This is a past event
The twenty-seventh European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM)
Conference Theme
'Taking Part' is an aspect of music making in most cultures. This conference will focus on the theme of participation, investigating performance from many different perspectives - ethnological, sociological, psychological, cosmological, as well as musical - and consider communities, groups, families, and individuals in their roles as music makers.
While we need to analyze what exactly is going on musicologically within a performance, we also need to examine what is going on emotionally, physiologically, and aesthetically, for the participants, to get to the core of meaning and function. An obvious case study in the UK is the growing phenomenon of community choirs. By adopting an ethnographic approach the researcher comes to understand their role and performance milieux, how the music is made, what characterizes it, and how individuals express their identity through the choirs.
Presentations have been grouped in ways that aim to facilitate discussion and debate, under the following headings:
- interactions and innovations;
- celebrating community;
- gender and inclusivity;
- music across boundaries;
- roles, status, and hierarchies;
- framing place and space;
- negotiating participation and identity;
- experience and perception;
- conditions of music-making;
- belonging and the construction of home;
- singing the sacred;
- sonic communities;
- temporality and transcendence;
- communication, education, innovation;
- multicultural identities;
- institutionalisation and identity.
The John Blacking Memorial Lecture
A regular feature of ESEM meetings, this year the lecture will be presented by Professor Anthony Seeger, University of California at Los Angeles.
Format
ESEM is a seminar rather than a conference: we host collegial meetings open to researchers from all over the world in which participants can gather to share ideas and discuss recent work in ethnomusicology in an informal setting. In order to do this, we have limited the number of paper presentations. This year we have a panel entitled ‘Conditions of Music-Making’ and an evening video presentation, ‘Chanting together: Islamic rituals of Harar, Ethiopia’.
Download a draft programme.
Excursion
On the Saturday afternoon we are planning an excursion (by coach) up Royal Deeside to Aboyne, visiting a castle en route. In the evening we will have a meal of traditional Scottish food at the village of Garlogie, followed by a traditional ceilidh of music and song, with some dancing for all to join in.
Workshop
On Sunday evening we will also have a participatory workshop for Scottish music/song and the opportunity to make our own entertainment, so please bring an instrument if you can.
Programme committee
Martin Clayton (Durham University)Ursula Hemetek (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna)Ian Russell (University of Aberdeen)
- Speaker
- Tony Seeger
- Hosted by
- Elphinstone Institute
- Venue
- MacRobert Building