2012-01-17

Soundtracks: Music, Tourism and Travel

As an expression of culture, a form of intangible heritage, a signifier of place, and a marker of moments, music provides an important and emotive narrative for tourists. Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to imagine tourism in silence, outside of the scores and songs which accompany and punctuate journeys. From touristic performances of traditional dance, pilgrimages to the homes and graves of composers and singers, impromptu street entertainments, tours to concerts, attending festivals, to the sounds of the car radio, the travelling with ipods and the muzak of hotel lifts, music can both activate and shape the journey, and passively permeate its duration. Music can both define and transcend the borders of destinations, emphasise and challenge notions of tradition, provide opportunities for liminal play, transgression and resistance and, help define the identities of visitors and the visited.

CALL FOR PAPERS

In this international research conference, and in the City of Liverpool famed for its popular music, we seek to explore the relationships between tourism, tourists and all forms/genres and sub-genres of music including: popular, classical, folk, dance, rock, jazz and hip-hop, across all cultures and continents. In the context of new and old global mobilities, we are interested in musical pilgrimage, the material and social flows of travellers and musicians, the cultural and economic policies that promote music tourism, festivals and performances for tourists, ethnographies of touristic encounters with music, the place of music in the representation of tourism destinations and, the role of music in the construction of tourist discourses, narratives and memories. As in previous events, the conference aims to provide critical dialogue beyond disciplinary boundaries and epistemologies and thus we welcome papers from the widest range of disciplines and fields including: anthropology, cultural geography, cultural studies, ethnology and folklore, history, heritage studies, landscape studies, leisure studies, museum studies, musicology and ethnomusicology, philosophy, political sciences, sociology, subaltern studies, tourism studies and urban/spatial planning.

We welcome innovative perspectives on all aspects of music and tourism. Key themes of interest to the conference include:

· Musical memory the role of music in narratives of touristic experience

· Fans, pilgrimage and performances motivations, behaviours and meanings

· The tourists involvement in preserving and creating musical traditions

· Managing tourists at musical sites

· Musical imaginaries - representing places, peoples and pasts in music

· Dance tourism and embodied practices

· Designing ambience mobilising music in touristic spaces

· Music festivals as opportunities for tourist encounters

· Inspirations - travelling musicians

· Music as intangible heritage touring through traditions

· Challenging musical traditions tourist noise

Please submit a 300 word abstract including title and full contact details as an electronic file to d.carl@leedsmet.ac.uk. You may submit your abstract as soon as possible but no later than 6th February 2012.

Comments (0)

There are no comments for this content yet.