Vol 6 Issue 2 – Call for Proposals

Riffs Vol 6 Issue 2: Popular Music Materialities

Editor Iain A. Taylor, University of the West of Scotland

“What we had thought to be an object was revealed as what I would call a thing. And the thing about things, if you will, is that far from standing before us as a fait accompli, complete in itself, each is a ‘going on’ – or better, a place where several goings on become entwined.” (Ingold, 2010: 96)

For this issue of Riffs, we invite proposals which explore the materiality of popular music, and the forms, formats, and practices which constitute it. We invite pieces of work which consider popular music, and popular music culture, as a thing, a ‘going on’ or, better yet, as a place where several goings on become entwined.

We are interested in submissions which relate to (but are not limited to):

• Popular music, materiality and memory
• The materiality of musical instruments
• Listening as a material culture
• Material metaphors in digital music spaces
• Ecologies of musical materiality
• The materiality of obsolescence (or, the obsolescence of materiality)
• Popular music materialities as exclusionary and inclusionary
• Issues of materiality and environmental sustainability in the music industries
• Music materialities of journeys and traveling

We welcome all creative responses to this prompt, from all individuals and collectives, from any sector or discipline. Feel free to include written, visual, and/or musical elements and to propose work that emerges from collaborations between writers, poets, musicians, composers and visual artists (etc).  

Deadlines – 27th March 2022 proposal deadline: to include a title and 300-word abstract / summary, your name(s), a short bio and contact email. Full submissions (2000-4000 words / visuals or mixed text/image to not exceed 8 A4 pages) are expected by 4th September 2022. All visual and audio content must have a Creative Commons License, be owned by the contributor or with full owner permissions. All proposals submitted to Riffs will be considered by the editorial panel.

Please send your proposal to: info@riffsjournal.org  

All invited full papers are subject to double blind peer review and, once accepted, will be published online (Open Access) and in limited edition print. This issue will be published in December 2022. Authors must follow the Riffs submission guidelines here. Please explore the Riffs website for previous publications and journal issues.