SAM

It took five planes, multiple buses, a train, a taxi, a rental car, and a lot of walking, but I made it from the dusty plains to the land of maple leaves and back again.

This iteration of the Society for American Music Conference was my first, and I must say it was a wonderful experience.  I think it'll be the conference that I'll want to attend as often as I can.  Because I was given the Student Travel Award, I was recruited to be a session monitor.  And that meant meeting a lot of great people.  Instead of giving a play-by-play, here are my highlights.

--The "Dance" panel (one I monitored) overall was inspiring.  Studies into the description of Fred Astaire's musical numbers in the scripts of Hollywood films (keywords like hot and swing) opened up so many semiotic ideas for me.  After Todd Decker gave insights into Astaire's personal philosophies in dance-- I had one of those aha moments.  And then another paper- research on On Your Toes, a musical I hadn't heard of.  Dan Blim, if you happen to read this, I loved your splicing of audio clips to highlight orientalism and jazz in the ballets.  It made an incredibly convincing argument.  I've never seen it done before, and I might have to borrow your technique (5-10 second clips separated by 2ish seconds of silence-- thereby shortening length of time you have to spend playing excerpts).  This was the second panel I went to, but their methodologies and techniques gave me the most lingering new research ideas.

--The Arts of Association Seminar-- I know a lot of people were saying it didn't quite work out as they wanted.  I didn't read the papers ahead of time because as a student presenting, I never registered for the conference (thus never getting the website/password).  But I liked the idea of an open dialogue, partially because it breaks up the constant reading of papers and also it highlights my favorite part of presentations- the Q&A.  Once SAM figures out how to perfect the logistics, I think this will be really great.

--Panel on Surveillance, Violence, and Trauma-- Wow.  Such admirable work Angela Hammond is doing, even if Canadian border police don't agree.  I'd love to get back to my archive job to see if we have any white supremacy records on file that aren't logged.  Most of the philosophical talk on System of a Down went over my head, but I loved seeing very complex philosophies applied to heavy metal music.  I was tempted to bring those songs into my class to wake up my students after Spring Break.  And particularly Jenny Olivia Johnson's work on sexual abuse as portrayed in tv/film music.... Her list of musical elements representing trauma hit home because I am a child of the 80s/90s- of the hyper-vigilant culture that was afraid I would lock myself in a fridge or talk to a man who wanted to give me a sticker with drugs laced in it.

-- Modern Musicals, Modern Audiences (another panel I monitored).  This was the one I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint.  New research on Cradle Will Rock film settings.  I had always wondered about what the heck Tim Robbins was getting at with his film, and I'm eternally grateful David C. Paul cleared up my lingering questions.  Jessica Sternfeld's dissertation on Mega-Musicals was my first foray into musical theatre scholarship about 4 years ago, so it was awesome to hear her talk about RENT and a recent school production.  And Elizabeth Craft's work on marketing In the Heights raised questions for me about what one must do to market anything these days- youtube, twitter, facebook, discussion boards, etc.  I loved the parodies Lin-Manuel Miranda created; I must watch more of those. 


I didn't get to stay Sunday, and I'm quite sad I couldn't be in two places at once often times.  Lots of Broadway, parody, and propaganda research I had to miss out on because I was listening to other papers.  I also missed the Student Forum, a dance session Thursday night, and the GLBT discussion-- most of those because of the before preparations or aftermath exhaustion of getting my presentation over and done with.  I get so worked up about presenting my research-- so much energy and excitement (never really nerves though)- that afterwards I typically crash.


Now final preparations are being made for the Music and War Conference in Austin this weekend.  I'm crazy for booking back to back conferences on different subjects.  And in between having to progress further my class research and thesis materials.

Pictures of Ottawa to follow.  I'll provide a link here soon.
Edit: I've placed the photos on facebook.  Tried other photo hosting sites, but my images are too large for their monthly quotas.