Blogging the conference 3: morning becomes eclectic

Sadly, Saturday morning was my last at the conference – I had another engagement on Sunday. As with the day before, here are my takeaways:

Session 1C: Gender & Sexuality in Popular Music

• I really enjoyed how Barry Promane (University of Western Ontario) addressed the personal dynamics of Freddy Mercury’s unwillingness to disclose his sexuality and medical condition, especially in relation to the political and social norms at the time. It’s easy to second-guess after the fact whether Mercury could have done more for AIDS awareness by outing himself, but reality is always a bit more complicated.
• Speaking of complicating things, Cindy Boucher’s (University of Alberta) “Theorizing Queer Music” was a solid overview of the struggles of defining a genre of music separately from traditional sonic distinctions.
• I was interested in Mark Laver’s (University of Toronto) paper mostly because I saw the name “Springsteen” in the title. I was expecting a broader analysis of the artists in question, but was pleasantly surprised at the paper’s use of a single performance to highlight four very different masculine images.

Session 2A: Centres and Peripheries in Mediation and Dissemination

• Though it was mostly anecdotal and narrative-based,  Cory Thorne’s (Memorial University of Newfoundland) paper on pirated CDs in Cuba was still thought-provoking, in particular the exploration of how this trade constitutes a new folklore of sorts. Very interesting.
• Corporate sponsorship is a tricky beast, especially when dealing with independent music scenes that consider “authenticity” as capital. I thought that Gillian Turnbull (York University) did a great job exploring some of these issues in Calgary’s music scene, along with some of the more interesting side-effects of CRTC radio licensing.
• Once again, my awful French was a hindrance in getting the most out of Sandria Bouliane’s (Universite Laval) paper,  but I still enjoyed listening to and analyzing how some of the songs of the 1920s were translated into French for Quebec audiences.

Well, that’s my recap over and done with. Once again, my thanks to conference organizers for a really great conference and lots of food for thought. My work isn’t quite done, though. Starting tomorrow I’m going to be posting interviews I conducted with some of the attendees…stay tuned…