Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 47 minutes ago
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
This Must be the Stage: Tactics of Live Music Staging in Italian Media Practices around ’68
Alessandro Bratus - Università di Pavia, Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali
Email: alessandro.bratus@gmail.com;
Maurizio Corbella (Università di Milano, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambientali) – corbellamaurizio@gmail.com;
/// ABSTRACT
Popular music performance gained increasing attention during the tumultuous period conventionally labeled as Sessantotto (“1968”) in Italy. Consequently, media practices developed creative tactics to deal with the political, social and (sub)cultural capital performance came to represent in those years, opening possibilities for individual and collective identification and engagement. This paper pinpoints two of these media practices – namely film and record production – and cross-examines the concurring ways in which they engaged with popular music live acts.
In Italian cinema, “playback” was hailed as the technological norm for surrogating liveness, resulting in lip-syncing and playback strategies becoming loaded, non-transparent performative resources. Simultaneously, in the record industry, the dramatic increase of live album releases in the late 1960s brought about a multi-modal remediation of the performance space as aurally experienced through listening.
To gain a comprehensive framework of interpretation encompassing such individually defined practices, we suggest that the overarching notion of “staging” lends itself as a fertile concept, taking on at least two complementary meanings: staging as (1) the relational configuration of the agents taking part in a performance act (e.g. the performers, the audience, the space, etc.) and as (2) the strategies through which an event is processed across a chain of remediations, ultimately destined for a dislocated audience. Focusing on the constructed, malleable and staged nature of mediatized musical performance rather than merely on its documenting functions, allows us to ponder the pragmatic choices defining the specific relationship between sound and visual elements in each media artifact.
crosstowntraffic2018.wordpress.com
This presentation took place as part of the conference Crosstown Traffic: Popular Music Theory and Practice, which was hosted by The University of Huddersfield from September 3 - 5 2018. This event combined the IASPM UK&Ireland Biennial Conference, the 13th Art of Record Production Conference (ARP), an ISMMS conference, and the additional participation of Dancecult.
A recurrent theme within popular music studies has been discussion of how the field can integrate different disciplines and professions, for example exploring both music and its context; involving both practitioners and researchers; and encouraging interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Many different issues make such approaches challenging, and various different popular music focused subject organisations have developed somewhat independently of one another. This conference brought four such groups together, to exchange knowledge, collaborate, and encourage crosstalk.
/// SUPPORT
Popular Music Studies Research Group (PMSRG), University of Huddersfield research.hud.ac.uk/pmsrg/#
Centre for Music, Culture and Identity (CMCI), University of Huddersfield
research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/cmci
The International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland Branch (IASPM UK & Ireland)
iaspm.org.uk
Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production (ASARP)
artofrecordproduction.com
Dancecult Research Network (DRN) studies into electronic dance music culture
dancecult-research.net
International Society for Metal Music Studies (ISMMS)
metalstudies.org
/// ORGANIZERS
IASPM UK&I: Rupert Till
ARP: Katia Isakoff, Shara Rambarran
ISMMS: Karl Spracklen
Dancecult: Graham St. John
University of Huddersfield: Jan Herbst, Austin Moore, Lisa Colton, Toby Martin, Catherine Haworth, Mark Mynett
/// CREDITS
This online project was edited, collated, and made available online by Chris McConnell, Jack Zissell, and Colin Frank.
/// PRESENTATION DETAILS
This Must be the Stage: Tactics of Live Music Staging in Italian Media Practices around ’68
Alessandro Bratus - Università di Pavia, Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali
Email: alessandro.bratus@gmail.com;
Maurizio Corbella (Università di Milano, Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambientali) – corbellamaurizio@gmail.com;
/// ABSTRACT
Popular music performance gained increasing attention during the tumultuous period conventionally labeled as Sessantotto (“1968”) in Italy. Consequently, media practices developed creative tactics to deal with the political, social and (sub)cultural capital performance came to represent in those years, opening possibilities for individual and collective identification and engagement. This paper pinpoints two of these media practices – namely film and record production – and cross-examines the concurring ways in which they engaged with popular music live acts.
In Italian cinema, “playback” was hailed as the technological norm for surrogating liveness, resulting in lip-syncing and playback strategies becoming loaded, non-transparent performative resources. Simultaneously, in the record industry, the dramatic increase of live album releases in the late 1960s brought about a multi-modal remediation of the performance space as aurally experienced through listening.
To gain a comprehensive framework of interpretation encompassing such individually defined practices, we suggest that the overarching notion of “staging” lends itself as a fertile concept, taking on at least two complementary meanings: staging as (1) the relational configuration of the agents taking part in a performance act (e.g. the performers, the audience, the space, etc.) and as (2) the strategies through which an event is processed across a chain of remediations, ultimately destined for a dislocated audience. Focusing on the constructed, malleable and staged nature of mediatized musical performance rather than merely on its documenting functions, allows us to ponder the pragmatic choices defining the specific relationship between sound and visual elements in each media artifact.
