Urban Music Studies

Edited by Ola Johansson,  Séverin Guillard and Joseph Palis this book

• provides an accessible and succinct overview of current discussions on cities and contemporary music policies
• offers novel insights spanning the fields of urban and cultural geography, urban policy, music and media studies
• Features interdisciplinary analyses and topical case studies by global experts

More https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-99-0757-1#toc

 Maciej Smółka examines in his new publication the sound of a city in terms of the relationship between music and the cultural specificity of a given urban area. This cultural phenomenon becomes apparent when artists from a region create music, which indisputably linked to its place of origin, such as in the case of the Nashville Sound, the psychedelic rock of the San Francisco Sound, Prince’s the Minneapolis Sound, or the Seattle Sound. The publication presents a theoretical tool how to research, analyse, interpret, and define the sound of a city.

More https://www.peterlang.com/document/1369553

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s largest sound projects, with more than 1,000 artists contributing to our goal of remixing the world, one sound at a time. 

Encompassing field recording, sound art and sound mapping, every location on the Cities and Memory sound map features two sounds: the original field recording of that place, and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new.

The listener can explore places through their actual sounds, to explore reimagined versions of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

Latest project – Music for Sleep. More https://citiesandmemory.com/music-for-sleep/

Call for proposals for edited volume

Editors: Dr Christina Ballico, Department of Music, University of Aberdeen

Dr Allan Watson, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University

Cultural planning holds a central place in urban regeneration and urban re-profiling initiatives in cities around the world. Over the past 20 years, interest in the ways in which cities might be re-imagined and place-branded through specific creative and cultural identities and activities has increased exponentially. Urban policymakers have sought to find ways to leverage place-based cultural identities to drive a range of urban development, economic, heritage, and tourism initiatives. This is demonstrated, for example, through the wide enactment of a range of culturally focused urban development strategies (for example, Music City initiatives) and the development of a range of ‘creative’ and ‘cultural’ frameworks (for example, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network).

Given that creative cities policy frameworks are becoming increasingly prevalent on a global scale, and in light of long-standing critiques regarding economic determinism and the narrow understanding of ‘culture’ deployed in such frameworks, in this volume we seek to bring together contributions which offer critical re-evaluations grounded within diverse geographical contexts. Thematically, we welcome contributions which consider the following issues:

• The city-specific impacts of creative and cultural cities frameworks and their capacity to support urban regeneration and social and economic development, for example the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, other international or national frameworks such as City of Culture awards, as well as localised initiatives.
• City-specific cultural policies and regulatory frameworks which might support and/or inhibit particular forms of creative and cultural initiatives and activities, both in the short and long term.
• Alternative strategies and methods for evaluating the success of creative city policies beyond economic determinism and shifting attitudes toward arts and culture as a social and cultural good.
• Consideration of the ways in which creative and cultural city policy frameworks might be re-worked, re-imagined, or re-invigorated in order to provide more equitable forms of urban, social, and economic development in cities.
• The capacity of arts and cultural activity to address local environmental issues and broader climate change and sustainability goals.
• Critical evaluations of in-situ place activation and cultural engagement initiatives, and/ or activities with a particular consideration of their impact/s and how they fit within city-wide frameworks and policy initiatives.

Deadline is October 31, 2023

Contact: citiesandculturebook@gmail.com

Music and the Internet is a hybrid, multi-day interdisciplinary conference that will take place virtually and at the University of Chicago on June 9–10 2023. Its goal is to bring together scholars and creators to present across a variety of perspectives on the intersection of music, sound, and online culture, and to help cultivate the developing international network of thinkers at work on these topics.

More: https://musicandtheinternet.co/

Edited by Derek Pardue, Ailbhe Kenny and Katie Young this edited volume demonstrates and interprets contemporary migrant musics as sonic signatures constitutive of the city at night. The distinct contribution is the articulation of migrancy and emplacement practices to the scholarship on urban musicology and the burgeoning field of night studies

A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License and is part of Knowledge Unlatched.

More: https://intellectdiscover.com/content/books/9781789386967#chapters

CUMIN is an inter-disciplinary cluster mixing researchers, practitioners and a range of stake-holders in educational and social projects of various kinds, fostering dialogue and production of new knowledge.

The broader purpose of CUMIN is to promote knowledge exchange between educational/social projects that use contemporary urban music in inclusive ways, on the one hand, and researchers, theorists, policy makers and cultural/education leaders, on the other hand. Key questions for CUMIN include: Can projects using contemporary urban music impact significantly on educational/social inclusion? If so, how can we best measure this impact?

On June 30^th the 2023 CUMIN conference will take place at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London (and online). It is planned as a major statement on the cultural, social, educational and inclusive value of contemporary urban music in all its forms, featuring world-leading scholars and celebrating the practical projects that have been already featured in workshops. More information you can find under https://cuminetwork.wordpress.com/.