Event | A Day with Mark J. Butler (Humboldt University Berlin) – An Amsterdance Colloquium (Workshop and Lecture)
Event | A Day with Mark J. Butler (Humboldt University Berlin) – An Amsterdance Colloquium (Workshop and Lecture)
Date: 9 February 2023
Organizers: The Amsterdam Electronic Dance Music Research Group (hosted by ASCA),
Coordinators: Dr. Oliver Seibt, Sydney Schelvis, and Ian Pocervina
Credits: 1-2 ECTS (details below)
Workshop with Mark J. Butler
Time: 10:00-13:00
Location: Amsterdam University Theatre (Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16-18, Room TBA)
Open to: Amsterdance and NICA students only.
Registration: amsterdance-fgw@uva.nl
Registration Deadline: 3 February 2023
After a successful first Amsterdance Colloquium with Graham St. John last year, the research group decided to stick with the format. This consists of an exclusive workshop with and a public lecture by one of the internationally most outstanding scholars in the field of electronic dance music studies. The guest of this colloquium is Mark J. Butler, professor of Popular Music at the Musicological Institute of Humboldt University Berlin and author and editor of three seminal book length publications about electronic dance music (Butler 2006, 2012, and 2014).
The workshop gives students currently working on electronic dance music related topics the opportunity to discuss their own research projects with our guest. The lecture will introduce the audience to the vision Butler has developed for future popular music studies in general and EDM studies in particular since he became professor for popular music studies at Humboldt University Berlin in late 2021.
Literature
Butler, Mark J.
2006 Unlocking the Groove. Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music. Indiana University Press.
2014 Playing with Something That Runs. Technology, Improvisation, and Composition in DJ and Laptop Performance. Oxford University Press.
Butler, Mark J. (ed.)
2012 Electronica, Dance and Club Music. Routledge.
‘Reimagining the Past, Envisioning the Future, from a New Center’ – Lecture by Mark J. Butler.
Time: 15:30-17:00
Location: Amsterdam University Theatre (Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16-18, Room 3.01)
Open to: Public
This lecture contextualizes my intellectual vision for the professorship in Popular Music Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and situates my primary current research project: a new edition of my monograph Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Indiana University Press, 2006).
I began my role as Chair of Popular Music Studies at HU in October 2021. In the first part of my talk, I will describe where I’m coming from as a scholar and how I see myself fitting in to and contributing to the landscape of popular music studies in Germany and in Europe more broadly. In particular, the Pop Music Chair will become the home base of a new Center for the Analysis of Contemporary Popular Music. The principal goals of the Center will be the cultivation and dissemination, through research and training, of an interdisciplinary analytical methodology for popular music. This will be based on methods developed in my previous research, with added emergent emphases on (a) sound and materiality, particularly the interfaces and instruments through which popular music is envisioned and created, and (b) the bodily knowledge and practices through which it is performed and experienced. The primary musical styles emphasized at the Center for the Analysis of Contemporary Popular Music will be electronic dance and club music, other groove-based styles (e.g., rap), popular music with prominent digital and/or electronic components, and videogame music. Overall, the Center will foreground culturally situated close readings of contemporary, groove-based styles, while also loosely continuing the tradition of the Forschungszentrum Populäre Musik that previously existed at HU.
In the second section of my talk I will describe my current major research project, in which I am revisiting and revising my book Unlocking the Groove for a new edition to be published by Oxford University Press. Having recently begun a year-long sabbatical devoted to this project, I am presently in the thick of it. For those not familiar with the text, I will briefly describe its contents and orientation. I will then outline my priorities for the new edition. In the context of this lecture, this will provide an opportunity for metatheoretical reflection on the state of popular music studies and dance music research today and, in comparison, as they existed in 2006 when the text was first published.
Credits
In preparation of the workshop and the lecture, participating students are asked to read Mark J. Butler’s 2006 book Unlocking the Groove, that he currently is revising and updating for a second edition, and to formulate some questions for the Q&A after the lecture (1 ECTS). For students particularly interested in EDM studies, the acquisition of 2 ECTS for an additional written proposal of their own research project can be considered. The proposal will be supervised and graded by the Amsterdance coordinators and maybe also by Mark J. Butler himself.
