Dec. 8, 2016: Final program announced 

Oct. 26, 2016: Travel Information 

Oct. 23, 2016: Program announced (download) 

OcT. 23, 2016: Conference News: Registration and more 

May 17, 2016: Deadline for paper/panel proposals is extended to May 25!

Jan. 21, 2016: CFP announced

* * * * *

CFP: The 5th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference 2016 in Melbourne (Australia)

Date: 11-12 December 2016, (Sunday-Monday)

Venue: Monash Asia Institute (MAI), Monash University, Caulfield Campus

900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, Victoria 3145, Australia (Melway Ref: 68 F1)

* For information on travelling to Caulfield campus (how to get to, parking and map), please visit Monash University Caulfield campus and Google Maps.  Getting There will be helpful to travel Melbourne.

Organized by:

Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group (IAPMS group),

Monash Asia Institute & School of Media, Film and Journalism, , Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

KEY NOTE SPEAKER: Andy Bennett (Griffith University)

Music (Post)subcultures and Scenes in Asia: Towards a Rethinking of Concepts and Theories

PLENARY SESSION: Koichi Iwabuchi (Manash University), Shane Homan (Monash University) et al.

Australia in Inter-Asian Pop Music Flows/connections

STATEMENT

We are pleased to announce the 5th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference, which will take place on December 10-11, 2016 in Melbourne, in collaboration with Monash Asia Institute and School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Following the first conference in Osaka in 2008, the second conference in Hong Kong in 2010, the third conference in Taipei in 2012, and the fourth conference in Chiang Mai, we move our next meeting to Australia, a country which geographically belongs to ‘Asia’ and has a large population of Asian backgrounds and many people working with musicians and producers in other parts of Asia.

Founded in 2008, Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group (IAPMS group) is a research network that at the moment includes 120 scholars not only in Asia but also in Europe, America and Oceania. Through its biennial conferences and related activities, the group provides a platform to foster scholarly conversations and collaborations arising from the growing academic interest in Asian popular music both inside and outside Asia.

CONFERENCE THEME (IAPMS∙2016∙Melbourne):

Reframing Asian Popular Music in Time-Place

In retrospect, Shuhei Hosokawa’s 1998 prediction in his book Karaoke Around the World sounds rather premature when he claimed, “There exists no ‘Asian’ pop but various forms of pop music in Asia.” Despite what seemed at the time the unbridgeable cultural, linguistic, religious and ethnic differences, decades of intensified trans-Asia cultural traffic has generated some seminal forms of ‘Asian’ pop music that entertain people across the national borders. Furthermore, there emerges a new batch of pop music that bears the influence of these new forms throughout East and Southeast Asia. Through the practices of relentless emulation, adaptation and referencing, some stylitically coherent, regionally based pop music is being created. So we have J-pop (Japanese pop), K-pop (Korean pop), M-pop (Mandarin pop), V-pop (Vietnamese pop), T-pop (Thai pop), I-pop (Indo pop), L-pop (Lao pop) and so on which, despite different prefixes, do not sound and look very far apart from each other.

The emergence of pan-Asian pop in country-coded names is the latest development unfolding in front of our eyes. However, we still do not have a large stock of shared knowledge about pop music of Asia beyond the glossy surface of the hiphenated pop, In particular, we barely know other Asian countries’s or regions’s histories, cultures and traditions of pop music. This lack of shared knowledge is becoming one of the main obstacles to re-imagining and and constructing Asian pop as a concrete entity. Thus, any constructive inquiry into Asian pop needs to delve deep into each country/region’s rich legacy of popular music and render visible what is increasingly being erased, forgotten and buried.

For this purpose, we propose a rethinking of Asian pop through a frame of time-place. Asian people are not familiar with the idea of Asian pop as a common currency as popular music of the continent has been narrativized firmly along the lines of the national and/or the ethnic. By bringing the subnational to the fore, we would like to introduce a new way of thinking/talking about Asian pop and take a step forward from rather abstract and often unproductive categories of the national and the ethnㅑc. Eschewing the existing way of addressing Asian pop in terms of nationality and/or ethnicity, we propose a research agendum of “Asian pop in particular time and place”. Here, Asian pop will appear in the form of, say, ‘1920s Osaka’, ‘1940s Shanghai’, ‘1950s Bangkok’, ‘1970s Manila’, ‘1980s Beijing’, ‘1990s Tainan’, ‘2000s Bandung’ rather than the tired classification of K-pop, J-pop, Canto-pop and so on.

Furthermore, the 2016 conference will be a great occasion to reconsider the inclusiveness of “Asian” and “Inter-Asia” by examining how Australia has been already and always part of Asian pop music flows and connections. Geographically located in the fringe of “Asia” and being a British settler colony, Australia tends to be not included in the study of Asian pop music. However Australia actually belongs to cultural geography of “Asia” for many people of Asian backgrounds live in Australia as long-standing diaspora, second & third-generation Asian Australians, recent migrants, temporary workers and overseas students who enjoy pop music of diverse parts of Asia. Furthermore, musicians, producers and industries has been collaborating with other Asian counterparts. We would welcome any paper proposal that explores the way in which Australia is part of inter-Asian pop music flows and connection. We believe that the examination of a time-space frame in terms of Australia’s involvedness in popular cultural geography of “Asia” will fruitfully expand our perspectives in the study of Asian pop music.

There have been precious precursors of Asian pop and its ilk loved and fondly remembered in a multitude of Asian countries. It could be a good starting point to explore production, circulation, consumption and impacts of these stars and hit songs in construction of Asian pop. Of course, it is far from our intention to force a contrived association between a particular sound and time-place or encourage what sounds suspiciously like a journalistic practice. We would just like to see if this change in perspective would yield any productive outcome and evaluate its potential.

Having said that, any paper that examines popular music’s contribution to construction of life (and death) of people in a particular time-place will be welcomed and much appreciated. The organizer of Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference 2016 in Melbourne would like to invite paper presenters to send their abstract (not more than 250 words) to iapmsconference@gmail.com before 15 May 2016.

Please use the Proposal Form (right click to download) when submitting your proposal. Please use your surname as file name (ex. Chua.doc, Douglas.doc). If you plan to organize a panel with more than two people, please coordinate with the panelists to put all the necessary information on one form (e.g., panel title, paper titles, individual abstracts, panelist information). A panel description is not necessary.

Please email all inquiries to: iapmsconference@gmail.com.

PUBLICATIONS AFTER CONFERENCE

In general, the paper submitted to the conference will be considered for publication in a special issue of a journal that organizing committee is working on. For papers that are intended for consideration for publications, we require these papers to be in one of the following streams:

1: Theory and Methodology

2: Production, Circulation and Consumption

3: Politics

4: Identity, Ideology, Affect

Besides, full paper submission is required for consideration for publication. Full and completed paper can be sent to the conference email on or before the conference dates. However, all papers will be sent for blind review, and there is no guarantee that the papers will be accepted.

SCHEDULE

2016.5.25 Deadline for abstract submission

2016.7.15 Acceptance of papers

2016.9.15 Registration

2016.11.15 Submission of papers

2016.12.11-12 Conference Days

REGISTRATION FEE

Committee members: AUD$ 80

Waged members: AUD$ 60

Unwaged members: AUD$ 30

Local Committee

Koichi Iwabuchi (Monash University, Australia/Japan)

Shane Homan (Monash University, Australia)…

Organizing Committee

Anthony FUNG (Chinese University, Hong Kong/China)

Jeroen Groenwegen-Lau (Independent scholar, China/Netherlands)

Tunghung HO (Fu-jen Catholic University, Taiwan)

Koichi Iwabuchi (Monash University, Australia/Japan)

Kai Khiun LIEW (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Jung-yup LEE (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA/Korea)

Keewoong LEE (Sungkonghoe University, Korea)

Yoshitaka MORI (Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan)

Viriya Sawangchot (Independent scholar/ThaiPBS, Thailand)

Hyunjoon SHIN (Sungkonghoe University, Korea)

Eva TSAI (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan)

Buni Yani (LSPR School of Communication, Phillipines/Indonesia)

ZHANG Qian (Communication University of China, China)

Notes:

English is the only language in the conference as there is no common language among Asia language. Translation service can be provided only during Q&A, in case the presenters need it.

This conference is consciously scheduled before the ACS Crossroads 2016 Conference in Sydney (14-17 December). For more information on that conference please go to: http://crossroads2016.org/call-for-papers/ and https://www.facebook.com/XR2016/.

For the updated information about submission, registration, accommodation, transportation etc, please keep visiting our website: http:www.interasiapop.org.