Conference Agenda

The Online Program of events for the SEM 2025 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early October.

Use the search bar to search by name or title of paper/session. Note that this search bar does not search by keyword.

Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 26th Aug 2025, 07:06:30pm EDT

 
 
Session Overview
Location: L-506/507
Lobby Level 100
Date: Thursday, 23/Oct/2025
8:00am
-
10:00am
01K: Jazz Futures
Location: L-506/507
Presenter: Tom Wetmore, Columbia University
Presenter: Lee Caplan
Presenter: Martin Hundley, University of California, Los Angeles
Presenter: Tim Booth
 

Constellations of Sound: Race, Technology, and Jazz Performance

Tom Wetmore

Columbia University



Nathan Davis and the Jazz Educational Undercommons

Lee Caplan

University of Pittsburgh



Free Jazz and Building Community in South Los Angeles: Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra

Martin Hundley

University of California, Los Angeles



Jazz in Colonial Korea: Exploring the Complex Perceptions of Blackness

Wonseok Lee

Yale University

10:45am
-
12:15pm
02K: Reimagining Belonging through Politics of Sound: Asian/American Artists in Global Popular Music
Location: L-506/507
Chair: Sora Woo
 

Reimagining Belonging through Politics of Sound: Asian/American Artists in Global Popular Music

Chair(s): Sora Woo (University of California, San Diego)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

From the West Coast to the Sea: Hip-hop Music and Its Body/Voice Politics in Taiwan

Heidi Yin-Hsuan Tai
University of California, San Diego

 

Rina, BTS, and The Ethics of East Asian Representation in Western Popular Music

Alissa Liu
University of California, San Diego

 

Beyond Borders: Tokimonsta, Politics of Collaboration, and Sonic Speculation

Sora Woo
University of California, San Diego

12:30pm
-
1:30pm
Gender and Sexualities Studies Section Open Meeting
Location: L-506/507
1:45pm
-
3:45pm
03K: Resounding, Unsilencing, and Amplifying Latin America: Global South Possibilities for Sound Archives in the Global North
Location: L-506/507
Chair: Caio Marques Pinto de Souza
 

Resounding, Unsilencing, and Amplifying Latin America: Global South Possibilities for Sound Archives in the Global North

Chair(s): Caio de Souza (State University of Amapá)

Discussant(s): Sergio Ospina-Romero (Indiana University)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

Resonances of the Crossroads: Lorenzo Dow Turner and the Capoeira Angola Group Estrela do Norte

Caio de Souza
State University of Amapá

 

Bullerengue Unsilenced: Reclaiming Afro-Colombian Women’s Voices in the Sound Archive and in Ethnomusicology

Manuel Garcio-Orozco
Columbia University

 

El Palenque de Delia: Retracing Steps, Re-enacting the Archive, and Activating the Imagination 

Amelia López López
Indiana University

4:00pm
-
5:30pm
04K: Critical Biographies
Location: L-506/507
Presenter: Derrick Reginald Smith, The University of Alabama
Presenter: Maya Celeste Ann Cunningham, American University
Presenter: Susan Hurley-Glowa, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
 

A Biographical Portrait of the Professional Career and Influence of African American Band Leader Thomas E. Lyle

Derrick Reginald Smith

The University of Alabama



Max Roach: Black Power Ideologies and Aesthetics

Maya Celeste Ann Cunningham

University of Massachusetts, Amherst,



Tracing the Barefoot Diva’s Path Through Repertoire: Cesária Évora’s Song Choices

Susan Hurley-Glowa

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley,

7:00pm
-
9:00pm
SIG for Music Analysis
Location: L-506/507
Date: Friday, 24/Oct/2025
8:30am
-
10:30am
05K: Encounters in Sound Studies
Location: L-506/507
Presenter: J.A. Strub, University of Texas at Austin
Presenter: Sara Fazeli Masayeh, University of Florida
Presenter: Hani Ahmed Zewail, University of California Santa Barbara
Presenter: Benedict Turner-Berry
 

Why They Pressed Record: Musical Field Documentation in the Huasteca Region of Mexico

J.A. Strub

University of Texas at Austin,



Invisible Sonic Agency of Ethnographic Photos in the Study of Protest Soundscapes

Sara Fazeli Masayeh

University of Florida,



Islam, Grief, and Beauty: The Temporal Aporia of Grief in its Aesthetic and Temporal Dimension.

Hani Ahmed Zewail

University of California Santa Barbara,



Sounding Displacement: (Re)Imagining Kinship and Media in Bordeaux’s Urban Spaces

Benedict Turner-Berry

University of Cambridge

10:45am
-
12:15pm
06K: Black Keywords In Sound
Location: L-506/507
Chair: april lashan graham-jackson, University of Chicago
 

Black Keywords In Sound

Chair(s): april lashan graham-jackson (University of Chicago,), Allie Martin (Dartmouth College)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

Sampling With Critical Intention

Allie Martin
Dartmouth College

 

From Root to Route: Scaling Black Sonic Life Across Black Chicagoland

april l. graham-jackson
University of Chicago

 

Timbral Tidepools and Tales of The Tidewater Trio

Danielle Davis
Florida State University

1:45pm
-
3:45pm
07K: Unsettling Settler Colonial Sonic Spaces
Location: L-506/507
Chair: Maxwell Hiroshi Yamane, University of Oklahoma
 

Unsettling Settler Colonial Sonic Spaces

Chair(s): Maxwell Hiroshi Yamane (University of Oklahoma,)

Discussant(s): Beverley Diamond (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

Sonic Erasure in Idaho: The Land and Its People

Kimberly Marshall
University of Oklahoma

 

Sounding Indigenous Resurgence in Nacotchtank: Unsettling Settler Colonial Sonic Spaces in the U.S. Capital

Maxwell Yamane
University of Oklahoma

 

Sonic Sovereignty and the Tactile Body: Contemporary Indigenous Storytelling

Liz Przybylski1, Tara "T-Rhyme" Campbell2
1University of California Riverside, 2Independent

 

Discussion

Beverley Diamond
Memorial University of Newfoundland

4:00pm
-
5:30pm
08K: Coloniality and Vocality
Location: L-506/507
Presenter: Chun-bin Chen, Taipei National University of the Arts
Presenter: Sally Mehreteab
Presenter: Damascus Kafumbe
 

Pathway of the Chants: Transported Soundscapes across the Austronesian World

Chun-bin Chen

Taipei National University of the Arts



Work Songs and Aura: We can take the song out of the field, but can we keep the meaning in the song?

Sally Mehreteab

New York, NY



Decolonizing Ethnomusicological Practice: Power Relations and Representation in Ugandan Court Song Research

Damascus Kafumbe

Middlebury COllege

7:00pm
-
9:00pm
Society for Asian Music Keynote and Business Meeting
Location: L-506/507

Keynote Address: “What Asia Taught Me”
Mark Slobin, Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus at Wesleyan University

Date: Saturday, 25/Oct/2025
8:30am
-
10:30am
09K: International Musical Entities in the 21st Century: The Impacts of Global and Transnational Flows
Location: L-506/507
Chair: Mehrenegar Rostami, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
 

International Musical Entities in the 21st Century: The Impacts of Global and Transnational Flows

Chair(s): John Pippen (Colorado State University)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

African American jazz in diaspora: The case of Denmark’s Rytmisk Musik conservatories

Leslie C. Gay Jr.
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

 

See Local, Listen Global: Perceiving “Knoxvillian” at the Big Ears Festival

Nicholas Horner
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

 

The Colorado City Music Festival: Mormonism, Intercultural Hospitality, and Secular Ideals

Mehrenegar Rostami
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

 

Zamanavi or Emruzi: Music as a Gateway to the World

Hiwa Hawaii
N/A

10:45am
-
12:15pm
10K: Time Travel, Sonic Portals, and Reclaiming Black Musical Futures
Location: L-506/507
 

Time Travel, Sonic Portals, and Reclaiming Black Musical Futures

Chair(s): Alisha Lola Jones Skinner (University of Cambridge)

 

Presentations in the Session

 

Lessons from Lemonade and the Future of Interdisciplinary Black Music Courses

Birgitta Johnson
University of South Carolina

 

Aemilia Bassano, Muse of the Dark Lady Portal: Black Women Channeling Verse & Reclaiming the Shakespearean Legacy

Alisha Lola Jones Skinner
University of Cambridge

 

Black Gospel Revelations: Time Travel and Sonic Afrofuturism in Contemporary Gospel Music

Lauren Elizabeth Eldridge Stewart
Washington University in St. Louis

12:30pm
-
1:30pm
SIG for the Music of Iran and Central Asia
Location: L-506/507
Date: Sunday, 26/Oct/2025
8:30am
-
10:30am
11K: Music and Political Climates
Location: L-506/507
 

From Counter-Publics to Citizens: Understanding Folklorization through the Burrakatha

Shivanand Boddapati

University of Pennsylvania



Turkey’s Paradoxical Sounds of Complicity—Or, the Logic of Populist Culture

Ceyda Cekmeci

UC Berkeley



Campaign Songs as Musical Manifestos in Ghanaian Electoral Politics

Divine Kwasi Gbagbo

Loyola Marymount University,



A Relational Paradigm for Political Geographies of Belonging

Gregory Joseph Robinson

George Mason University

10:45am
-
12:15pm
12K: Identity and Preservation
Location: L-506/507
 

Open Online Communities as a Mediation Between Musical Culture and Sustainability: A Case Study of Maame Ode.

Naa Akle Afriyie Okantey

University of Florida,



Performing the Kyrgyz Epic Manas in Contemporary Times: An Endeavor to Preserve the Oral Tradition

Aibek Baiymbetov

Wesleyan University



Resonance in Exile: Young Afghan Musicians, Diasporic Identity, and Cultural Preservation in the United States

Sara Feili

Independent Scholar, New Haven