World Cup music

I gave a paper on the 2010 World Cup music at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference in LA last week. A version of it written before the world cup is due to come out in the Journal of Soccer and Society soon (if they get back to me with an alternative to signing away my copyright) and I'm working on a version based on the conference talk as a follow-up to the first, so I won't publish the whole paper here, but I did want to link to all the music I discussed, not least so that potential future readers can easily find it all in one place.
Vuvuzelas
Diski Dancing

Back from SEM

Another SEM is over, and I'm back in New York, and back in the middle of things. Despite the travel hassles, things were really pretty great. NYU made a very good showing, with lots of really effective papers from students and faculty, and a party that, in the tradition of NYU music department parties at SEM, got shut down. And I was especially happy to get to spend some time with Brett, who is doing wonderful things. T has a great post on the conference, and in particular, what we ate, that is really worth reading, and Gabriel Solis over at People Listen to it, has a post on the keynote lecture which generated some interesting discussion.

SEM so far

I rushed through my morning yesterday in order to make my flight out of JFK in comfortable time. I needn't have bothered. The flight was canceled, and we were re-routed to LaGuardia. Frantic that we would get caught up in traffic on the rather expensive shuttle ride between the airports, we dashed downstairs to the baggage claim, and waited. And Waited. AND WAITED. Finally, two of us went upstairs to the luggage claim desk to investigate further, only to be told that our bags had been put on a plane that evening to Columbus. Why we were not on that plane with our bags, we could not understand. And why that flight was able to leave, and ours was canceled due to "bad weather", we could not understand. And why we had been told to collect our bags downstairs, when they had been automatically re-routed, we could not understand.
So we rushed outside and on to a shuttle. And waited. And finally offered to pay the driver more to leave with all six of us plus one non-NYU student, and one empty seat, rather than wait for an eighth passenger, so that we would make our new flight.
So off to LaGuardia we rushed, and got through customs just in time to hear that our flight had been delayed. Not a complete tragedy. It was about dinner time, and we were all pretty hungry. Several of us in the group are vegitarians, and several people have food allergies, and so our choices were rather limited. But we ate and talked, and waited together. Finally it got to the time when we should be making our way over to the terminal. We did that little thing just in time to discover that our flight had been canceled! We were booked on a new one in the morning that basically guaranteed that we would miss the first few papers we had all wanted to attend. But at that point, what choice did we have?
Brett, who had begun his journey on Monday evening (he was traveling from South Africa) was about ready to pass out, and so rather than drive all the way out to Manhattan and then back in the early hours of the next morning, we crashed at Allen's place in Brooklyn. Many thanks, Allen and Nicki. Your fold-out couch was very comfortable!
Part the next: On Thursday morning, we all woke up bright and early to get to LaGuardia. This time we actually got onto the plane before the waiting happened. But at long last, we got into the air, and on to Columbus. The airport taxis were unable to carry all six of us at once, so we went in two taxis. And three of us landed up at the wrong Hyatt. Who would have thought Columbus had two Hyatts?
But we finally got there, and got registered, and are now (relatively) comfortably settled at the conference hotel. The hotel, thankfully, did not charge us for the first night that we missed, but they did give away our double room, and so three women and one (tall) man are sleeping in one king-size bed and one cot. Last night the arrangement was less than successful. Tonight, we will have to try something different. Most of the NYU department gave their papers yesterday (and there were some very good ones among them), but Jenny, Brett and Allen all speak today, and I have my paper tomorrow morning.

Columbus, here I come.

I am headed for Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow, for SEM. I can't believe Hawaii was nearly a year ago! I'm excited, and a little nervous, but mostly just looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues again. I always enjoy conferences, even without the beaches and warm weather. My paper is on Saturday morning, fairly early, but hopefully there will be a few die-hard attendees who aren't completely wiped out by then, and who will have some useful feedback. I don't know what internet access I'll have, but as we are in the conference hotel, I'm sure there will be something, so I'll blog as I have the opportunity.

Finals time

I am having no luck blogging this weekend. I can't seem to pick out the important bits well enough to summarize it, and I don't have time to blog the whole thing. Suffice it to say that Saturday was spent at the Access to Knowledge conference in Yale, and was very productive and exciting. And now I'm plowing through the last official week of the semester, and finals. One paper down, two to go. I'm sure I'll be back on full blogging form by this time next week.

Seattle, and academic technique.

Wow, New York is beautiful. Summer is really upon us, and I'm loving the warm weather and green things.
Seattle was beautiful, too, though in a rather different way. The natural beauty around the city is spectacular. We spent a little time after the conference sitting on a patch of lush grass near the Pike place market, eating our lunch, and watching the boats in the sound, and the sense of absolute, simple luxury overtaking me was so memorable. And there were several occasions when, walking around the city I caught sight of a sliver of silvery moon hanging in the sky beside the space needle, or the lights of the residential areas on the hillsides around us, and was delighted by the beauty of it. The flowers in the Pike place market, and the carnivalesque atmosphere around the fish stalls were really appealing, too, and I was really happy to see all of that. But there was something about Seattle that didn't sit well with me, and while I can't articulate it very clearly, I think it had something to do with the rather obscene displays of money that abound, not least at the Experience Music Project. I'm afraid the museum did not impress me. Very high-tech, and I'm sure great fun for the children who were milling around most of the weekend, but there is very little real thought about music and the way it works, sociologically, politically, or just in a very mundane practical sense. The conference, however, more than made up for the museum's inadequacies. There were a whole lot of super panels, and I heard some really high-quality papers that made me think in all the right ways, and I met some super people.
Our panel went really well, though I did realize that I have become a little too blaze about conference presentations. It's one thing to write a paper that people will pick through and dissect, and that you know you need to be rigorous with, but it is a whole other to know what you are talking about well enough to do more than simply read it. I tried to talk through this paper, rather than reading it, and I realized rapidly that I have become too reliant on the notes in front of me. I do think that there are some things that are best read, simply because it can be difficult to be concise and artistic with words in a live moment, but in general really being able to present a paper like this means being so deeply engaged with the vocabulary that you can pull it together coherently on the spot. It's a bit like knowing a musical instrument well enough to improvise on it. Doing it well means really knowing it. So I'm applying to a couple of South African conferences at the end of the summer, and I'm going to spend some time over the break getting that in touch with my data again.
In the mean time, the end of the semester looms. Three papers, two abstracts, two presentations and one more conference (at which, thankfully, I am not giving a paper this time) left, and some smaller scale stuff in between, and then I'm back to the airport for that much anticipated trip home. Can you believe my first year of grad school is nearly over? I can't.

Back in NYC

It's quarter to 2 in the morning, and I just got back from a super weekend in Seattle. The conference was really great, and our presentation went nicely. I'll blog in more detail when I have recovered a bit, but for now, my bed, and the book I need to finish for class tomorrow, are both calling to me. I think bed is winning out, though.

Another conference, hey?

Ben, his girlfriend Serena and I are off to Seattle tomorrow for the Experience Music Project Conference, where Ben and I are giving a joint paper. I'm very excited, not least because my collegues who have spent time in Seattle have given us lots of suggestions for places to eat, and things to see and do while we are there. More than that, though, I'm excited by the prospect of our talk, which is on online representations of music scholarship, and involves, along other things, this blog. Wish us luck. We're talking on Sunday.

A weekend in Virginia

I'm home, and well-rested after a good night's sleep, and an unintended sleep-in this morning (At least class is only this afternoon).
The weekend was wonderful. I had a bit of a bumpy start on Friday morning, when security at JFK spent so long checking all my paperwork to validate the authenticity of my South African passport and US visa, that I missed the plane, and had to wait on standby for the next one, but I caught that one without a problem, and T very sweetly waited for me in Richmond. It was wonderful to step off the plane in Virginia and take off my jersey.
The weather was beautifully warm, and it was wonderful to wonder around Colonial Williamsburg in short sleeves, with someone who really knows the area. I'm sure T will blog about that a little herself, but she spent several years in the town, and knows the ins and outs. We bought kitchy souvenirs, photographed buttercups and violets in the grass, hurled magnolia pods, and watched lambs hopping about in a way I would never have believed possible, had I not actually seen it myself. We also watched a parade of men and boys (and a few girls) enacting military manouvers, were followed up the oyster-shell lined street by a fife and drum band, and wondered around the kitchen garden of one of the establishments.
Finally, in the early evening, another friend joined us, and we spent a little time touring the college campus before the conference reception. T played some tunes with one of the folklorists who was there, and it was wonderful to hear her play (the first time I have). Finally, a group of us headed out to one of the few restaurants that was open at 22:00 (Williamsburg is not New York!) to grab some dinner (and chocolate raspberry cake for pudding. So good), before making our way back to the hotel.
Saturday started with cinnamon buns and orange juice at the university, before the panels started. We missed the first paper, but everything else I heard was superb. There was a really great range of topics, and I was very impressed with how polished and clear so many student papers were. The keynote speaker gave a really wonderful reference to the work of my advisor that made me very proud, and I spent a lot of time thinking how happy I was to be there. My paper was in the afternoon, and despite some technology fumbles in the morning (we couldn't connect my computer to the sound system, and I had to write a new CD, instead), it went well. I always feel like the inevitability of race issues in my work mean that I risk losing some of my audience before I even start (another white girl speaking about black music. sigh) and I got at least one of the type of question that makes it apparent that it was read that way by at least one person, but in general, I was happy with the outcome. And I enjoyed the intersections between my paper and the one that followed it.
The conference day ended on Saturday with a really long concert that showcased a huge selection of performers from among the conference attendees. I heard gamelan for the first time, and was really impressed by many of the departmental ensembles. Afterwards, T and finished up the evening at our hotel talking about everything and anything until the early hours of the morning. There is nothing like traveling with a friend to get to know them really well.
Sunday morning began with a joint panel between MACSEM (the organization whose conference we were there for), and MAFA, the Mid-Atlantic Folklife Association, who had parallel panels to ours all weekend. It was really interesting to hear both groups converse, though I wish I had had time to attend a full panel from the MAFA group. T gave the last paper of the weekend, which went really well, and ended things on a high note, and then a group of us went to a smart French restaurant for lunch. We had eaten every meal of the weekend in one particular restaurant, and so it was nice to have a change, and to have time to chat to people I am only just getting to know.
T and I then had a few hours to kill before we needed to catch our plane, and so we drove toward the airport via a particularly picturesque route so that I could see some of the countryside. Virginia looks so lovely, and I really hope I will have another opportunity to visit. T suggested a winter break there sometime next year, and the idea is really appealing.
And just to round off my set of new experiences for the weekend, we went shoe shopping at an outlet mall (which, for my South African readers, is an open-air shopping complex with a series of name-brand shops with significantly lower prices than in New York), and stopped at a self-service petrol garage (gas station) on our way to the airport. To my delight, my South African drivers license got me through security far more easily than my passport does, and before I knew it, we were in the air, and on our way back to New York.
It has been such an amazing weekend. I am really glad to have had the break from my routine, and the fact that it was in a beautiful place, with lovely people, made it all the better. Thank you, T, for a super weekend. I wouldn't even have applied were it not for you, and I am really glad I did.

Williamsburg, here I come

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, T and I are flying to Richmond, and then driving to Williamsburg for the MACSEM conference. Or rather, T is driving, and I'm passengering. So no blogging this weekend. But wish us luck. We're both giving papers.

Good News All Round

Yippee, T and I just got proposals accepted for the MACSEM conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the end of March. Congratulations, T, and thank you for turning me on to this one. I wouldn't have even known about it if you hadn't made the suggestion, and followed up with me.

And on top of that bit of good news, I am delighted to report that the Union Square farmers' market is up and running again. It isn't quite full force yet, but I managed to get some gorgeous seasonal vegetables (I am just finishing the stir fry I made for dinner, with said wonderful seasonal veggies. Yum), fresh baked multi-grain bread of the sort you just can't get in the supermarket, and a delicious cup of hot perry (or pear cider). It is so wonderfully fragrant, and just right for this weather. Today was significantly warmer than the rest of the week has been, and beautifully sunny, and so despite the grey slush on the sidewalks, and the blocks of frozen, dirty snow that make the streets look like a war zone where the plows have been, it was a really great day to be out of doors.