Call-for-Chapters for Transatlantic Songs and Music

Call-for-Chapters for an edited volume published by a US-based academic press (TBD): 

Transatlantic Songs and Music  

Benjamin Hebblethwaite, University of Florida, hebble@ufl.edu 

Silke Jansen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremburg, silke.jansen@fau.de  

Kevin Meehan, University of Central Florida, kevin.meehan@ucf.edu 

This Call-for-Chapters invites researchers to prepare submissions for our edited book about transatlantic and Atlantic-intersecting songs and music. These pivotal forms of transoceanic cultural expression, preservation, exchange, and innovation reveal creative, inventive, linguistic, historical, religious, social, ludic, and emotional aspects of experience. We welcome contributions about transatlantic and Atlantic-intersecting songs and music from authors working in musicology, linguistics, cultural studies, literary criticism, ethnology, historiography, religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, among other disciplines. The following illustrates some of the genres and topics about which we encourage submissions: 

We seek chapters that investigate and develop granular as well as macroscopic analyses on transatlantic and Atlantic-intersecting songs and music, and we welcome diverse methodological approaches. We are interested in gathering high-quality studies focused on the past or present that advance our understanding of the interconnections, trajectories, and patterns of transatlantic songs and music. Our collection will explore how songs, music, language, culture, styles, genres, and instruments were shaped over layers of Atlantic time and space, including consideration of sources, manner of creation, mediums of recording and distribution, itineraries across oceans, reception in social and live spaces, and the retention and reshaping of ideas and practices in new nations and communities (Kummels et al. 2014). Contributions that examine the complex interplay between different musical traditions within or intersecting with historical and contemporary Atlantic spaces are welcome.   

Our volume breaks new ground by welcoming submissions on songs and music from all Atlantic regions, ethnicities, groups, and languages—as well as those that intersect with it—to gather traditions under a single tent and to reveal developments that transcend ethnic groups, languages, regions, and musical styles. While narrow or ethnic-centered work characterizes much publishing on transatlantic history and culture, such as Budasz (2019), Kubik (2017a, 2017b), Oja (2000), or Wynn (2007), our volume is untethered from any one part or population of the Atlantic. Instead of restricting our project to a closed set, we invite work that examines any transatlantic or Atlantic-intersecting musical phenomenon with the goal of collecting diverse and representative studies on a hemispheric and global scale, thereby revealing the role of songs and music in forging various transatlantic cultural, linguistic, and historical connections under the dramatically different social conditions that still mark this region.  

An abstract of 500 words should first be submitted to hebble@ufl.edu and cc’d to silke.jansen@fau.de and kevin.meehan@ucf.edu before August 15, 2024. After the abstract is peer-reviewed and accepted, authors will write book chapters of no more than 5,000 total words (including bibliography) before August 15, 2025.  

Studies are welcomed on songs and music, including artists, the language and linguistics of songs (e.g. lyrics, the vocabulary of songs, linguistic variation, language choice, etymology), music theory, musical instruments (including innovations and design), the (sub)cultures around music, music studios, distribution, music and technology, ethnomusicology, sociology of music, the history of songs and music, the themes of songs, artistic and genre genealogies, music marketing, transatlantic recording and producing practices, evolution of styles, genre theory, as well as work on ideologies, esthetics, methodologies, social and live venues, touring circuits, and imagination and imagery in music genres and marketing practices.  

ATLANTIC SONGS AND MUSIC INTERSECTING IN THE ATLANTIC: 

• Influences to and from North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Africa. 
• Atlantic folklore, mythology, and stories in songs. 
• Types and regionalization of Caribbean genres (i.e., reggae, calypso, salsa, etc.). 
• The transatlantic spread of religious ideas through songs (Rastafari, Christianity, Norse Paganism, Vodou, etc.). 
• The calypsonian Atlantic. 
• Cuban influences in Africa or African influences in Cuba.  
• The Cumbia Atlantic of Colombia’s coast. 
• The Salsa Atlantic. 
• Eco-consciousness in transatlantic songs and music. 
• The Kongo Soukous Atlantic. 
• The British Rock Invasion of the Americas.  
• Materiality of music: Instrument history, building, design, innovations, and influences. 
• Materiality of music: Mediums of recording, marketing, and distribution.  
• Materiality of music: Tours, social, and live spaces in Atlantic songs and music. 
• Women’s, men’s, and gender studies approaches to transatlantic songs and music.  
• Haitian konpa in the circum-Caribbean, internationally, and in the Haitian diaspora. 
• Sacred songs and music across the Atlantic. 
• The Jazz Atlantic: Accra, Berlin, Cape New York City, Stockholm, Buenos Aires, etc.  
• The English Atlantic: the English-language lingua franca in European pop and rock lyrics. 
• Foreign word borrowings and code-switching in Atlantic traditions. 
• North African Arabic and Berber lexical influences in European hip-hop. 
• Spanish and Portuguese influences in the Americas or Africa. 
• Transatlantic reggae: Ethiopia and Italy in Rastafari lyrics and ideology. 
• European folk songs and music across the Atlantic. 
• Transatlantic folk and country music. 
• Qualitative and quantitative studies on songs and music. 
• Promoters, fanzines, and music clubs in the fostering of transatlantic cultural connections. 
• Theodor Adorno’s Atlantic. 
• Lineages, patterns, structure, and transmission of sacred or secular Atlantic drum rhythms. 
• Lexical or grammatical evidence of transatlantic history in songs and music. 
• The creole language continuum (basilect-mesolect-acrolect) and songs. 
• Expressions of linguistic prestige, covert prestige, and insecurity in songs and music. 
• The continuum of imperial languages and creole languages in Caribbean songs. 
• African influences in the Atlantic and globally. 
• Transatlantic influences in classical, opera, and orchestral music. 
• Transoceanic death metal: the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Africa, Japan, and Korea  

In addition to the interconnecting Atlantic cultures, we also encourage studies that consider the connections to Atlantic cultures on a global level. In this context we want to know how Atlantic and global cultures influence one another. Examples of our interests include, but are not limited to these items: 

ATLANTIC SONGS AND MUSIC INTERSECTING GLOBALLY: 

• Atlantic influences in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese songs. 
• The reception of jazz, rock, ska, and reggae in Asia. 
• Bengali-Scottish connections in the songs of Tagore-Burns.  
• Asian uses of Atlantic music. 
• Cambodian pop and U.S. psychedelic rock. 
• Asia-Pacific diasporas and Atlantic music. 

References 

Adorno, Theodor. Essays on Music. Edited by Richard Leppert and translated by Susan Gillespie. University of California Press: Los Angeles, 2002. 

Anderson, Crystal S. Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020. 

Budasz, Rogério. Opera in the Tropics: Music and Theater in Early Modern Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 

Gasta, Chad Michael. Transatlantic Arias: Early Opera in Spain and the New World. Erlangen: Iberoamericana Vervuert., N.D., 2013. 

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993. 

Guilbaut, Serge, and Manuel J. Borja-Villel. Be-Bomb: The Transatlantic War of Images and All That Jazz, 1946-1956. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2007. 

Hebblethwaite, Benjamin and Silke Jansen, editors and authors. Indigenous and African Diaspora Religions in the Americas. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. 

Hebblethwaite, Benjamin. A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou: Rasin Figuier, Rasin Bwa Kayiman, and the Rada and Gede Rites. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. 

Jansen, Silke. “Los sonidos del merengue: variación lingüística e identidad en la música nacional dominicana.” Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI) XV (2017), 145-160. 

Jansen, Silke and Katrin Pfadenhauer. “La tumba francesa à Cuba: quelques lumières sur les caractéristiques linguistique du créole de Saint-Domingue à l’époque de la Révolution”. Archipélies (accepted, forthcoming).  

Jansen, Silke. “Le répertoire linguistique de la tumba francesa entre Saint-Domingue, Cuba et Haïti”. Submitted to Études Créoles.  

Jones, John Miller, Wilfried. Raussert, and Wilfried. Raussert. Traveling Sounds: Music, Migration, and Identity in the U.S. and Beyond. Berlin: Lit, 2008. 

Kubik, Gerhard. Jazz Transatlantic, volume I. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. 

Kubik, Gerhard. Jazz Transatlantic, volume II. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. 

Kummels, Ingrid, Claudia Rauhut, Stefan H. Rinke, and Birte Timm. Transatlantic Caribbean: Dialogues of People, Practices, Ideas. edited by Ingrid Kummels, Claudia Rauhut, Stefan H. Rinke, and Birte Timm. Bielefeld, Germany, 2014.  

Kristiansen, Jon. Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries. New York: Bazilion Points, 2011.  

Meehan, Kevin. 2009. People Get Ready: African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange. 

Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 

Ogundiran, Akinwumi. “Spiritual vibrations of historic Kormantse and the search for African diaspora identity and freedom.” In Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic. Edited by Akinwumi Ogundiran and Paula Saunders. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2014. 

Oja, Carol J. Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. 

Rubio Gómez, Salva. Metal Extremo: 30 años de oscuridad (1981-2011). Lleida, Spain: Editorial Mileno. 

Sánchez, M.. Thrash metal: del sonido al contenido: Origen y gestación de una contracultura chilena. Santiago: Ril editores, 2014. 

Sierra i Fabra, Jordi, and Xavier Bartomeus. Historia del Rock: La música que cambió el mundo. Madrid: Siruela, 2016. 

Wynn, Neil A. Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.