HLS EdX Course on Copyright

(Yes my holidays are going well ;) but...)

I just found out that EdX (Harvard and MIT) are running a course in Copyright Law from 28 January 2013 which goes for 12 weeks and requires a minimum of 8 hrs per week study. Applications are open until January 3rd 2013. No legal background is required but there will be a limit of 500 applications accepted. The course instructor is William Fisher III. Applicants must be 13 yrs or older and have a good grasp of English. Certificates of completion and written assessments will be given to those who pass. The course material will be made available publicly, so even if you don't wish to do the course, perhaps you might still want to take a look at that, when it becomes available.

Further Information
EdX, HLS1x Copyright <https://www.edx.org/courses/HarvardX/HLS1x/2013_Spring/about> at 27 December 2012

Merry Christmas

Off The Web

I'm taking a break for the next few weeks to enjoy the beach and the summer sun. I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog this year - it has been a lot of fun writing it - so thanks for being a great audience. I think what I write about is a little obscure so its great to know that over 1,000 people a month read my blog. Have a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I hope to be back around the end of January 2013 but it depends a little on whats happening with events in cyberspace - I'll try to keep you uptodate if anything big happens.

Sal

IASPM ANZ: Photos

What a great conference! Thanks Hobart!

IASPM: Music Festivals and the State of our Planet: An Eco-Musicological Perspective

Donna Weston gave a fantastic paper this afternoon. She talked about ecomusicology and in particular WOMADelaide and Woodford Folk Festival and the connection between music and the environment. Donna stated that at music festivals there is commonly a sense of community, a common purpose and often a degree of environmental awareness.

The aim of her study was to consider ways in which festivals could be forums where environmental responsibility is raised with a particular view to inspiring people to take action to help the environment after the festival is over.

By way of an introduction to the ideas of ecomusicolgy, Donna explained that the field concerns itself with the relationship between society and the natural environment. It questions the role that musicology plays in the welfare and survival of humanity. Furthermore it asks whether the environmental crisis is relevant to music and whether musicology is relevant to solving it.

Donna was particularly interested in finding out how festivals incorporate environmental issues into their programs and reduce their environmental impact. Solidarity concerts, calls to action, raising awareness both from artists speaking out and displays, stalls and speakers, making financial donations to NGOs, merchandising, and showing audiences proof of environmentally friendly technology in action were all ways that these festivals had sought to promote environmental awareness.

Donna suggested that it would be best to adopt a deep ecology approach to the organisation of music festivals in the future to produce deep thinking and wisdom from audience members to ensure that individual responsibility and action emerges.

Donna mentioned a book I am hoping to get my hands on soon - Juke Box In The Garden - sounds like a fabulous read.

IASPM ANZ: Flows of Relevance: still fighting the power 23 years on?

I saw a very interesting paper at IASPM this morning by Sarah Attfield. Sarah spoke about Public Enemy and The Specials and the relevance of their music more than two decades after its release. Sarah noted that while Billy Bragg says that music cannot change the world, it can bring people together. Sarah suggested that listening to Public Enemy's Fight the Power and going to their concert could be a catalyst for a listeners entry into activism. She noted John Street's view that music has been the site of political expression for centuries with some songs explicitly referring to political issues and events, some reflecting on society and other songs being adopted for occasions or causes. Sarah suggested that while political music is often grounded in the lyrical content and the music can be from any genre, the sound of the music is still a very important component to the potential impact of the song and its reception. She also suggests that who performs it is very important with Taylor Swift, for example, being unable to carry a song such as Fight the Power. Sarah reflected on her experience of going to a Public Enemy concert in recent years and suggested that they now attract a very broad audience of both young and old people. Sarah also noted the sadness in the continued relevance of their music to the socio economic circumstances and incarceration rates of African Americans. A very interesting paper, I really enjoyed it.

IASPM ANZ: The #RockStar in Social Media

I am at the conference for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music in Hobart, Tasmania. I just saw a fantastic paper by Penny Spirou on the functions of social media for rock stars. Penny spent a lot of time talking about NikkiSixx and his use of facebook and twitter. Penny identified the three central functions of social media for rock stars as being; 1. Autobiography 2. Intimacy and 3. Self branding and promotion. It was a very interesting paper and these three qualities are easily identifiable in the posts made by the artists that I myself follow. Most of the artists I follow (being more of the political musician type) also post a lot about causes they are interested in. Perhaps for those artists there is a fourth function of social activism.