Uploaded August 2019 | Updated September 2026, 42 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
Stories We Could Tell: Putting Words to American Popular Music
Tom Attah - Leeds Arts University
/// ABSTRACT
Stories We Could Tell identifies eight typical strategies used when critics and historians to write about American popular music. How has the history of rock and roll been told? Has it become formulaic? Or remained, like the music itself, open to outside influences? Who have been the genre’s primary historians? What common frameworks or sets of assumptions have music history narratives shared? The most persistent formats that the writers of rock and rock histories embrace are the instinctual, the Darwinian, the heroic, the ritual, the alluvial, the agoraphobic, and the Manichean. Stories We Could Tell critically discusses each of these ways of presenting the history of popular music genres. This paper summarises the forthcoming Routledge book of the same name by the late David Sanjek, and which is co-edited by Tom Attah. The book is a unique work of music historiography that analyses, catalogues, and contextualises music writing in order to afford new perspectives on the field of cultural production.
Stories We Could Tell invites the audience to deepen their engagement with popular music by considering the mediating role of critics and writers in the creation of music history. The paper and book have three specific aims. First, by focusing on rock’n’roll, they create an inventory of the eight most persistent narrative patterns used by popular music historians. Each of these narrative patterns has been employed to produce books of immeasurable value, and our knowledge of the subject would, undeniably, be deficient without them. Stories We Could Tell does not dismiss the eight patterns or make their potential inferiorities the main focus of discussion; instead it recognises their abundant usefulness as tools of investigation. The second aim is to elucidate assumptions that have governed the development of each pattern. Finally, the work considers each strategy’s theoretical and ideological consequences.
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
Stories We Could Tell: Putting Words to American Popular Music
Tom Attah - Leeds Arts University
/// ABSTRACT
Stories We Could Tell identifies eight typical strategies used when critics and historians to write about American popular music. How has the history of rock and roll been told? Has it become formulaic? Or remained, like the music itself, open to outside influences? Who have been the genre’s primary historians? What common frameworks or sets of assumptions have music history narratives shared? The most persistent formats that the writers of rock and rock histories embrace are the instinctual, the Darwinian, the heroic, the ritual, the alluvial, the agoraphobic, and the Manichean. Stories We Could Tell critically discusses each of these ways of presenting the history of popular music genres. This paper summarises the forthcoming Routledge book of the same name by the late David Sanjek, and which is co-edited by Tom Attah. The book is a unique work of music historiography that analyses, catalogues, and contextualises music writing in order to afford new perspectives on the field of cultural production.
Stories We Could Tell invites the audience to deepen their engagement with popular music by considering the mediating role of critics and writers in the creation of music history. The paper and book have three specific aims. First, by focusing on rock’n’roll, they create an inventory of the eight most persistent narrative patterns used by popular music historians. Each of these narrative patterns has been employed to produce books of immeasurable value, and our knowledge of the subject would, undeniably, be deficient without them. Stories We Could Tell does not dismiss the eight patterns or make their potential inferiorities the main focus of discussion; instead it recognises their abundant usefulness as tools of investigation. The second aim is to elucidate assumptions that have governed the development of each pattern. Finally, the work considers each strategy’s theoretical and ideological consequences.
