The Politics of Music
The 35th Annual Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia

Registration open

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Keynote speakers

• Professor Tina K Ramnarine, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Professor James Webster, Cornell University
• Elder Wanta Patrick, The Australian National University
• Professor Derek B Scott, University of Leeds
• Professor Svanibor Pettan, International Council for Traditional Music

The Australian National University invites you to Canberra for the 35th Annual Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia.

‘The Politics of Music’ is a broad theme that is designed to encompass the analytical, historical, performative and socio-cultural ways in which music has been continually influential in shaping political opinions and policy directions in human societies, and potentially, to consider how such understandings may be applied in the contemporary Australian context.

Music is a powerful, pervasive and crucial form of human communication and expression. It permeates our public spaces and media, and it is so readily internalised and personalised that we often carry it our minds unaware. Throughout human history, people have rallied together under anthems of unity or dissent to support, sway or challenge the socio-political hegemony of the day.

Music has alternatively enjoyed official support or been severely suppressed because of the power that it holds to influence public opinion rapidly and affect major socio-political change, and in some contexts, music carries a society’s ultimate expressions of polity and political power. Musical innovation is also intrinsic to the kinds of technological and economic growth that build the robust industries and communities upon which stable policies and polities can be sustained.

How do we understand these interplays of people, policy and power, and their agency in the world both historically and today? What might these insights reveal about how societies habitually reconstitute themselves politically through music, and the various policy contexts in which music is made and learnt, whether in Australia or internationally? What conditions are best suited to nurturing the robust industries and communities in which producers and consumers of music are entrenched, and what are the policy and economic ramifications of sustaining such support?

Suggested lines of inquiry around this broad theme may include, but are not limited to:

Music in the national curriculum
The power of song
Silenced sounds
Music and the film industry
Music without borders?
Eco-musicology and the environment

Papers of a more general nature beyond these themes are also welcomed.

Papers and presentations are invited from scholars and students representing a diverse range of disciplines. There are seven different presentation types, so there should be something for everyone. Please forward this CFP to any interested parties.

Dates: 3–5 December 2012
Location: The Australian National University

The Acton campus of the Australian National University is ideally positioned in the Canberra CBD, only minutes away from the nation's parliament and national institutions, and on the doorstep of the city’s exciting new urban development, New Acton.

The conference will directly follow the 11th Symposium on Indigenous Music and Dance on 1–2 December 2012, which will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Mabo Judgment with the following themes:

• Ceremonial law as legal process
• Song evidence and litigation
• Information technologies and Indigenous communities

It will also overlap with the Living Instrument Project on 5–6 December 2012, an international symposium and concert series that reveals new interplays between tradition and innovation in the world’s contemporary music cultures.

• The theme of the 2012 Living Instrument Symposium will be ‘The Rallying Cry’ with a focus on traditional and folk music and politics 5 December. Evening concert presents a newly commissioned work by one of Australia’s finest composers Dr Mary Finsterer who explores connections between contemporary music and traditional music in this work.
• 6 December will focus on the nation of Croatia with talks, workshops, musical performances, and dances.