Participatory Pop: Audiences, Life Styles and Fan Culture in 20th Century Southeast Asia

Call for Papers
January 10-12, 2013, KITLV Jakarta, Jakarta.

This workshop focuses on Southeast Asian popular music and its
connection to the emergence of new audiences recognized by distinct
modern and fashionable lifestyles. People throughout twentieth century
Southeast Asia, articulated notions of ethnicity, religion, class,
gender, generation, modernity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and a host
of other 'isms', in commercially produced music intended for mass
consumption. Through the consumption of popular music, social identities
are made audible and visible in life styles. This allows us to explore
from the angle of popular music processes of social differentiation and
social transformation.

Southeast Asian popular music studies are a burgeoning field with an
emphasis on the producing side of the spectrum. Since the 1990s
scholars working on other geographical areas have sought to go beyond
the traditional divide within the field of popular culture studies
between those focusing on either producers or consumers. Mainstream
media are critically interrogated for the tendency to ridicule
particular sections of the audience, especially fans, as passively
consuming and infantile people. Instead, writers such as Lewis and
Jenkins have shows fans to be a determent force in today's popular
culture industry that actively engage in reproducing and appropriating,
and often subvert pop music's initial meanings. We aim to address these
and related matters in the specific context of 20th century Southeast
Asia, where a music industry emerged as early as 1903 catering for its
own distinct audiences and specific local markets.

The workshop is part of the project Articulating Modernity; The Making
of Popular Music in Twentieth Century Southeast Asia and the Rise of New
Audiences hosted by the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian
and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden and funded by the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). KITLV Jakarta acts as host
for the workshop.

We aim to address those popular music audiences, the lifestyles, crazes
and fashions and the various forms of participatory culture that have
surfaced since the early 20th century and strongly endorse historical
approaches. We solicit papers on the following possible topics:

§ New musical fashions (dance crazes, clothing, slang, youth gangs,
associated with particular genres or artists)

§ Popular music and the press (the role of journalists, photographers,
designers that have helped to shape particular taste and lifestyles).

§ Cover bands (from imitation of 1960s American rock, cover bands to
today's K-Wave clones, reunion concerts, and reality soaps like Idols or
Akademi Fantasia)

§ Fan Culture (fan clubs, fanzines and fan gatherings, both on and offline)

§ Fandom and gender (from groupies to those looking for new glamorous
role models)

§ Antagonisms between consumer-turned-producer and the established
industries (remix culture, piracy and other forms of creative appropriation)

We encourage colleagues to submit papers within the areas of
anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, ethnomusicology, history and
related fields. Paper proposals, not exceeding 300 words, should be sent
to the programme committee no later than 30 April, 2012. Once accepted
we expect those selected to submit a full draft of about 7.500 words by
1 November, 2012. Travel fare up to a maximum of EUR 1000, - and
accommodation (3 nights) will be covered for those who submitted a full
paper by that date. Papers will serve as materials for an edited volume
that is due to be published in 2014.

The program committee consists of Henk Schulte Nordholt (KITLV),
Patricia Spyer (Leiden University), Peter Keppy (NIOD) and Bart
Barendregt (Leiden University/KITLV). All inquiries and abstracts can be
send to the latter, at barendregt@kitlv.nl

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