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Call for Papers: Journal of Caribbean Music & Sound Cultures

Special Issue: ‘Konpa Dirèk: Popular Music and Social Relations in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora’

Guest Editors

Cécile Accilien, University of Maryland, USA, cecileaccilien22@gmail.com

Sabine Lamour, University of Montréal, Canada

Alexandra Cenatus, University of Maryland, USA

Deadlines

1 November 2026: 250–300-word abstract

15 November 2026: Successful authors notified

15 February 2027: First draft of article due to editors

August 2027: Final article drafts due

October 2027: Publication of issue

To view the full call click here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-caribbean-music-sound-cultures#call-for-papers

Details

All articles must be in English and will be 6000–7000 in length including all works cited and images. The journal can publish a translated abstract and keywords alongside the English ones, if you wish to provide this. Abstracts to be sent first to Cécile Accilien, cecileaccilien22@gmail.com.

The Call

Caribbean societies are characterized by a close interweaving of cultural productions, colonial legacies, and power dynamics.  These societies are fundamentally impacted by slavery, creolization and transnational exchanges. As such they use artistic expressions especially music as spaces for narrating social realities, negotiating identity and reconfiguring power relations. In that regard, music cannot be reduced to mere entertainment; it constitutes a strategic space where social norms, symbolic hierarchies and collective imaginaries are constructed, reproduced or challenged.

Konpa (konpa dirèk) occupies a unique place in Haitian culture. Since the late 1950s, it has played an important role in the transformations of Haitian society, both in urban areas and within diasporic communities, a significance affirmed by its inscription on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritages of humanity in December 2025. Recognized as a force for unity, it constitutes a major vector of socialization, a common language transcending social classes, generations and geographical boundaries, as well as a privileged space for the expression of politics, gender and everyday life. Through its dissemination, uses, and meanings, Konpa participates fully in the production of social cohesion and the development of collective narratives about modernity, success, respectability politics and transgression.

Paradoxically, despite its social and symbolic centrality, konpa remains a subject that is largely understudied by academics, particularly in the field of Haitian studies. There is very limited scholarly focus on Konpa, whether from ethnomusicologists or other researchers. Analyses of its lyrics and performances, the histories of major Konpa groups and musicians and its impact on the cultural economy and associated professions remain scarce. Gender dynamics, which are central to the aesthetics, professional trajectories and power relations within the music scene are particularly underexamined.

This scholarship invisibility stands in stark contrast to the growing institutional recognition that Konpa now receives, particularly through processes of heritage preservation and international legitimacy. These dynamicsraise major questions: which narratives of Haitian musical and social history are thus being established? Which actors, practices and memories are being valued or marginalized? What tensions emerge between memory, the market, symbolic power, and popular practices? The pioneering work of Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain (1951) on Haitian music had already demonstrated the heuristic potential of song for understanding the relationships between popular culture, political power and social constructs, and points to the need for more systematic, interdisciplinary and critical approaches to Konpa as a space of symbolic negotiation among urban elites, popular classes and institutions of power.

This Special Issue centres Konpa as a primary object of analysis for understanding the relationships between music, power and society in Haiti and its diasporas. Its objectives are twofold: first, to contribute to a deeper understanding of Konpa as a social phenomenon at the intersection of cultural history, power relations, cultural economies and transnational flows; and second, to examine contemporary processes of heritage-making and legitimization by analysing the narratives, memories and symbolic hierarchies that Konpa music produces and sustains.

The guest editors welcome contributions from researchers working on Konpa in Haiti and in diasporic communities across North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as those whose work engages with Haitian, Caribbean and Afro-diasporic music from a comparative perspective. We particularly encourage submissions addressing the following:

• Fieldwork in Haiti and/or in the diaspora;

• Historical, sociological, anthropological or ethnomusicological analysis of konpa;

• Feminist, intersectional, and critical approaches related to gender, class, race and sexuality;

• Reflections on the conditions of knowledge production and the persistent silences surrounding Haitian music;

• Research on the place and role of konpa in film productions.

By recentring the analysis on konpa as a space for the production of social meaning, this issue aims to contribute to the structuring of a research field that is still relatively underdeveloped, while also highlighting existing and emerging research conducted in Haiti and its diasporas.