Questions of Prince's Vault, the technology he used, pioneered etc. are
really fascinating, so we welcome submissions from the ARSC list members!
Please note the impending deadline - and disseminate widely!
Thanks!
PRINCE FROM MINNEAPOLIS
A SYMPOSIUM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
APRIL 16-18, 2018
CALL FOR PAPERS
Prince was proud to hail from Minneapolis. Continuing to live and work
there, he put the city firmly on the map of the music industry through the
Minneapolis Sound. Until his unexpected death on April 21, 2016, he hosted
parties for local fans at his Paisley Park studio. Prince is probably the
only global megastar who has remained so embedded in the cultural life of
their hometown.
This symposium will investigate Prince’s unique relation to Minneapolis and
Minnesota. What demographic, cultural, and economic conditions were in
place for Prince to emerge as a musical genius? How was a new sound born
from a small African American population in a very white and segregated
state? Why did Prince stay there? How did he reinvent the aesthetics and
politics of blackness? How did he at the same time win over white and
international audiences? How did Minnesotans, both queer and straight,
react to Prince’s ambivalent black male sexuality? How is Minneapolis
represented in *Purple Rain*? How do we interpret his spiritual
explorations? What kind of utopia did Paisley Park embody? What was
Prince’s mode of operation in the studio? How did the Minneapolis sound
affect hiphop, jazz, rock, and electronic dance music? Why do music
tourists flock to this city from Europe and Australia?
Appreciating Prince’s impact will provide a window on fundamental questions
in US and Minnesotan society. At a time when the political achievements of
the 1960s are under grave threat, we hope understanding where Prince* comes
from *will make some room for reimagining social change.
Send paper title, abstract (300 words), and short bio (200 words) to
[log in to unmask] by *October 20, 2017*.
*POSSIBLE TOPICS*
In collaboration with the symposium, the University of Minnesota’s Weisman
Art Museum <http://www.wam.umn.edu/> is organizing an exhibition organizing
an exhibition, “Prince from Minneapolis”, celebrating Prince’s local
legacy, from December through June. Immediately after the symposium Paisley
Park <http://officialpaisleypark.com/> is hosting “Celebration 2018” and
there will be other commemorations in the Twin Cities.
• music industry and technology
• musicology and music history
• name change and legal battles
• visual arts
• style, fashion, design
• protest, freedom, revolution
• segregation and migration
• blackness and hybridity
• gender, sexuality, family, love
• apocalypse and messianism
• vegan, environmental, health ethics
• afterlife and remembrance
• Minneapolis and the world
--
Suzanne Wint, Ph.D.
Independent Ethnomusicologist
West St. Paul, MN
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