Riffs Journal

22/05/2025

New in Riffs | OPEN 🎸

"Some Strings, Many Affordances: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Being an Electric Bass Guitarist" by Dominic Kingsford-Ross

🔗 Read the full article: https://riffsjournal.org/dominic-kingsford-ross-some-strings-many-affordances-may-2025

23/04/2025

Check out Riff's latest CFP: POP! Art School Reunions.

🗓️ Deadline: June 16, 2025
📩 Email submissions + bio to: [email protected]
🔗 Full CFP: riffsjournal.org/news-latest-cfp

24/03/2025

Developing from Riffs Vol 5 Issue 2 in 2021 (a whole new world...), a new book on Popular Music Ethnographies is now available, edited by Riffs Co-Managing Editors Sarah Raine and Iain A. Taylor and Guest Editors Shane Blackman and Rob McPherson.

This book brings together contributors from many disciplines/sectors and countries to examine a wide range of music genres, traditions, and communities. The book aims to offer critical reflections on and innovative approaches to undertaking ethnographic research within popular music related contexts. Content includes a consideration of breaking in Japan (Jason Ng), q***r carnival spaces in Jamaica (Erin MacLeod), chaperone ethnography (Radia Kasdi), and endogenous ethnography as counter-cultural practice (Juan Pablo Viteri). Thanks to Intellect Books and the BCMCR, we can offer well-priced paperbacks and ebooks from the first day of publication. Please do have a read, order for your libraries, include in your reading lists, and share with others.

Cover image: Ian Davies. Cover design: Iain Taylor.

https://intellectdiscover.com/content/books/9781835950579

24/03/2025

For our followers in Birmingham – join us for a free Riffs event at the School of Art on Tuesday 25th March (from 5.30pm) as part of our Pop! Art School Reunions special issue. More info: https://riffsjournal.org/pop-art-school-reunions-birmingham-uk-25th-march-2025/

10/02/2025

Pop! Art School Reunions (editor Ed McKeon)
Pop Music, Pop Art, + Art Schools have long and entangled histories. This special issue of Riffs calls for a reunion of these elements, but with an added ingredient: experimental music + performance. More info: https://riffsjournal.org/news-latest-cfp/

09/12/2024

Our latest issue of Riffs is now available to read + download! Guest edited by Sharon Kong-Perring (Birmingham City University, UK) + Mathieu Berbiguier (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) on Asian Pop, it includes pieces on K-Pop, Japanese Punk, the Indian music industry + more.

Cover artist: Ning-Ning Li (by Ian Davies, all rights reserved)
Design work by Iain A. Taylor.
Riffs front cover design by Adam Williams.

Volume 8, Issue 1 – December 2024 We are pleased to announce the publication of Riffs Volume 8, Issue 1: Asian Popular Music. Asian pop music has experienced a spectacular rise in markets globally and outside of the Asian continent, yet its popularity and relevance in academia, content creation,...

03/12/2024

We're busy behind the scenes at Riffs journal preparing our next issue. While you wait, get in the mood with Sharon Kong-Perring's review of the 2023 We Bridge Musical Festival + Expo (Las Vegas)

Gig Review-“The Power (And Pitfalls) of Parasociality and Internet Celebrity in the Mediation of K-Pop Music Festivals: A Review of We Bridge Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada,” Sharon Kong-Perring K-Pop group, DreamCatcher, performing on the Grammy Museum Stage during We Bridge Expo. Image Courtesy of ...

27/11/2024

For our followers who are based in/interested in the UK.

Call For Papers: Neither Factory Records nor Madchester: Rethinking Manchester’s Musical and Subcultural Histories

A two day international conference – Thursday 19th and Friday 20th June 2025 – Manchester Metropolitan University

What do we find when we critically examine the dominant stories of Manchester music, or when we shift our focus to those stories less often told?

We invite academic papers, practice-based research and creative submissions/performances related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

● Subcultures, scenes, bands, people, nightlife etc. that fall outside or complicate dominant narratives about Manchester’s cultural past and present (we are keen to avoid a ‘tokenistic’ approach here that perpetuates existing myths while making them appear more ‘inclusive’).
● Reclaiming ‘the popular’ e.g. nightclubs, cabaret clubs, ‘fun pubs’.
● The effects of neoliberal urbanism on cultural production and consumption in the city.
● The popular/subcultural culture(s) of Greater Manchester and its peripheries.
● Post-Punk and beyond – How post-punk influences have shaped the city’s identity and its impact on current musical and subcultural expressions.
● From ‘Madchester’ to present-day scenes – The "Madchester" era to contemporary musical movements.
● The role of DIY and independent labels – How independent labels and DIY practices have fostered alternative musical communities in Manchester.
● Exploring the intersection of visual arts, performance, and music in shaping Manchester’s subcultural identities.
● Music and activism – Examining how music and subcultures in Manchester have intersected with political activism and social change.
● Global influences and local adaptations – Investigating how global music trends (and migration flows) influence Manchester's scenes and how these musics are adapted locally.
● Heritage and memory in music scenes – The role of memory in preserving, celebrating, or distorting Manchester’s musical histories.
● Who gets to speak, who/what is funded, and how – Critical examinations of heritage projects and practices, and the funding processes (public and private) that make these possible.
● Community, spaces, and venues – The significance of and threats to physical spaces in shaping subcultural communities, past and present.
● Musical and subcultural northernness within and beyond Manchester – Critical examinations of dominant notions of northernness and alternate understandings of The North.
● Engaging with The Second City – Exploring sub/cultural engagements with and rejections of Manchester.

Please send to [email protected]:
(1) a 250-word abstract
(2) a proposed title
(3) a clear indication of presentation format
(4) 150 word speaker bio/s

Deadline January 20th 2025

14/03/2024

A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in the creation of our latest issue of Riffs - American Graffiti! A very special thank you to Dr. Nick Gebhardt for all his work for the Write Club and putting this issue together!

Discover the full issue here: https://riffsjournal.org/volume-7-issue-2-february-2024/

13/03/2024

Dive into Nicholas Gebhardt's "And So It All Ends" to conclude our special issue dedicated to George Lucas's iconic 1973 film, "American Graffiti."
🔗 Linked here: https://riffsjournal.org/2024/02/26/nicholas-gebhardt/
Nick Gebhardt is Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies and Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Enterprise in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. His work focuses on jazz and popular music in American culture and his publications include Going For Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology (Chicago), Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929 (Chicago). He is also the co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies (2019) and the Routledge book series Transnational Studies in Jazz.

Nicholas Gebhardt Nicholas Gebhardt Citation: Nicholas Gebhardt (2024), “And So It All Ends”, Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music 7(2): 30-32. Tweet Post navigation Previous PostVolume 7, Issue 1 – October 2023Next PostAsya Draganova February 26, 2024 Sarah Raine News Leave a comment

12/03/2024

Dive into Asya Draganova’s “DNA of Sound and Vision” in the latest issue of Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music (7.2) on George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973).
🔗For the full text: https://riffsjournal.org/2024/02/26/asya-draganova/
✍️ In her words: ““DNA” is my response to the “High school Hop” scene in American Graffiti. Hand drawn in the spirit of DiY zines, this piece is an abstract exploration of the relationships between image and sound in film and elsewhere. It uses the bridged spirals we recognise from the popular diagrams of DNA as a metaphor to express how vision and sound interweave to embody and voice emotional experience. Yet, they remain autonomous, not always synchronised, and sometimes even in contrast with one another; image and sound allow for a multiplicity of meanings.”
👩‍💻About the author: Asya Draganova is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music Culture at Birmingham City University and a co-leader of the Popular Music Research Cluster at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. She is the author of Popular Music in Contemporary Bulgaria (2019) and lead editor of the collection The Canterbury Sound in Popular Music (2021). Asya’s research includes themes such as cultural alternativity, ethnographic methods, popular music heritage and place, and East European post-communist transitions. She is keen to explore exciting ways of writing about exciting stuff such as popular music research. Asya also enjoys playing the guitar and singing.

Asya Draganova Asya Draganova Citation: Asya Draganova (2024), “DNA of Sound and Vision”, Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music 7(2): 27-29. Tweet Post navigation Previous PostNicholas GebhardtNext PostChris Mapp February 26, 2024 Sarah Raine News Leave a comment

11/03/2024

Dive in to Chris Mapp’s “Function Gig Therapy” in the latest issue of Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music (7.2) on George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973)!
🔗For the full text: https://riffsjournal.org/2024/02/26/chris-mapp/
✍️ In his words: “I should have paid to download it instead of streaming it last time, but I came over all cheap. And I missed the last group viewing because of work. Maybe I should have at least ordered it from Amazon and now I’d have a copy; probably would have cost the same as having to stream it.”

🧑‍💻About the author: Chris Mapp is the Head of Music at the University of Warwick’s Music Centre. He is a bass player, improviser and composer living and working in Birmingham. His work falls somewhere between composition and improvisation, using sound, music and electronics to satisfy his own sonic curiosity. As a bandleader he has worked with Arve Henriksen, Maja Ratkje, Mark Sanders, Leafcutter John and Dan Nicholls with the ensemble Gonimoblast. He also leads the trio stillfelt alongside Thomas Seminar Ford and Percy Pursglove. As a key member of the Birmingham improvised music scene, Chris has worked with many UK based and Internationally recognised musicians such as Rachel Musson, Ken Vandermark, Paul Dunmall, Jan Bang, Erik Honore and most recently as part of the trio CollapseUncollapse. Chris’ artistic practice uses written material as a way of igniting improvisation within an ensemble context combined with electronics, sound spatialisation and visuals. Written themes then become points of departure, destinations or fragments of group improvisation.

Chris Mapp Chris Mapp Citation: Chris Mapp (2024), “Function Gig Therapy”, Riffs: Experimental Writing on Popular Music 7(2): 24-26. Tweet Post navigation Previous PostAsya DraganovaNext PostIain A. Taylor February 26, 2024 Sarah Raine News Leave a comment