EXTENDED DEADLINE
Call for Papers [EXTENDED DEADLINE May 31st 2009]:
Transatlantic routes of American roots music: Folk/ Blues/Jazz University of Worcester, UK
September 12-13, 2009
We invite proposals for papers for this conference examining the impact and significance of American folk music(s) in Britain. We would especially welcome contributions that examine representations of such music in an interdisciplinary frame.
This conference will interrogate presentations and representations of American roots music as performance, in textual representations, and as received by British audiences in both historical and contemporary settings. The conference is particularly concerned with the complex cultural relations of exchange and transnational construction of identities.
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Paul Oliver (Blues Fell This Morning; Conversations with the Blues; Blues off the Record)
Tony Russell (Country Music Originals the Legends and the Lost; Country Music Records Discography 1921-1942)
Professor Brian Ward (Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations; Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South)
We invite papers from a variety of disciplines focusing on topics including but not limited to:
 Folk and roots revivals; protest; sacred and secular; rural and urban; Transatlantic sessions
 Authenticity; Song catchers (Child, Lomax, Sharp); reverse diasporas; relationships between producers, promoters and consumers
 Native American music and British interfaces
 Blues – process and effects of the export of African American music to Britain; censorship of black origins; public memory
 Country Music – 'American's truest music' (Malone) and its transatlantic connections
 Radio, TV, literary, artistic, representations of American roots genres in Britain and imagined communities
Papers should be 20 minutes long. Please email a 250 word abstract, accompanied by a short curriculum vita by the extended deadline May 31st to both:
Dr Jill Terry j.terry@worc.ac.uk and Prof Neil Wynn nwynn@glos.ac.uk
Applicants will be informed by early June as to their inclusion in the conference programme. All are welcome and for those delegates wishing to attend but not present a paper, registration and full programme details will be circulated in early June.
The academic conference will be followed in the evening by a themed supper and roots music gig with guest performers. We would be delighted to include performances by willing conference participants so please indicate accordingly.
It is planned to publish a book of essays from selected papers, edited by Terry and Wynn, for which a publisher has already expressed strong interest. We will therefore ask invited speakers to provide a full draft of their papers for selection for publication immediately following the conference.