Conference, Princeton University, October 24–25, 2015

Rethinking Protest Music

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

October 24–25, 2015

Few moments seem as ripe as the present for a reconsideration of protest, protest cultures, and music’s role in both. The past decade has witnessed a notable surge in protest activity across the globe, as witnessed in the Red Shirt rebellion in Thailand, the Arab Spring uprisings, post-Fukushima anti-nuclear protests in Japan, the Greek anti-austerity movement, the Occupy movement, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, the Euromaidan movement in the Ukraine and, most recently, the “Black Lives Matter” movement in the United States. The inventiveness and ingenuity with which activists have mobilized music and related sonic practices within these and other recent protest movements point to ways in which the familiarity of this object of inquiry might profit from its defamiliarization, as much in theory as in practice.

This conference gathers scholars from a range of disciplines to reexamine the place of music and sound in protest. With a view toward generating fresh perspectives on this subject, participants in Rethinking Protest Music will address such questions as:

• How does music help movement participants form a sense of identity? How do musicians mobilize people to action?
• What constraints are musicians under in performing political roles? In what ways do they put themselves at risk? Why do they participate in politics?
• In what ways does the arena in which music is performed impact the form it takes, the political messages it can convey, or the way listeners respond?
• How have social media and networked digital technologies changed the soundscape of musical protest?
• What roles has alternative media played in musical protest?
• In what ways do musicians capitalize on pre-existing music, cultural material, or collective memory in their politico-musical practice?
• How do musicians and activists exploit specific genres, such as traditional music or musics widely regarded as resistant or contestatory (like hip-hop, punk, or folk)?
• How do they use performance practices and other paramusical resources (advertisements, posters, liner notes, etc.) to support their political messages?
• How do they engage audience members in participation?

For more information about this conference, please contact Noriko Manabe (nmanabe at princeton dot edu) or Eric Drott (drott at utexas dot edu).

Non-speakers planning to attend the conference are requested to register in advance here.

This conference has been made possible by a generous grant from the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.