Knowing by singing: song, acoustic ecologies and the overflow of meaning - CfP RAI 1-3 June 2018

[Valeria Lembo]

We invite 250-word abstracts for an anthropology and interdisciplinary conference on the theme of 'Art, materiality and representation'. The event will be held at the Clore Centre, British Museum in London in June 2018. Please submit your abstracts online by clicking on 'propose a paper' on the panel's webpage

 *1-3 June 2018, Clore Centre, The British Museum*

 Call for papers closes on the 8th January 2018.

 For more information for the link below

http://nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/Views/plenaries

Please, circulate this call for papers to any theatre or research email groups you might be on.

Short abstract

Can song be a way of knowing for anthropologists, rather than an ethnographic object? Can it be a practice of inquiry distinct from logocentric analysis? We invite experimental presentations that use singing to investigate topics ranging from memory and placemaking to forms of collaboration.

Long abstract

The performative mode of singing puts into relief two issues that are of persisting importance to anthropology: (1) language and meaning and (2) ecology and materiality. Song can incorporate language and meaning explicitly, and yet because of its musicality is always acknowledged as exceeding its semantic value. Singing emerges from an entire acoustic ecology, ecologies of practice, material and storied histories, and from the voices of particular singers. While song has been analysed anthropologically in terms of the senses, healing, colonialism and memory, the craft of song as a way of knowing offers a fruitful but as yet unexplored approach to these topics. Rather than considering song solely as an object of ethnographic study, we propose to take seriously ways of knowing inherent in different practices of singing. We ask: how can anthropologists explore song as an epistemic practice both in its own terms, and in dialogue with conventional academic ways of knowing?

We invite experimental presentations, in which presenters feel free to sing as well as talk, that explore the following topics.

What is a song?

Song in relation to memory, ritual, the living body and healing.

Singing in ecological perspective: singing, acoustics, materials and senses of place

Relations between movement, gesture and singing

Education of attention: pedagogies of singing and singing as pedagogy

Voice, sound, silence, noise

Voice as expression: affects, aesthetics, subjectivity and politics

Singing as collaboration: polyphony, choir, listening and attunement

Language and song