*Music and Magic: Call for Articles*



This special issue of *Popular Music* will focus on the intersection of
popular music with ‘magic’, however authors may wish to define the term.



Back in 1981, Simon Frith insisted that myths and magic existed insofar as
cultural participants believed in them and found them comforting, giving
the example of rock songs that conjured up, for those who so desired, a
working-class street culture. Eric Weisbard (2005) similarly proposed to
focus our academic study on the 'magic moments' of musical experiences,
insisting that scholars should accept and recognize those instances when
rapture, accidents, a sense of vertigo or one's perplexity ('the quizzical,
not the categorical') takes centre stage in life, and all thanks to music.



These different interpretations of magic relate to control, with magic
offering an illusion of coherence and confidence to artists, consumers and
critics, and having the ability to re-enchant an implicitly and excessively
rational world –whether this is interpreted as welcome comfort or as
political disengagement.



So, when is magic actually mobilised in and around music-making? What does
the mobilisation of magic reveal about the values and practices that
underpin our contemporary popular music culture? What does the idea of
magic bring to music, and to our understanding of the world?



This special issue seeks to explore these issues.



*Deadline for abstracts (500 words): 30 April 2017*

*Deadline for articles (max. 10,000 words, bibliography inclusive): 28
February 2018*

*Peer-review process in Spring 2018*

*Planned publication : January 2019*



For more information on this call, please visit the link:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/popular-music/specia
l-issue-of-popular-music



Please send your proposals or any queries to the special issue editors,
Barbara Lebrun (barbara.lebrun -at- manchester.ac.uk) and Nanette De
Jong (nanette.de-jong
-at- newcastle.ac.uk).
------------------------------
*From:* Robert Judd <[log in to unmask]>
*Sent:* 29 September 2016 18:53:05
*To:* Nanette De Jong
*Subject:* Re: Call for Papers: Music and Magic

Dear Nanette,

I'd like to forward this, but it's too long. It should be no more than 300
words in length, and with a URL for full details as necessary.

Please review the AMS-Announce guidelines for full details regarding
posting requirements: www.ams-net.org/announce.php.

I can edit, or you are welcome to send a shortened version. Please let me
know what you'd like.

Regards,
Robert



On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 1:34 PM, AMS Office <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Nanette De Jong <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 12:49 PM
> Subject: Call for Papers: Music and Magic
> To: AMS <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> *Music and Magic: Call for Articles*
>
>
>
>
>
> This special issue of *Popular Music* will focus on the intersection of
> popular music with ‘magic’, however authors may wish to define the term.
>
>
>
> Despite its relegation to ‘entirely misunderstood hocus pocus’ (Henry
> 2001) since the development in the 17th century of modern music and
> acoustic science (see Gouk 1999), the notion of magic has continued to
> shape and influence our engagement with the world as one particular mode of
> knowledge –typically (but not necessarily convincingly) when pitted against
> so-called reason and science. In *Totem and Taboo*, originally published
> in 1913, Freud contends that magic is a body of instructions, a technique
> that primitive men and neurotics mobilise when they are confident about
> their possibility to control the world –when they believe, specifically,
> that their acts can influence other persons or things, by a rather
> straightforward process of imitation. This does not just concern neurotics
> and savages, however, but also artists : in the modern, scientific age,
> ‘only in art does it still happen that a man who is consumed by desires
> performs something resembling the accomplishment of those desires and that
> what he does in play produces emotional effects –thanks to artistic
> illusion- just as though it were something real’ (Freud 1975 p.90). The
> desire, and sometimes the ability, to produce emotional effects thanks to
> an imitative process with one’s inner wishes is a fundamental
> characteristic of magic, which Freud also defines as ‘the omnipotence of
> thought’ (*ibid*. p.85). Further, and although he does not develop this
> point, Freud claims that the frequent comparison of artists to magicians is
> not just a matter of hyperbole, but also indicative of something more
> significant, a sense that artists (musicians?) can control or change the
> world.
>
>
>
> There is no doubt that magic has its sceptics and critics. For Roland
> Barthes (1957), magic is the shutting-down of critical faculties, the
> regrettable depoliticisation of language, the acceptance of the world as it
> is presented to us by dominant discourse, most powerfully that of consumer
> capitalism. In a similar vein, although only in passing, David McGuiness
> (2016) recently took issue with the mobilisation of a vocabulary of magic
> in popular music criticism, alleging that it amounted to analytical
> ignorance.
>
>
>
> Conversely, however, it is often for these very reasons of orderly
> appearance or satisfaction with the state of things that magic also appeals
> to many. For those regarded as mystics today, from Plotinus writing in
> 200AD to Schopenhauer and since, music can be an enchantment, a ‘form of
> sorcery that raises no question’ with the capacity to calm thought, to
> transcend the human condition of suffering, and/or to grant access to the
> world of ‘the Beyond’ (Godwin 1987). On a certain level, contemporary
> popular music is saturated with magic, with many artists following rituals
> prior to performance, like Beyoncé and Adele who reportedly invoke their
> respective alter egos (Denham 2015), and others who use a ‘magical’
> language to transform and assert their gender identity, such as the
> Japanese hip hop artist Hime (Condry 2006). Others suffuse their
> compositions and performance with the presence of sometimes long-dead
> others, including African American vocalists from Billie Holiday to Tracy
> Chapman who capture the memory of slave escapees (Davis 1999). Audiences
> and critics, too, frequently report having been mesmerized by performers
> (Looseley 2015 provides such accounts about Edith Piaf). In fact, given
> that the academic sub-field of Star Studies hinges on the premise that
> stars exist thanks to the propitious alignment of factors external to our
> control, i.e. the right type, place and time (Dyer 1998), an argument
> exists for the recognition that pop stars are fundamentally magic figures,
> our contextual analysis of their success being necessarily incomplete. Back
> in 1981, Simon Frith insisted that myths and magic existed insofar as
> cultural participants believed in them and found them comforting, giving
> the example of rock songs that conjured up, for those who so desired, a
> working-class street culture. Eric Weisbard (2005) similarly proposed to
> focus our academic study on the ‘magic moments’ of musical experiences,
> insisting that scholars should accept and recognize those instances when
> rapture, accidents, a sense of vertigo or one’s perplexity (‘the quizzical,
> not the categorical’) takes centre stage in life, and all thanks to music.
>
>
>
> These different interpretations of magic relate to control, with magic
> offering an illusion of coherence and confidence to artists, consumers and
> critics, and having the ability to re-enchant an implicitly and excessively
> rational world –whether this is interpreted as welcome comfort or as
> political disengagement.
>
>
>
> So, when is magic actually mobilised in and around music-making? What does
> the mobilisation of magic reveal about the values and practices that
> underpin our contemporary popular music culture? What does the idea of
> magic bring to music, and to our understanding of the world?
>
>
>
> This special issue seeks to explore these issues, asking its contributors
> to think through the musical implications of the concept of magic and to
> re-examine the habitual polarisation of the term against reason and
> science. Below are some non-prescriptive suggestions for contribution:
>
>
>
> ·       Music as a metaphor for cosmic organisation, for social ‘harmony’
>
> ·       Magic and musical inspiration,  the artist’s connection with ‘the
> other side’
>
> ·       Magic and fascination, listeners and consumers ‘under the spell’
> of music
>
> ·       Fetishes, rituals
>
> ·       Music and magic-related notions, including (alphabetically
> listed): angels, chance, charisma, destiny, fate, incantation, luck,
> saints, shamans, stars, supernatural, trances, visions, voodoo, witchcraft…
>
>
>
>
>
> *Deadline for abstracts (500 words): 30 April 2017*
>
> *Deadline for articles (max. 10,000 words, bibliography inclusive): 28
> February 2018*
>
> *Peer-review process in Spring 2018*
>
> *Planned publication : January 2019*
>
>
>
> Please send your proposals or any queries to the special issue editors,
> Barbara Lebrun ([log in to unmask]) and Nanette De Jong (
> [log in to unmask]).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Bibliography :  *
>
>
>
> Barthes, Roland  *Mythologies* (Paris: Points Seuil, 1957)
>
> Condry, Ian. *Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization* (Duke
> University Press, 2006)
>
> Davis, Angela Yvonne. *Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude" Ma"
> Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday* (Vintage books, 1999)
>
> Denham, Jess. ‘Chris Evans confuses Adele with Beyoncé’, *The Independent*,
> 23 October 2015.
>
> Dyer, Richard. *Stars* (London: British Film Institut ,1998 [1979]).
>
> Freud, Sigmund. ‘Animism ,Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts’ in *Totem
> and Taboo* [originally 1913], *The Standard Edition of the Complete
> Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*, vol.xiii (London: The Hogarth
> Press, 1975), 75-99.
>
> Frith, Simon. ‘“The magic that can set you free”: the ideology of folk and
> the myth of the rock community’, *Popular Music*, 1 (1981), 159-68.
>
> Godwin, Joscelyn (ed). *Music, mysticism and magic : a sourcebook* (London:
> Arkana, 1987).
>
> Gouk, Penny. *Music, Science and Natural Magic in 17th century England* (Yale,
> 1999)
>
>

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