Music Research Seminar: Matthew Brennan (University of Glasgow)
Event abstract
How should educators approach teaching the music industries in a time of climate emergency? This paper outlines challenges arising from three current overlapping crises - biosphere crisis (Bradshaw et al 2021), creative work force crisis (Oakley and Banks 2020), and higher education crisis (Collini 2012) – and their implications for music industries curricula in higher education. It considers two case studies of music businesses adjusting their activities in response to the climate emergency – (1) the environmental sustainability plan of the Beggars Group of independent record labels; and (2) the Coldplay ‘Music of the Spheres’ world tour – and asks what lessons, if any, music educators might take from these pivots in music industry practice. Finally, drawing on the work of climate fiction (or ‘cli-fi’) author Kim Stanley Robinson, the paper concludes by weighing the pros and cons of envisioning musical utopias as a strategy for teaching the music industries in the 21st century.
About Matthew Brennan
Matt Brennan is Reader in Popular Music and Convenor of the MSc Music Industries degree at the University of Glasgow. He has served as Chair of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), and has authored, co-authored, and edited several books in the field of popular music studies. His latest book, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (Oxford University Press 2020), establishes the drum kit’s central role in shaping the history of music over the last 150 years; it was named one of the "best music books of 2020" by the Financial Times. His previous monograph, When Genres Collide (Bloomsbury 2017), was named as one of Pitchfork’s “Favourite Music Books of 2017” and was awarded the IASPM Canada Book Prize. He has also co-authored (with Martin Cloonan, Simon Frith, and Emma Webster) a three-volume History of Live Music in Britain (Routledge 2013; 2019; 2021).
How do I join?
This is an in-person event, so please feel free to join us in Wettons Terrace Room 0-01 at the Department of Music.
However if you wish to join us online, we will also be streaming this session via an online conferencing platform. Therefore, please complete this short form, and a member of our team will be in contact on the day of the event with further details.
