In this session, we will be introducing an idea for a research project that brings together a lot of work that is already going on at BCU, in particular research that engages with both the popular music and the history, heritage and archives research clusters. This presentation represents the very beginnings of a proposed project and hopes to act as an invitation for collaboration and ideas.

We were interested in how musicians assimilate their influences into their own musical identities, and how musical conventions are translated over time within particular cultures. In order to gain a clearer insight into this topic, we decided to conduct a textual analysis on two similar music acts from different eras, namely, The Supremes and Destiny’s Child. Whilst honing in on these two subjects, we concentrated on what compositional elements Destiny’s child may have taken from The Supremes. To conduct our investigation, we looked at the likes of David Michen’s idea of collective learning and shared cultural conventions, and David Millward’s proposal that imitation and reproduction of historic repertoire is a crucial part of musicians developing their own musical identities.

A work-in-progress reflection on the evolution and future of the journal and its value for research. In this short presentation, members of the Riffs editorial team will reflect on the upcoming issue of the journal, and the new challenges and opportunities encountered as the publication expands to engage with new themes, authors, and readers. The talk will address the cultural research value of experimental writing about popular music and will outline how Riffs has incorporated the DiY politics of creative identity in the context of live events such as this year’s Surge in Spring festival. Pathways to further publications in conjunction with the Popular Music Write Club will also be discussed.

Sarah Raine is a Research Fellow at BCU. She researches the ways in which the younger members of the northern soul scene negotiate their place in a multigenerational community that values ‘original’ participation. She is the co-Managing Editor of Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music, Review Editor and special issue Guest Editor (2018) for IASPM@Journal, and the Network Coordinator for Jazz & Everyday Aesthetics (AHRC).

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City University. Tim researches the production and consumption cultures around popular music and radio, and works on knowledge exchange projects with music and radio organisations and the wider creative industries. He uses political economic and historical analysis of media organisations and fan practice combined with ethnographic studies of community interactions on- and off-line, interpreted through discourse analysis.

He is particularly interested in the way that technology can be utilised for creative solutions to challenges in music and radio enterprises, and how the activities of these industries create important regional cultures. He has been an AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellow and worked on collaborative projects with the BBC and other organisations involved in creative and cultural practice. Most recently he has been applying insights from music to activism and citizen journalism in the Arab region.

His recent publications have included the second edition of his book Studying Popular Music Culture, music radio online, punk fanzine, the transistor radio, personal music listening, popular music on television, television music histories, jazz collectives, Duke Ellington on the radio, and The X Factor.

Hannah Clayton is a Blues and Soul singer from Hereford. She has been singing for approximately 5 years. She considers herself to be a “farmer’s daughter” and complete country girl in Hereford on the weekend, whilst living the parallel life at Birmingham in the week.

Nicolas Castro is from Uruguay and has been a musician and music producer for 8 years. He has studied guitar for 8 years and has a degree in music production.

Riffs: Experimental writing on popular music is an emerging and exciting postgraduate journal at Birmingham City University. This journal offers authors a creative and experimental space for writing and thinking about popular music, in addition to an online forum for the publication and hosting of high calibre research in the area of popular music studies. More information can be found here: http://riffsjournal.org/