Mediating Jazz Conference November 26, 2009

An international conference hosted by the Popular Music Research Centre, University of Salford

Keynote speaker: Professor Krin Gabbard (SUNY), author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture, Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture, and Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema.

Mediating Jazz is a two-day multi-disciplinary conference that brings together the leading researchers in the field of new jazz studies. The conference itself will comprise of four key strands, each of which addresses the overarching themes of mediation in jazz:

1. Jazz and the media

We wish to explore the way in which media representation impacts on jazz discourse. The review panel will welcome papers that examine the way in which jazz is represented through various media from Hollywood film to television documentary, sleeve notes to journalism.

2. Performance and the body

Musicians often promote the performance of jazz as an unmediated experience. We invite papers that interrogate this assumption, exploring the relationship between performance and different types of mediation. This could include discussions of jazz as a transcendent art or a gendered construct, as well as examining the mythologies of improvisation, musicianship and the 'jazz life', and the codification of performance practice.

3. Politics and identity

Within the jazz mainstream, the radical politics of the 1960s has arguably been replaced with a sense of homogenised culture, devoid of explicit race and class issues. This strand explores the role mediation plays in the growth and development of identities alongside the promotion/subversion of political messages.

4. Jazz cultures and narratives

This strand explores jazz as both narrative trope and changing cultural signifier. We welcome papers that explore the concept of jazz from a range of disciplinary perspectives, encouraging a discursive approach to the cultural study of jazz.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to Dr Tony Whyton (t.whyton@salford.ac.uk) by Wednesday 27 May 2009.

Review panel: Dr Tony Whyton (Salford), Dr Nicholas Gebhardt (Lancaster), Dr Catherine Tackley (Open University) and Professor George McKay (Salford)

Official Website: http://www.salford.ac.uk/events/details/925