Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:34:27am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Fans, Audiences, and Participants in Popular Music Session Chair: Lance Morrison | |
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Anime Cover Musicking through the Lens of Anime as Cinematic Language and a Media Genre: Performative Para-Poaching (PPP) as the Main Mechanism in Anime Fan Creativity The Chinese University of Hong Kong Existing scholarship on Japanese anime has predominantly focused on its role as a socio-cultural prism, examining issues of identity, gender, and transnational fandom. However, recent scholarship has identified a significant gap in approaching anime as cinema (Pellitteri 2024). This neglect overlooks the fact that anime itself is a distinct media genre with its fundamental audiovisuality and unique cinematic language, in which music plays a constitutive role. Rather than being confined to the screen, anime’s cinematic language is structured to invite continuous fan engagement through musical performance. Yet how anime’s cinematic language is sustained, constantly generated, and extended beyond the screen through fan musicking has remained largely unexamined. This study uses anime cover music – fan-generated performance videos based on original anime soundtracks and circulated on digital platforms – as a critical site in examining how anime’s cinematic language is rearticulated and performed. Drawing on music performance studies (Cook 2007), paratextual theories (Genette 1997; Gray 2010), and media fan studies (de Certeau 1984; Jenkins 2012), this paper first coins Performative Para-Poaching as an analytical framework that comprehensively captures the core mechanism of anime cover musicking as a fan creative practice. Through case studies of the song ‘Avid’ (2021) from 86 (A-1 Pictures 2021-2022) and its three covers on Bilibili, this research reveals how anime as language invites constant fan musical practices. First, melody acts as an affective anchor constantly mobilized through rearrangement to activate the affective power of anime’s cinematic language. Second, anime cover music functions as paratexts where fans rearticulate virtual narratives through diverse embodied performances, extending anime into the physical realm. Third, synchronous performativity through Bilibili’s barrage commenting system turns covers into a shared space for audience-performer co-creation. By generating independent affective authority, cover musicking breaks the traditional gap between original works and fan creations, establishing a non-hierarchical media ecology. This paper illustrates that anime cover musicking is a vital variation of anime’s cinematic language, demonstrating anime’s inherent capacity for continuous performativity as a media genre. Furthermore, it offers a new analytical path for musicology to examine how musical meaning is collaboratively sustained through digitally mediated fan practices. | |