[ANPPOM-Lista] CFP: Special issue of Popular Music (Cambridge): Music and Magic

Dom Jul 3 08:34:08 BRT 2016

T
his special issue of *Popular Music* will focus on the intersection of
popular music with ‘magic’, however authors may wish to define the term.

Despite its relegation to ‘entirely misunderstood hocus pocus’ (Henry 2001)
since the development in the 17th century of modern music and acoustic
science (see Gouk 1999), the notion of magic has continued to shape and
influence our engagement with the world as one particular mode of knowledge
–typically (but not necessarily convincingly) when pitted against so-called
reason and science.

In *Totem and Taboo*, originally published in 1913, Freud contends that
magic is a body of instructions, a technique that primitive men and
neurotics mobilise when they are confident about their possibility to
control the world –when they believe, specifically, that their acts can
influence other persons or things, by a rather straightforward process of
imitation. This does not just concern neurotics and savages, however, but
also artists : in the modern, scientific age, ‘only in art does it still
happen that a man who is consumed by desires performs something resembling
the accomplishment of those desires and that what he does in play produces
emotional effects –thanks to artistic illusion- just as though it were
something real’ (Freud 1975 p.90).

The desire, and sometimes the ability, to produce emotional effects thanks
to an imitative process with one’s inner wishes is a fundamental
characteristic of magic, which Freud also defines as ‘the omnipotence of
thought’ (*ibid*. p.85). Further, and although he does not develop this
point, Freud claims that the frequent comparison of artists to magicians is
not just a matter of hyperbole, but also indicative of something more
significant, a sense that artists (musicians?) can control or change the
world.

There is no doubt that magic has its sceptics and critics. For Roland
Barthes (1957), magic is the shutting-down of critical faculties, the
regrettable depoliticisation of language, the acceptance of the world as it
is presented to us by dominant discourse, most powerfully that of consumer
capitalism. In a similar vein, although only in passing, David McGuiness
(2016) recently took issue with the mobilisation of a vocabulary of magic
in popular music criticism, alleging that it amounted to analytical
ignorance.

Conversely, however, it is often for these very reasons of orderly
appearance or satisfaction with the state of things that magic also appeals
to many. For those regarded as mystics today, from Plotinus writing in
200AD to Schopenhauer and since, music can be an enchantment, a ‘form of
sorcery that raises no question’ with the capacity to calm thought, to
transcend the human condition of suffering, and/or to grant access to the
world of ‘the Beyond’ (Godwin 1987).

On a certain level, contemporary popular music is saturated with magic,
with many artists following rituals prior to performance, like Beyoncé and
Adele who reportedly invoke their respective alter egos (Denham 2015), and
others who use a ‘magical’ language to transform and assert their gender
identity, such as the Japanese hip hop artist Hime (Condry 2006). Others
suffuse their compositions and performance with the presence of sometimes
long-dead others, including African American vocalists from Billie Holiday
to Tracy Chapman who capture the memory of slave escapees (Davis 1999).
Audiences and critics, too, frequently report having been mesmerized by
performers (Looseley 2015 provides such accounts about Edith Piaf).

In fact, given that the academic sub-field of Star Studies hinges on the
premise that stars exist thanks to the propitious alignment of factors
external to our control, i.e. the right type, place and time (Dyer 1998),
an argument exists for the recognition that pop stars are fundamentally
magic figures, our contextual analysis of their success being necessarily
incomplete. Back in 1981, Simon Frith insisted that myths and magic existed
insofar as cultural participants believed in them and found them
comforting, giving the example of rock songs that conjured up, for those
who so desired, a working-class street culture. Eric Weisbard (2005)
similarly proposed to focus our academic study on the ‘magic moments’ of
musical experiences, insisting that scholars should accept and recognize
those instances when rapture, accidents, a sense of vertigo or one’s
perplexity (‘the quizzical, not the categorical’) takes centre stage in
life, and all thanks to music.

These different interpretations of magic relate to control, with magic
offering an illusion of coherence and confidence to artists, consumers and
critics, and having the ability to re-enchant an implicitly and excessively
rational world –whether this is interpreted as welcome comfort or as
political disengagement.

So, when is magic actually mobilised in and around music-making? What does
the mobilisation of magic reveal about the values and practices that
underpin our contemporary popular music culture? What does the idea of
magic bring to music, and to our understanding of the world?

This special issue seeks to explore these issues, asking its contributors
to think through the musical implications of the concept of magic and to
re-examine the habitual polarisation of the term against reason and
science. Below are some non-prescriptive suggestions for contribution:

   - Music as a metaphor for cosmic organisation, for social ‘harmony’
   - Magic and musical inspiration,  the artist’s connection with ‘the
   other side’
   - Magic and fascination, listeners and consumers ‘under the spell’ of
   music
   - Fetishes, rituals
   - Music and magic-related notions, including (alphabetically listed):
   angels, chance, charisma, destiny, fate, incantation, luck, saints,
   shamans, stars, supernatural, trances, visions, voodoo, witchcraft…

*Deadline for abstracts (500 words): 30 April 2017*

*Deadline for articles (max. 10,000 words, bibliography inclusive): 28
February 2018*

*Peer-review process in Spring 2018*

*Planned publication: January 2019*

*Bibliography:  *

Barthes, Roland  *Mythologies* (Paris: Points Seuil, 1957)

Condry, Ian. *Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization*
(Duke University Press, 2006)

Davis, Angela Yvonne. *Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude" Ma"
Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday* (Vintage books, 1999)

Denham, Jess. ‘Chris Evans confuses Adele with Beyoncé’, *The Independent*,
23 October 2015.

Dyer, Richard. *Stars* (London: British Film Institute,1998 [1979]).

Freud, Sigmund. ‘Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts’ in *Totem
and Taboo* [originally 1913], *The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud*, vol.xiii (London: The Hogarth Press,
1975), 75-99.

Frith, Simon. ‘“The magic that can set you free”: the ideology of folk and
the myth of the rock community’, *Popular Music*, 1 (1981), 159-68.

Godwin, Joscelyn (ed). *Music, mysticism and magic: a sourcebook* (London:
Arkana, 1987).

Gouk, Penny. *Music, Science and Natural Magic in 17th century England*
(Yale, 1999)

Henry, John.  ‘*Music, Science and Natural Magic in 17th century England*
by Penny Gouk’, book review, *The English Historical Review*, 116 (467),
2001 p.723-4.

Looseley, David. *Edith Piaf. A Cultural History* (Liverpool University
Press, 2015).

McGuinness, David. ‘*Let’s Talk about Love* by Carl Wilson’ (book
review), *Popular
Music* 35 (2), 2016, 280-81.

Weisbard, Eric. ‘The magic moments: pop, writing, and the little
stuff’, *Popular
Music* 24 (3), 2005, 307-310.

-- 
carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)
professor de musicologia ufmg
professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
www.proibidao.org
ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
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