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Everywhere you look, music is changing—overhauling itself in response to climate crisis. There are records made of plants and stereos that run on sunshine. There are sector-specific carbon calculators and literacy programs, organizations that size up (and draw down) the environmental impact of music on all levels. There are declarations of emergency, anthems for the anthropocene, playlists for the planet. Top to bottom, we are witnessing a climate-oriented recomposition of what music is and how it comes to be.

Music’s recomposition probably seems like a good thing. It is. And it isn’t. In this talk, Kyle Devine will highlight what is good about the good things, drawing on years of work with the people devoted to change. He will also explain what is not so good about the not-so-good things, showing how music gets stuck in ruts that turn even the best intentions into the problems they hope to solve. And he will suggests what could change in order to authorize the most daring hopes and audacious plans for rescuing the future of music—along with everything else.

This event takes place in the Harmony Building (1315.0049) on Monday 23rd October from 18:00 – 19:30.

Music Matters kicks off the 2023-2024 with an exciting talk from Bard College’s Maria Sonevytsky, who will discuss her award winning book Wild Music. Wild Music tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of “wildness” as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, Sonevytsky assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, Sonevytsky proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

This event takes place in the Harmony Building (1315.0031) on Monday 11th September from 16:00-18:00.

Music Matters at RUG will continue their artist discussion series in partnership with VERA on May 24 with a public interview with Japanese noise rock group Bo Ningen.

This event takes place at VERA Groningen (Oosterstraat 44, 9711RT) on Wednesday May 24 from 14:30 until 15:30, ahead of Bo Ningen’s performance at the venue that evening.

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The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture Series invites you to “On Being Touched by Boeremusiek: Listening as a Haptic Event” with dr. Willemien Froneman (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). This 38th talk of the series takes place at the room 1312.0018 in the RUG Harmony Building from 18:00 until 19:30 on Tuesday May 2nd, 2023. For further information on this talk, see the abstract below.

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The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture Series invites you to “Saying It Differently: Political Activism and Parody Songs in Malta” with Philip Ciantar (Department of Music Studies, School of Performing Arts, University of Malta). This 37th talk of the series takes place at the Heymanszaal in the RUG Academy Building from 17:00 until 18:30 on Wednesday April 26th, 2023. For further information on this talk, see the abstract below.

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The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture Series invites you to its 36th event, the ESNS Diversity and Inclusion Panel with Lisa Schoemaker (Eurosonic Noorderslag), Ilona Deuring (Eurosonic Noorderslag), Juan Carlos Méndez Álvarez (Utrecht University), Dan Pădure (University of Groningen). This discussion takes place at the RUG Harmony Building, room 1312.0012 from 17:00 until 18:30 on March 21st, 2023.

The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture Series is proud to present Dr. Raymond Macdonald (University of Edinburgh), who will give the 35th Music Matters talk entitled “We Are All Improvisers: The Psychological Foundations of Musicality.” This talk takes place at the Heymanszaal in the RUG Academy Building from 17:00 until 18:30 on December 8th, 2022.

This presentation discusses the importance of improvisation as a defining feature of social and creative interactions. It outlines the relationship of community music, music therapy and music education by focusing upon what it means to be musical and how music plays a crucial role in defining who we are as individuals and socially. The role of music in health and wellbeing will be emphasized as will the topic of how improvisation can be utilized to help explore creativity and collaborations in multiple contexts from virtuoso performances to children’s first experiences of music. A new definition of virtuosity will be proposed which includes a broader range of musical skills than is conventionally accepted. The lecture will include some short practical demonstrations to highlight the key points.

The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance is proud to present Dr. Mimi Haddon (University of Sussex) who will give a talk entitled “Telling Alternative Stories: Women’s Knowledge Cultures of Music.” This talk takes place at the USVA Theatre (Munnekeholm 10) from 09:15 until 10:00. All are welcome to attend. Read an abstract of Dr. Haddon’s project below:

“This paper brings together two recent projects that share a broad aim. The first is an idea that emerged when writing my article on Joan Baez’s imitations of Bob Dylan, which was published in 2021 in the journal Twentieth-Century Music. By analysing mimicry, this article sought to challenge the assumption that true musical knowledge is best demonstrated by writing original songs. Drawing from academic interrogations of musical creativity and identity as well as the work of Leopoldina Fortunati, I offered the idea of the creative matrix and looked to recentre the listening subject as a way to engage matrilineal lineages in music and the underexplored musical ‘work’ of listening and intimacy.
This process of focusing on listening and decentring traditional notions of knowledge and creativity in music led me to a second project, which is the AHRC-funded network, Music for Girls. In collaboration with twelve women from the local East Sussex community and  two affiliates of the Museum of Ordinary People, we curated an exhibition of women’s music tastes and local women’s music stories, which opened for four days in September this year. The local participants ranged in age from 15 to 72 and, crucially, their level of music ‘expertise’ varied too — from professional musicians to lay people.
The aim in these two projects is this: By looking to the position of listener, to perceived non-expert knowledges, and feminist archives, can we develop new paradigms for the analysis and even teaching of popular music that go beyond fan studies and traditional paradigms? What emerges—at the level of sonic properties and music historiographies specifically—if we experiment with suspending what we think we ‘know’ about popular music cultures and engage instead with knowledge cultures as linked to femininity?”

The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture series is proud to present a two day symposium on queer futurities, starting with a karaoke queer music history lecture at Dorothy’s drag bar on November 16th. On November 17th we continue in the academy building of the University of Groningen with a panel discussion on Janelle Monae and Queer Afrofuturisms in music with Dr. Dan Hassler-Forrest (Utrecht University) and Dr. Magdalena Fürnkranz (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna). All are welcome to attend.

The Music Matters at University of Groningen Performance and Lecture series in partnership with IASPM Benelux’s Pop Talks series is proud to present Dr. Charles Kronengold (Stanford University) who will give a talk entitled “Genres of the 1970s: Big Archives, Close Readings, Medium Sized-Theories” that will discuss the content of his recently released book Living Genres in Late Modernity (University of California Press). All are welcome to attend. Register via email to c.j.tonelli@rug.nl.