The Journal

History

Riffs emerged from a writing group at Birmingham City University, established in 2015 by Nick Gebhardt and supported by the Birmingham School of Media. As popular music scholars, many of the original ‘Write Clubbers’ straddled disciplines: music; sociology; media studies; anthropology; dance. Some felt adrift, on thin ice.

‘Write Club’ offered an opportunity of 2,000 words and the space of a table and eight chairs to explore what it meant to research popular music, to write about it, to construct an argument, a description, a song, a line. Once nerves were finally quashed and it became comfortable to watch another read your work, the writing became better and better until it seemed a crime to keep them under wraps, hidden away from curious eyes on a private blog.

In Riffs, we offer up some of our thoughts and writing in the hope that we will be able to read yours, and that each of us will in some small way change the ways in which we think and write about popular music. Consider this your official invitation to Write Club.

What we do

Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music is an Open Access journal run by an international Editorial team and funded by the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (Birmingham City University, UK).

The editorial board at Riffs work to provide a creative and experimental space for writing and thinking about popular music. As such, we publish writing on popular music that questions and experiments with the traditional forms of academic research. We also forge relationships with writers, festivals, local businesses in the critical consideration of popular music. Our greatest challenge is to continually change our form and approach as we explore new ideas, topics, collaborations and contributors.

Our editorial team and further researcher community actively participates in a range of international research networks to include The Subcultures Network, IASPM, MeCCSA, and the Jazz Research Network. Through these connections, we aim to develop an international and active readership of postgraduate researchers, academics at all stages, industry professionals, and creatives.

If you would like to propose a special issue or explore a collaboration, please contact us at riffsjournal@gmail.com