EMP 2008 Pop Conference

Hahaha

Always amazing when the left and right go so far around the bend they meet up again. Sounds like (based admittedly on no direct exposure to her writings) her quasi-progressive critique of science's aspersions to truth would dovetail quite nicely with the recent fundamentalist attack on science.

And it ain't just Xgau. I bow to the genius in every sentence of this Scott Seward review:

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0228,seward,36351,22.html

Skot (and I as his significant other) got death threats from "Jukies" in response to that review. It really riled some folks. Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

holy shit, that first paragraph is hysterical

The second for me:

El-P's rhymes are as wack as a lumberjack swinging an ax made of wax from the ears of Tears for Fears after they drank all the beers and found Britney Spears in arrears for illiciting too many middle-aged leers and hipster sneers. On the other hand, instrumentally, he's good.

Yeah, I haven't read much Scott Seward, but every time someone posts something of his, I find that it's the new best thing ever written. Line Ned posted is definitely a favorite from the El-P piece.

"I'll make ya quake. Scare ya so bad your ass will be Farrah and your drawers will be Cheryl Ladd."

*** *** ***

I suppose the value of academic/technical jargon is that it allows you to pack very complex ideas (and idea sets, ideas about ideas, references, etc.) into small spaces, where they can be played off each other. This assumes an audience familiar with the terminology and its implications, so yeah, it can impede broader communication, but broad-channel communication isn't always the #1 goal. Sometimes you just just want to get the concepts across as efficiently as possible.

Ned beat me to it. EXCELLENT review. The best line that sums up what I like and don't like about the latest El-P.

Like Skinny Puppy made a record and let their plumber sing.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

Ha ha, I'm imagining the guy furiously text messaging this.

Neoliberalism, neoliberal, neoliberals: know what they mean, can see why they're used, but avoid them myself. They might fall into the category of an ideology that goes nameless in order to pass itself off as "common sense," but conservatives would say the same thing about left-wingers who don't like communism, liberalism, or anti-Americanism as labels. I prefer openly argumentative language, such as "free-market true believers" or "free-market hucksters" or "the self-serving ideology of First World international lenders," etc.

At EMP "neoliberalism" was code for "Clintonism."

Lol I'm def making an ass of myself

No you're not. You're managing to have a humane argument on ILM for which I'm grateful.

Someone sent me a msg that if I ever set foot in Brooklyn they'd smash my face in the pavement.

You've got to be fucking kidding me! So much for the underground.

I understand your point, Pete, but the descriptive phrases you prefer fail to do what the word "neoliberalism" does so effectively: encapsulate a complex set of ideas and historical references into a small space. Neoliberal is (or can be considered) good jargon, because it's much more efficient than a sidebar on the history of economic liberalism.

As a buzzword, though, it plainly sucks. Maybe the difference between academic obfuscation and beat-to-death buzzwords figures in here.

I gotta ask, though, Pete - is your favorite book Madame Bovary? It's mine...

I take Pete for a Portrait of a Lady fan.

Loved Bovary in high school, but what's the connection?

Le mot juste

Flaubert was obsessed with finding it

A blog posting from someone who is on the committee planning the next conference http://swtos.blogspot.com/2008/08/politics-of-race-bodies-on-popular.html

was recently asked to participate on the program committee of a major popular music conference that happens each spring in Seattle. If you know pop music, you know I mean the EMP Conference. Seattle is home to the great Jimi Hendrix and EMP has a great exhibit happening now on Jimi. The program committee selects the upcoming topic and puts the call for papers together. Who attends the conference? A mix of music journalists and academics. And some industry folks and publishers of popular music from A to Z.The conference itself has always struck me as driven by the participation of predominately white driven set and discourse of POP music. It occurs for me as a black female scholar that EMP has been dominated by the musics that powerful groups of white folks like or white critics talk about (Kelefa Sanneh is an exception though he ain't Greg Tate). It has also been about hidden conversations by all us "minority" folk still feeling and perhaps making ourselves others but NOT taking a stand on program committees to say what is usually backroom conversation for blacks only or with a few radical white folks who we trust or who we think are like us -- have no real power in the matter.

The committee is assigned to choose a title in the next few days so the CFP (call for papers) can go out by early Sept. One of the popular titles arising has to do with the EROTICS OF POP. Committee members are talking about how bodies get left out but rarely are they talking specifically about WHOSE bodies are left out and HOW. Right now we are at the generalizing stage. I suggested this title two days ago and some liked it, others did not. For one, it's too long:

Share, Remix, Reuse : Social Media, Music & We the People in 2.0(09)

What was behind my proposition was bringing issues of diversity out without making it explicit -- race, gender, nation, class -- as well as musical and cultural diversity in approaches to music-making. Check out this great video on creativity and video remixes:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.htm

My specialty as a popular music scholar is race, gender and the body. What I have been privy to as a speaker/participant at EMP, what has driven my own concerns about participating has been that I feel white concerns about popular music run the atmosphere and the conversation. It seems inevitable with a critical mass of white journalists and scholars talking about pop.

I notice the committee's conversations seem to already use the term BODIES without politicizing what it means to different audiences and people. The politics of the people of color whose BODIES and VOICES have been consumed, always present, but often disenfranchised by the pop machine seems to always get lost when we don't privilege REAL PEOPLE in our themes and discourses not just their bodies.

So here I am on the program committee and if you've learned something about me from my previous posts -- offending the status quo excites me when I really have the courage to do it. But part of me is withholding what I always wanted to say now that I got a little power. Crazy thing.

So I said it. Black folks already got issues about the way bodies are consumed in popular culture and popular music from hip-hop to McDonald's commercials and jingles. I shared with the committee that I think we must politicize the way people MIX in whatever title we choose and use it as a metaphor about the MIX in music. It's about sounds and people mixing. Not just money and markets on some chart. I shared in my last communication, if we bring the politics of race and gender to the CFP then I'd feel more at home with my participation in EMP as a whole.

The hidden transcripts among some folks of color I've talked since EMP began several years ago, particularly some notables in journalism and academia, is that the issue of race might be a topic of some paper, but not a issue we talk about as people readin'/writing popular music. I also told my compatriots that RACE and WE THE PEOPLE and WEB 2.0 in 2009 is a national tie in for the conference this year. Which is I am considered proposing the following title: WE THE PEOPLE in 2.0(09) : FORMING A MORE PERFECT MUSIC

I also added that the keynote speaker should be someone of color to bend the ear of the conference goers in the direction of race, gender and the body in ways that people of color can and do without trivializing that WE are the ones who often get BOXED IN in conversations of BODY.

I still want Success with the Opposite Ethnicity/Sex/Gender/Nation/Age. I want to shatter the illusion but going to the place that is heard as different, other, or out of place. I want to pull our attention towards the MIX and REMIX of DIFFERENCE. Like...Agree to be Offended and Stay in the Conversation Anyhow!! Kyra
Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. at 11:15 PM