Exploring, Decoding, and Experimenting with Musical Symbolisms
The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music's PEER Lab and Durham University Music Department are collaborating to host a free virtual interdisciplinary symposium on April 29-30, 2022. This event, titled "Understanding and Undoing Metaphors about Music," aims to critically examine the metaphors that shape how music is conceptualized in various disciplines.
Inaugural Dean Eileen Strempel expressed pride in hosting this symposium, emphasizing that no one should have to conform to a specific box for their musical experiences to be considered valid. The event will feature keynote speakers from diverse fields, including Jessica Bissett Perea, Philip Ewell, J. Martin Daughtry, Katherine Hambridge, Nicholas Harkness, Dorinne Kondo, Shana L. Redmond, Dylan Robinson, and Holly Watkins.
The symposium will involve professionals such as musicologists, theorists, Indigenous scholars, linguists, performers, and playwrights. The focus will be on presenters examining metaphors about music, exploring how they work, and suggesting new ways to articulate musical experiences and relationships. The goal is to shift the power balance, allowing for a wider recognition of experiences and practices, and the creation of diverse worlds.
The PEER Lab, led by UCLA musicologist and vocalist Nina Eidsheim, is an experimental research lab at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music. It is dedicated to decolonizing data, methodology, and analysis through creative practice. The symposium fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue that bridges music theory, cultural studies, cognitive science, and other areas to more fully articulate music’s multifaceted meanings and impacts.
The complete symposium program can be viewed online, and media inquiries should be directed to Brian Runt, who can be reached at (310) 206-4911 or via the same website. The symposium seeks to uncover how metaphorical language influences perception, interpretation, and scholarly discourse about music, providing a welcoming educational space for discussions about the current musical lexicon. By examining the words and concepts used to describe musical experiences, the symposium aims to allow for contradictory experiences to be recognized and for different perspectives to be heard.
- This interdisciplinary symposium, organized by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Durham University, encourages lifelong learning and education-and-self-development by examining the metaphors used in music, fostering discussions that will help shape new ways of articulating musical experiences and relationships.
- The symposium, featuring experts from various disciplines such as musicologists, linguists, Indigenous scholars, and performers, offers an entertaining yet enlightening exploration into music, covering a wide spectrum of areas, including music theory, cultural studies, cognitive science, and more, ultimately aiming to advance our understanding and undoing metaphors about music.
