Event overview
This one-day symposium looks at avant-garde music in the UK since 1970, covering Bowie, post-punk, modernist composition, electronic dance music and more.
The 1970s is recognised as a decade of cultural transition, where music evolved into new configurations of established and emerging forms. But despite recent scholarly interventions, many accounts of avant-garde music still hew to a traditional narrative.
This symposium examines ways the history and historiography of ‘vanguard music’ in the UK since 1970 can be traced, documented and rethought. Scholars working on a range of different musics will explore the dynamics of flux that have helped to shape post-1960s UK music culture.
Profs Georgina Born and Benjamin D. Piekut will lead a keynote discussion.
The symposium is co-hosted by the Fringe/Underground Music Group and States of Flux (UofManchester).
SCHEDULE
Welcome and Introduction: Roddy and Stephen (9.30-10am)
Session 1: Pop and Folk Avant-Gardes (10-11am)
'From Blackstar to Berlin: David Bowie and the manifestation of late style in the Berlin Trilogy'. Dr Andrew Frayn, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, Edinburgh Napier University; Dr Rachael Durkin, Senior Lecturer in Music, Northumbria University
'Forwards and Backwards: Locating the Vanguard of English Folk Music in the 1970s'. Dr Alexis Bennett, Goldsmiths.
Session 2: Vernacular and Popular Avant-Gardes (11am-12pm)
'"Sit While You're Standing" – The Vernacular Avant Garde and Unpopular Popular in Contemporary Scotland'. Keiran Curran, University of Highlands and Islands.
'Space, Time and the Hardcore Continuum: Recalibrating the Temporal Logic of the Popular Avant-Garde'. Maria Perevedentseva, Goldsmiths.
Session 3: Radical Aesthetics, Radical Politics? (12-1.15pm)
'Left Behind in the Twentieth Century: Avant-garde revivalism after the SI'. Dr Christopher Haworth, University of Birmingham.
'Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty'. Pete Dale, Manchester Metropolitan University.
'It’s Okay To Cry–SOPHIE’s hyperreal avant-garde'. Dr Christian Bielefeldt, University of Basel.
Lunch (1.15-2pm)
*Session 4: The Ghosts of British Modernism (2-3pm)
'Early Music, Medievalism, and the Paradox of British Modernism, 1971-2012'. Alexander Kolassa, The Open University.
'Trolling the avant-garde, or the avant-garde as trolling? The case of the New “New Manchester “Manchester School””' School (NNMMSS). Dr Edward Katrak Spencer, University of Oxford.
*Session 5: The Art-School Avant-Garde (3-4pm)
'Electric Shock: Synth Pop and the Queering of the Art School Avant-Garde'. Prof Gavin Butt, Northumbria University, Newcastle.
'Off-kilter: How avant-garde elements were subsumed into the development of punk, post-punk and new wave bands of the 1970s, through the influence of UK art schools'. Dr Simon Strange, Bath Spa University.
*Keynote session (4-5pm)
Prof Georgina Born and Prof Ben Piekut.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Jul 2021 | 9:30am - 5:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
