Urban Music Studies

This international, interdisciplinary conference will take place in Hong Kong, 5-6 December 2024. The conference aims to uncover emergent frameworks and methods for the interpretation and analysis of literary, filmic, and cultural texts relating to the profound transformation of cities around the world across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The starting point for discussion is cities in Asia and their dialogues with different cities in the world. While “urban” typically denotes a geographical location and its inhabitants, we use it to indicate a process and practice of co-existence. The urban, in this sense, is informed by socio-cultural, economic, ecological, political, and technological processes that may appear or aspire to be global but that are, in fact, diversely lived and experienced.

The framework “urban mediations” offers a way of thinking about “the urban” not as a bounded, stable object, but as an intermediary agency that is both specific to a particular milieu and connected to people and processes elsewhere. “Mediation” extends recent work on urban infrastructure – the physical systems of connectivity that keep cities moving – to include the social, affective, aesthetic, and material relations that bind the urban to itself and to myriad elsewheres. Like the urban, mediation “is not a stable thing but a way of seeing the unstable relations among dynamically related things.”

More information here https://rih.cuhk.edu.hk/news-and-events/cfp-urban-mediations-conf-dec2024/

Soundscapes profoundly connect listeners to the places they inhabit and thereby reveal the vibrant and resonant fabrics that lie beneath the delineated spaces of visual representation. In Resonant Fabrics, Marvin Heine explores and celebrates the many-layered and ambiguously undulating sense- and soundscapes as they shape and are shaped by urban cultures and particular ways of listening. By examining historical documents, contemporary accounts, and original empirical material through a combination of actor-network-theory, ecology, and sound studies scholarship, he embraces, in a stylistically embodied and often poetic manner, the sonic urban world in all its fragile, ephemeral, yet deeply affective sonority.

More: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6643-4/resonant-fabrics/?c=311034657

This Must Be the Place by Shain Shapiro introduces and examines music’s relationship to cities. Not the influence cities have on music, but the powerful impact music can have on how cities are developed, built, managed and governed. Told in an accessible way through personal stories from cities around the world — including London, Melbourne, Nashville, Austin and Zurich — This Must Be the Place takes a truly global perspective on the ways music is integral to everyday life but neglected in public policy.
More you can find here https://repeaterbooks.com/product/this-must-be-the-place/

Dear colleagues, Dear friends,

I am pleased to announce you my PhD viva voce examination in geography, entitled:

“Singing in China, theory and fieldwork in music geography – A Shanghai case study and singing during the covid-19 pandemic”.
It will be held in French, the 28th of November 2023 from 1:00 PM in Jean-Baptiste Duroselle’s room in La Sorbonne and by videoconference. A videoconference link is now available with Zoom. You generally only have to click on the link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86125755240?pwd=aWcwQkJpcklyNUkxaHNqakY2ZnpIUT09
The viva will be held in French. To make the organisation easier, please connect from 5 to 10 minutes before the viva’s beginning planned at 1:00 PM.

Abstract
In China, singing is an activity practiced by a large number of amateurs and professionals in various places. Perceived as a vector of morality, singing has been considered for several centuries as a powerful political tool by government power. The analyses carried out in this thesis aim to highlight the contemporary nature of this political dimension of singing, which is expressed both in urban development and in terms of the supervision of the population, particularly at times for crisis.
Situated within music geography and Urban Music Studies approaches, this thesis considers singing places as geo-indicators of the socio-political organisation and urban production of the Shanghainese metropolis. The study of singing places provides information on the construction of the city as being determined by the local authorities. In particular, singing can be examined within the framework of heritage and gentrification based on cultural reconstruction strategies. This evolution of the social and urban environment of the metropolis works in tandem with urban fabric. In particular, certain singers can be observed to appropriate public spaces, during the time of their activities.
The political dimension of singing appeared more pronounced during the management of covid-19 by the Chinese government. The analysis of the effects of this pandemic on the Chinese social and political space illustrates the persistence of singing as a means of communication and advocacy, mobilised both by the government and by population. The consequences of this crisis were also at the root of a reflection on the data collection primarily online, qualified here as “mediated fieldwork”.

Keywords: singing, music geography, socio-spatial dynamics, urban organisation and production, covid-19 pandemic, “online” fieldwork, political communication.
Best regards,

Sarah DEFOIN–MERLIN
Doctorante en géographie
UMR 8586 Prodig
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – UFR 08

Dear colleagues, Dear friends,

I am pleased to announce you my PhD viva voce examination in geography, entitled:

“Singing in China, theory and fieldwork in music geography – A Shanghai case study and singing during the covid-19 pandemic”.

It will be held in French, the 28th of November 2023 from 1:00 PM in Jean-Baptiste Duroselle’s room in La Sorbonne and by videoconference. The link will be available a few days before the viva.

The examiners are:
– Ms Sara Adhitya, Senior Research Fellow, University College of London
– Ms Manuelle Franck, Professeure des universités, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales
– Ms Marie Gibert, Maîtresse de conférences, Université Paris Cité
– Mr Thierry Sanjuan, Professeur des universités, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (thesis supervisor)
– Ms Isabelle Thireau, Directrice d’études, École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Keywords: singing, music geography, socio-spatial dynamics, urban organisation and production, covid-19 pandemic, “online” fieldwork, political communication.

Best regards,

Sarah DEFOIN–MERLIN
Doctorante en géographie
UMR 8586 Prodig
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne – UFR 08