorius
Ken Ge – Transgression and Transcendence in 1970s Electroacoustic Jazz Bass Timbres
Chair: Barry Shank
James Aldridge- “Double You, Enny Double You”: Appropriated Sounds and Styles in 1960s New York Radio
Peter Selinsky- Marketing Musical Malapropisms:
[Re-]Presenting Jazz, Hindustani, and Popular Music Hybrids 1965-1977
Keynote
Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas
The Best of Jazz, the Worst of Jazz: Why I Play the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument
Chair: Andrew Berish
Sarah Suhadolnik- Friendly Meetings Abroad: Navigating Geographies of Genre on Basin Street
Steve Waksman- Reproducing the Jazz Concert: Norman Granz and Jazz at the Philharmonic
Kim Teal- Interdisciplinary Elevation: The Role of Mixed Media in Jason Moran’s Reclamation of Jazz History
Chair: Catherine Tackley
Alan Stanbridge- Swingin’ in the Ol’ Corral: Jazz meets Country Music
Jacob Cohen,Macaulay Honors College, CUNY- When Branford Marsalis Jammed With the Grateful Dead
Nathan Seinen – Beyond Aja: Elements of Jazz in Steely Dan’s Gaucho
March 30-April 1, 2023
"Playing the (Heart) Strings: Music, Wellness, and the Body"
MGSA Conference
June 16-18, 2022
"Theorizing African American Music"
October 2, 2020
"Character, Caricature, Characterization"
MGSA Conference
March 28-30, 2019
"Enacting Curricular Change in Music Education through Vernacular Music"
CWRU Music Education Program, Center for Popular Music Studies, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Keynote:
- Marilyn Mobley (CWRU): "Changing the Tune: The Value of Diversity in Music Education"
Program:
October 5-6, 2018
"Popular Music, Popular Movement(s)"
MGSA Conference
April 20-21, 2018
"Beyond Genre: Jazz as Popular Music
October 6-7, 2017
“Popular Song in Film: Thirty Years of Gorbman’s Unheard Melodies”
Speakers:
- Caryl Flinn, "How Todd Haynes Took the Camp out of The Carpenters"
- Anahid Kassabian, "From Awkward to Insecure: Rap in a web series and its HBO offspring"
- Kevin Donnelly, "The Rolling Stones Code and Performance (1970)"
- Jim Buhler, "Nondiegetic Music and Stylized Sound- James Buhler"
- Jeff Smith, "Pop Music, Processing Fluency, and Pleasure: Film Songs as Both Hype and Memento"
- Kathryn Kalinak, "Popular Music at Edison: The Roots of Musical Accompaniment to Film"
- Richard Dyer, "Is It Their Song? The Use of Popular Song for Melodramatic Climax"
- Elsie Walker, "Hearing the melodies–from The Searchers to Shine"
- David Neumeyer, "The Ballad of Sergei and Stella: Music in and from The Uninvited (1944)"
- Robynn Stilwell, "Little Matched Girl: Belle’s voice, authenticity, and genuineness in Disney’s live-action Beauty & the Beast"
- Jennifer Fleeger, "The Voice Lesson: Learning to Sing on Screen"
- Jim Deaville, "Unheard Melodies: The Trailer"
- Neil Lerner, "Unheard Metaphors are Sweeter: Towards a Disablist Film Music Theory"
- Julie Hubbert, "Auteur Music and Labor"
- Daniel Goldmark, "Pixar’s Memories"
- Martin Marks, "I’ll Sing You in My Dreams: David Lynch’s American Songbook"
February 23-25, 2017
"Gimme Shelter: Popular Music and Protection"
The CPMS hosted the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US-Branch’s annual conference at Case Western Reserve University.
October 2-3, 2015
“Popular Music and Communities”
MGSA Conference
Speakers:
- Natalie Oshukany (City University of New York), “‘Americanizing’ the Criminal Song: Willi Tokarev and Russian-Jewish Immigrant Identity in 1980s New York City”
- Bryan Wright, (University of Pittsburgh), “The Ragtime Piano Revival Community in America”
- Nicole Winger (University of Western Ontario), “Reinterpreting Harry Belafonte: A Narrative of Resistance, Activism and Crossover Success”
- Sean Peterson (University of Oregon), “‘Hip-Hop Without a DJ’: Authenticating The Roots in an Era of Sample-Based Hegemony”
- Catherine Hall (Florida State University), “‘Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock!’: Music and Heroism in the Harry Potter Fandom”
- Sarah Suhadolnik (University of Michigan), “Watch, Tweet, Listen, Repeat: Channel Surfing to the Top of the Charts”
- Keynote lecture by Norma Coates (University of Western Ontario), “Fantasies and Humpty-Dumpties: Teen Girls, the Monkees, and The Monkees”
- Danielle Maggio (University of Pittsburgh), “‘Soul Power’: Black Popular Music as a Mobilizing Force For Radical Activism in Chicago, 1967-1973”
- C. Megan MacDonald, (Florida State University), “White as Snow: Performances of Whiteness in Depression-Era Southern Gospel Communities"
- Marco Accattatis (Rutgers University), “Work Hard, Play Hard: Normalizing Neoliberal Ideology in Popular Music”
- Trevor Nelson (Michigan State University), “Bottoms Up: Parody, Camp, and Homonormative Critique in the Music of Willam Belli”
- John Hausmann (College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati), “The Deadhead Community, Parodies, and the Marginalization of the Counterculture”
- Christa Anne Bentley (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), “Self-Expression and Communal Belonging in Singer-Songwriter Performance from the 1970s”
- Ryland Bennett (Tufts University), “The Cult of ‘Keytar Bear:’ Performing Utopia for Boston’s Masses”
- Keynote lecture by Mark Katz (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), “‘We Need You to Get this Right’: Musical Communities and the Responsibilities of the Scholar”
April 26, 2014
“Drumming”
Speakers:
- Robert Walser (CWRU), “A Typology of Drum Fills”
- Mandy Smith (CWRU), “The Rhythm is Gonna Get You: The Primitive vs. the Virtuosic in Rock Drumming”
- Mark Ferber (City College of New York), “Perspectives of Pedagogy of the Drumset”
- Steven Baur (Dalhousie University), “Toward a Cultural History of the Backbeat”
- Gareth Dylan Smith (Institue of Contemporary Music Performance), “Embodied Experience, Autoethnograph and Rock”
November 16, 2013
“Queer Popular Music”
Speakers:
- Mitchell Morris (Amherst College)
- Judith Periano (Cornell University)
- Stephan Pennington (Tufts University)
- Susan McClary (CWRU)
April 12-13, 2013
“’Sing Me That Song Again’: The History and Impact of Tin Pan Alley”
Speakers:
- Richard Crawford (University of Michigan), “Scenes from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess”
- Walter Frisch (Columbia University), “If Ever a Wiz There Was: Harold Arlen and American Popular Song”
- Keir Keightley (University of Western Ontario), “From Hogan’s Alley to Tin Pan Alley”
- Jeffrey Magee (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne), “From Flatbush to the Sea: The Cozy Cottage Trope on Tin Pan Alley and Broadway, 1910s-70s”
- Gillian Rodger (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “When Singing was Acting: Song and Character in Variety Theater”
- Rose Rosengard Subotnik (Brown University), “My Father’s Musical Time-Capsule: American Songs, Sheet Music, and the Dream that Got Away”