The Future(s) of Music? – Notions of Prospective Musics in Utopian Movies and Literature. – Call for Articles for norient academic journal Vol. II.
The famous Cantina Band scene from George Lucas’ Star Wars, featuring an alien ensemble performing a foxtrott-like John Williams composition, is just one of many examples: While film scores often have provided an experimental ground for musical innovators – just think of the trendsetting sound creations Oskar Sala and Bernard Herrmann contributed to the late films by Alfred Hitchcock – diegetic depictions of musical performances, i.e. those scenes in films where the production or consumption of music is part of the story, often draw on known musical idioms when the dramatic setting is explicitly utopian. The paradox here is that there seems to be a decisive difference between composing innovative film scores on the one hand and imagining, picturing and sounding-out “the music of the future” on the other. Or, is it futures?
Now that Holly- has been joined by Bolly-, Hallyu-, Nolly-, and several other -woods from all around the globe, the Norient Academic Online Journal (NAOJ) is looking for articles for its second volume that address cinematic, theatrical / dramatic and / or literary delineations of the future(s) of music and that pay particular consideration to the specific positions, perspectives and artistic strategies of its producers. NAOJ is looking for contributions that reflect on the diversity of worldviews, on “aural imaginations” of places, discuss markers of knowledge and power, or explore traces of ethnocentrism, traditionalism, or parody in these various produced and performed futures.
Parallel to the thematic call that will result in the second issue of the NAOJ we also welcome ethnographic articles on popular musics from around the world.
Articles can be submitted in any language the editors can read (currently English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Russian, Dutch, Esperanto) but must include an abstract in either English or German.
Deadline for abstracts (maximum 200 words) is May 31st, 2012.
Please submit your abstracts to
journal_submission at norient.com
For inquiries regarding the journal you can contact the editor-in-chief David-Emil Wickström (dew at norient.com).
Tentative schedule:
October 1st, 2012: Deadline for articles (maximum 6.000 words, Chicago Manual of Style with the author- date system and endnotes)
Spring 2013: Articles published.
P.S.: The planned publishing date of the first issue of the NAOJ is May 21st, 2012 – one week before the «Thementage Musik und Globalisierung», co-organized by Norient in Bern and Zurich.
About the norient academic online journal
The norient academic online journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on the study of popular music from an ethnographic perspective. The journal has one yearly issue which is conceived around a theme. While it is part of the norient network and website the journal works as an independent section with its own editors and (mostly) different authors.
The journal offers cross-cultural (case) studies of the diversity of aesthetical approaches in our increasingly transnational and digitalised world. It analyzes contemporary musical aesthetics and observes how musicians interact and situate themselves musically in local, regional, and transnational contexts. norient works with a broad definition of music that includes phenomena like soundscapes, the sonic, noise, and sound.
The journal also favors cross-cultural approaches and collaborative and transdisciplinary work. In this way, the journal hopes to put forward far-ranging theses without ignoring the complexity, ‘messiness’ (cf. Taruksin) and the process-oriented nature of human (and artists’) behaviour and strategies. Its aim is to put forward a detailed analysis of music, musicians and musical communities and to reflect on the ruptures and flows of the 21st Century on various levels.
The name norient implies that this network (and the journal) reaches beyond orientalist ideas and essentialist views of the world and the world of music. norient looks at musicians as individual human beings first. They interact with local and global social and political realities, but are not “determined” by their culture of origin, if at all one such culture of origin can be determined.
The journal’s editorial board consist of David-Emil Wickström, Birgit Abels, Julio Mendívil, Oliver Seibt, Thomas Burkhalter, Violeta Mayer Lux, Jesse Wheeler, Shin Hyunjoon, Kristine Ringsager and Jeroen de Kloet.
[...] Source: http://norient.com/academic/vol2/ Schlagwörter: call for articles, future of music, norient Beitrag kommentieren [...]
Please accept my abstract submission for “The Future(s) of Music”
McGinney, William L., “The ‘Natural Order’: Musical Oppositions in John Boorman’s Zardoz”
John Boorman’s 1974 film Zardoz revolves around the theme of arrested human development and uses contrasting musical styles to support the broader implications of the developmental impasse. Boorman’s film presents a dystopian future marked by stagnation and a lack of human progress, all resulting from the accumulation of power and resources by an elite group of intellectuals, the Eternals, who have achieved immortality. It is only through the destruction of the Eternals’ enclave by a “barbarian” from outside that human development, progress, and evolution can continue.
The film’s score contrasts paraphrases from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony with avant-garde musical material, including dissonant harmonies, electronic sounds, and “sound mass” passages. The avant garde sounds are clearly associated with the Eternals, reinforcing their portrayal as effete and out of touch; this is most clearly shown in the group’s call to collective meditation by singing tone clusters. The Beethoven paraphrases hint at an underlying “natural order,” referred to as such in the film, that the hyper-intellectual pursuits of the Eternals have violated. The film’s opposition of musical styles contributes to an apparent reactionary stance behind the film in the wake of the social and political turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[...] Vol. 2 (2013): The Future(s) of Music? – Out in June 2013 (see call here) > Vol. 3 (2014): Performing Exotica (send abstracts now! – see call [...]