Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours 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
Mysticism and the Mediation of Violence through Noise in Dub, Trance and Drone Metal
Owen Coggins - The Open University
Email: owen.coggins@open.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
This presentation compares how mysticism and religious experience have been understood in three popular music cultures–dub reggae, psychedelic trance, and drone metal. While dub, trance and drone metal have arisen from very different geographical, socio-historical and musical contexts, they bear striking similarities: their emergence from specifically translocal and marginal contexts; an emphasis on ritual, including sacramental uses of intoxicants; and a concern with repetition, bass and sonic materiality mediated through amplification technology, for example. Further, each has attracted discourses of religious experience and mysticism, though musical, cultural and religious authenticities are constructed very differently for each. The importance of collective dancing for psytrance, for example, contrasts with the frequent immobility of drone metal audiences, while the translocality of the diasporic Black Atlantic in Jamaica for dub reggae differs from the roots of psytrance in a Western hippie traveller community in Goa, India. Dub reggae draws on Rastafarian-influenced practices of Biblical exegesis and interpretation; influence from Buddhist, Hindu and indigenous religions contributes to the construction of a neo-shamanism in psychedelic trance; while drone metal employs a more fragmented deployment of elements from diverse real, fictional and imagined religious traditions.
In examining the contrasting ways mysticism is understood in dub, psytrance and drone metal, I discuss how sound (in timbres, rhythms, musical structures and conventions) as well as social practices and visual/verbal aesthetics contribute to the mystical religious imagination in each context. After highlighting some issues with the classical Perennialism evident in many analyses of religion in these musical cultures, I suggest how the work of Michel de Certeau–on the reception of popular culture and on mysticism as embodied social and textual practice–can provide a grounding for an empirical methodology for studying mysticism in popular music cultures. Beyond this, I reflect on how each form of music and their relations to mysticism can be understood as different approaches to the mediation of violence through noise.
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
Mysticism and the Mediation of Violence through Noise in Dub, Trance and Drone Metal
Owen Coggins - The Open University
Email: owen.coggins@open.ac.uk
/// ABSTRACT
This presentation compares how mysticism and religious experience have been understood in three popular music cultures–dub reggae, psychedelic trance, and drone metal. While dub, trance and drone metal have arisen from very different geographical, socio-historical and musical contexts, they bear striking similarities: their emergence from specifically translocal and marginal contexts; an emphasis on ritual, including sacramental uses of intoxicants; and a concern with repetition, bass and sonic materiality mediated through amplification technology, for example. Further, each has attracted discourses of religious experience and mysticism, though musical, cultural and religious authenticities are constructed very differently for each. The importance of collective dancing for psytrance, for example, contrasts with the frequent immobility of drone metal audiences, while the translocality of the diasporic Black Atlantic in Jamaica for dub reggae differs from the roots of psytrance in a Western hippie traveller community in Goa, India. Dub reggae draws on Rastafarian-influenced practices of Biblical exegesis and interpretation; influence from Buddhist, Hindu and indigenous religions contributes to the construction of a neo-shamanism in psychedelic trance; while drone metal employs a more fragmented deployment of elements from diverse real, fictional and imagined religious traditions.
In examining the contrasting ways mysticism is understood in dub, psytrance and drone metal, I discuss how sound (in timbres, rhythms, musical structures and conventions) as well as social practices and visual/verbal aesthetics contribute to the mystical religious imagination in each context. After highlighting some issues with the classical Perennialism evident in many analyses of religion in these musical cultures, I suggest how the work of Michel de Certeau–on the reception of popular culture and on mysticism as embodied social and textual practice–can provide a grounding for an empirical methodology for studying mysticism in popular music cultures. Beyond this, I reflect on how each form of music and their relations to mysticism can be understood as different approaches to the mediation of violence through noise.
