The Business of Live Music
A conference to mark the completion of the AHRC funded project, The Promotion of Live Music in the UK.
31st March 2011
“It was exactly the same as 1000 other rooms above pubs that I’ve been to during my life time.” The live music space as heritage object – Rob Horrocks (Birmingham City University)
Prof Tim Wall’s presentation at The Business of Live Muic conference, Edinburgh, 31st March – 2nd April 2011.
Tim Wall at the Business of Live Music Conference, Edinburgh 1st April 2011 presenting his paper: Contemporary Live Jazz Scenes in the UK regions.
Venue: Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool
Date: 8–9 September 2011
We invite proposals from a broad range of academic disciplines for a 2 day symposium examining sites of popular music heritage: from institutions such as museums, to geographic locations, websites and online archives. Papers are welcomed that explore popular music within narratives of heritage and identity, real and imagined geographies, cultural memory and contested histories.
The event will focus on three thematic areas:
Popular Music Heritage in the Museum
In recent years museums have increasingly engaged with popular music heritage, as evidenced in a proliferation of exhibitions including those in the UK such as Kylie: The Exhibition at the V&A and the British Music Experience at the O2. Museum interaction with popular music heritage enables methods of narration beyond traditional written histories, engaging visitors with objects, sounds and images. The place of popular music in the museum raises issues of how music is both represented and used to represent and explore social histories, personal and collective identities, memories, and geographies. Possible themes for papers include:
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The closing panel Q and A discussion from the Salford Northern Soul symposium.
Investigating Northern Soul panel discussion/Q&A by Interactive Cultures
The first of two audio clips of question and answer panel discussions from the recent Rare Records and Raucous Nights symposium at The University of Salford.
Following a screening of Tony Palmer’s 1977 film ‘The Wigan Casino’ the panel comprising
Prof Tim Wall, Dr Nicola Smith, Dr Lucy Gibson, Ady Croasdell (Ace Records) and Prof David Sanjek discussed the film and responded to comments from the audience.
Investigating Northern Soul , Visual Representations of Northern Soul – Panel discussion by Interactive Cultures
The film is on . Not a great copy but it is there.
Ady Croasdell
Rare Records and Raucous Nights: Investigating Northern Soul symposium, University of Salford, 4 November, 2010
Ady Croasdell went to this first “Old Soul” all nighter in 1969 and now bosses the longest running Northern Soul club/all nighter of all time (31 years and counting) at the 100 Club in London’s Oxford Street. He has worked for Ace Records since 1982 compiling Northern Soul LPs and CDs for their Kent subsidiary. He oversees the production of these from concept to product and actively seeks and negotiates deals with the US owners.
The first of a series of papers from the recent Northern Soul symposium at The University of Salford.
Dr Lucy Gibson at the Rare Records and Raucous Nights: Investigating Northern Soul symposium
4 November, University of Salford
Lucy Gibson is a temporary lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral research explored popular music and the life course, which included ethnographies of Northern Soul and rare soul, rock music, and electronic dance music scenes and interviews with over 70 adult fans. She is particularly interested in how ageing shapes participation in music scenes and music taste and is currently working on publications in this area.
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A micro history of Black Handsworth in the 1980s from Interactive Cultures on Vimeo.
Wednesday afternoon research seminar presentation from our guest speaker Kieran Connell – a research student at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary History, University of Birmingham. Kieran is completing a micro history of Black Handsworth in the 1980s.
Kieran’s paper on recent cultural history was well programmed as our regular Book Group discussion that followed his presentation used Exhibiting Popular Music: Museum Audiences, Inclusion and Social History by Marion Leonard (University of Liverpool) and Museums and Popular Culture by Kevin Moore as the starting point for a wider discussion about the cultural heritage work that some members of the centre are involved in.
Professor Tim Wall is speaking at this Symposium hosted by The University of Salford next month.
Rare Records and Raucous Nights: Investigating Northern Soul
Robert Powell Theatre, 4 November, 2010; 1-5 P.M.
A spirited examination of dance culture, record collecting, and the perpetual British love for American Rhythm & Blues
Programme
1:00 Tim Wall, Birmingham City University
“Northern Soul: There’s Nothing Northern About It (And While We’re At It, It Isn’t Soul and the Dancers Aren’t Break Dancers”)
1:30 Nicola Smith, University of Wales Institute Cardiff
“Dancing Alone, Together: Pleasure, Competency and Competition On The Northern Soul Dancefloor”
2:00 Screening “The Wigan Casino” (Tony Palmer, 1977)
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Members of the Interactive Cultures research group attended/took part in a panel at the recent Un-Convention event in Salford writes Paul Long.
Jez Collins, the originator of the Birmingham Popular Music Archive chaired a panel consisting of: Dr Marion Leonard, who was the curator of Liverpool’s The Beat Goes On, and who oversees on ongoing project to examine how museums collect and preserve (or not) popular music; Alison Surtees of the Manchester District Music Archive; Eve Wood, the director of the documentary (2001) and Mike Darby of Bristol Archive Records.
Speakers offered insights into each of their projects, revealing the variety of practices in this field, the public appetite for music heritage and the innovations and connections that curation has been making. Surtees for instance outlined how the online MDMA had generated input from around 2000 individuals, half of which regularly posted material on the site. Some of these were members of the bands featured and indeed, these explorations of music past also connected with the present scene in ways that avoided the potential necrophilia of such work.