Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the SEM 2026 Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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: 29th Aug 2026, 08:14:48pm EDT
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Daily Overview |
Mongolian Musical Practices as Ecological Mediation in Inner Mongolia
Victoria University of Wellington
Neither Hani Heritage nor Global Grooves: Sonic Negotiations of Minority Identity in Yunnan’s Transnational Reggae Networks
Duke University
The Texture of Silence: Tracing the Blank History of African Soundscapes in China’s Urban Archive
McGill University,
Music and the Invention of Ethnicities: Rethinking Ethnic Categories in the Ethnomusicological Study of Chinese Music
University of Vienna
Musical Representations of Indigeneities in Contemporary Japanese Anime
Whose Instrument? The Banjo, Blackness, and the Politics of Cultural Recovery
Presentations in the Session
What Makes an Early Banjo?
Alien Music: Hauntology and Temporal Disruption in Contemporary Black Banjo Performance
Classic Style, Personal Collections, and the Pittsburgh Banjo Scene
Defining 'Black Banjo': Toward Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
Suspending Asian/American Listening
Singing imagined futures: Young people, musical arts, and forced displacement
Presentations in the Session
Singing Our Stories: Musical arts and refugee children and young people in Canada
Sounding Against Organized Abandonment: Refugee Arts Practice and the Limits of Witnessing
Singing Agency into Being: Refugee Youth, Participatory Arts, and the Co-Creation of Knowledge
“Condenó al ostracismo”: Contesting Histories of the Salon in Post-Revolutionary Mexico
University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
Chilena and Los Banqueros: Afro-Mexican Memory in a Motley Society
University of Oregon
Aural Convivencia: a Decolonial Aesthesis of Mexico City’s “Typical” Sounds
The University of Texas at Austin
The (De)Growth of Music
Presentations in the Session
Music, Real Abstraction, and Growth: A Monster Story
Sounds of Enough: Toward a Degrowth Ethnomusicology
Songwriting (Re)Productive Labor in Veracruz's Sotavento
Spreading St. Louis Jazz Values to “Postfigure” a Different Future
Shame on the Field: How Shame Shapes Field Experiences
“Quitate tú pa’ ponerme yo”: Clave Riddim, Salsa, and Puerto Rican Reggaetón Relations
University of California, Davis
Military Bands in Puerto Rico during World War I: Music as an Instrument of Imperial Power (1917-1919)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Sanctioning the Divided Musical Nationhood: Institutionalization of Music under ‘Muñozismo’ in Puerto Rico (1949–1965)
University of California, Berkeley,
Concierto por radio: WKAQ, Musical Programming, and Canon Formation in 1920s Puerto Rico
Florida State University
Technologies of Witness: Recorded and Digital Sacred Music in American Life
Presentations in the Session
Recording the Mission Field: The Musical Betts and their “Truckload of Instruments”
The Blood Still Works: Gospel Sound Circulation on TikTok as Black Lived Theology
Sacred Music’s Technological Echoes: Examining Online Catholic Sacred Music Transmission and Re-Enchantment
Reclaiming the Public: Listening Out in All-Women and Gender-Expansive HONK! Street Bands
Ohio State University
Vendedores Ambulantes: Their Lives and Labor Embedded Within the Soundscape of Capital
CUNY: Hunter College
“A Tale of Two Protests”: Soundscapes of Urban Immigration Rights Shared-Care Spaces in Cincinnati, Ohio 2025–2026
University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music
(Dis)Locating Masculinities in the New York Jazz Scene
The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY),
Sounding Sacred Order: Gender, Boundary, and Choral Performance in the Celestial Church of Christ, Nigeria
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
Dances of Empire: Dance and Power on the Nineteenth Century Omani East African Coast
Brandeis University
Sounding the Dead: The Tulod-Damag Mortuary Rite of Central Panay, Philippines
Univeristy of the Philippines College of Music
The Soul of Whose Japan? The Rumor of Zainichi Korean as Imperial Trace
University of Pittsburgh
Sound and Religious Engagement in Contemporary Jōdo Shinshū
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
From American Showbands to Uchinā Jazz: Reclaiming Jazz Music in Postwar Okinawa
University of Texas at Austin
Toward an Applied Ethnomusicology of Diasporic Health Promotion: Developing a Music-Based Wellness Program
Bard College Conservatory of Music,
Musical Hustle: Performing “Africa” in China’s Theme Park Industry
University of California, Berkeley
Sounding Steppe - (Re)Inventing the proto-Hungarian Music Today
Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe,
Jarring as Attunement: the Sound, Etiquette, and Risk in Taiwan Mountain Trail
Duke University,
Echoes After Empire: Sound Archives and the Post-Imperial Nation-State
Presentations in the Session
Sonic Transductions: Revisiting Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Radioscape in Bahia (1940-1941)
Making Archives Musical, Making War Historical: Popular Song, Archival Violence, and Other Constructed Histories In and Against Sikh Militancy
Nostalgic Collages: Archival Projects of Critical Radiophonic Utopianism
Listening to Medical(ized) Spaces: Sound, Care, and Clinical Ethics
Presentations in the Session
Table of Phonetic Wounds
Negotiating an Alternate Aliveness on the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester Carillon
Sonic Care and Maternal Well-Being in Ibadan, Nigeria: Musical Practices in Faith-Based and Government Antenatal Clinics
The Afterlives of Contemporary Worship, or Metamodern Musicking in the Shadow of Megachurches
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
“The War Changed Everything”: Reimagining Identity and Worship Songs in Ukraine
1: Dallas International University,; 2: Duquesne University
Sacred Sound Across Religious Boundaries: Carnatic Music in Kerala’s Christian Communities
University of California, Los Angeles,
Why Suruí Christians Sing: Exploring a Post-secular Ethnomusicology in Brazil
University of Toronto,
Catching Tosca: Uncovering Technical Labor and Redefining Musicking in the Contemporary US Opera House
College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati,
Sliding down the Sacred Harp-to-Contra Dance pipeline: the Affective Potential of Performance Arts
Boston University
"I didn't feel valuable until I got a medal": Barbershop Singing and Stepping Outside of Neoliberal Success Narratives
1: University of Lincoln; 2: University of London
Beyond Identity Politics: Rethinking Music, Selfhood, and Sonic Ontology in African Musics
Presentations in the Session
Beyond the Living: Toward a Spectral Theory of the Musical Individual.
Transcending Anthropocentrism in Musical Sustainability
Is there even Ghanaian Afrobeats?
"Religioso": Sonic morphologies as identity construction in Ghanaian art music
Acoustic Architectures of Justice: Sound, Power, and the Courtroom
University of Pittsburgh,
A Multimodal Ethnography of Displaced Karen Refugees at the Thai-Burmese Border
Goldsmiths, University of London
Aesthetics and Production in Los Angeles: A Global “New Music” Field of Cultural Production
UCLA
Voye Chante (Throwing/Sending Song): Ritual Frequencies for Resistance in Haitian Vodou
Yale University
Women Inheriting and Maturing the Bullerengue-voice in the Afro-Colombian Maroon Caribbean: Worlding, Epistemic Aurality, and Las Penas Alegres
Columbia University,
Defending Cuban Heritage in Sound and Stone: Reviving Colonial-Era Music and Architecture in Contemporary Havana
University of Florida
"Go Back and Get It": Sankofa, Jamaican Maroon Cultural Traditions, and Recovering Fugitive Histories
Swarthmore College,
Sounding Authority in Yorùbá Indigenous Christianity: Music, Leadership and Worship
University of Lagos, Nigeria
Groans, Shouts, and Sacred Resonance: Sound-Triggered Practices in African Worship Contexts
Loyola Marymount University,
The Ambivalence of Literal Decolonization Approaches in Sacred Music: A Case Study of Gregorian Chanting in the Holy Cross Catholic Church of Kenya
University of Texas at Austin,
Festivalization of Devotional Music in India
UCLA
Milk in Marathi Musics: From the Mother of the Gods to the “Tigress” of Education
Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge
“Listening to the Sarangi in a House of Music (Gharana)”
University of California Santa Cruz
Sonic Imaginations of the Nation: An Analysis of the Politics and Poetics of the Powada (Ballad) in Maharashtra, India
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington
Black Women’s Songs of Migration: Reinforcing the Collective Authority of Cantadoras in Cali, Colombia
Boston University
Sounds of Fuerza: Espiritismo Marialioncero and Venezuela’s Contemporary Crisis
Boston University
ARMORIAL MEMORY: INSURGENT CITIZENSHIP AND THE RESIGNIFICATION OF SPACES
Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany
Owning Sound: Music and/as Property
Presentations in the Session
Property and Patrimony: Indigenous Music and the Contours of In/alienability in Mexico
Contested Legacies: Alienation and Intergenerational Transfer in the Blues
Heritage Fever and the Sounds of Insurgency in a Decolonizing State
Building Sound Pedagogies for Collaboration across Boundaries in Music Education
Multi-Sited Ethnography: Promises and Perils, Politics and Poetics
Presentations in the Session
“Following the Jazz”: Stories from Improvised Music Scenes of Three Continents
Taking Elsewhere on the Road: Laylit and the SWANA Dance Party
Beyond Homeland/Diaspora: Listening Archipelagically Across Filipino/American Jazz Scenes
Scale, Affect, Infrastructure: Keywords for Musical Labor in the Global Cruise Industry, Provocations for a Multi-Situated Economic Ethnomusicology
Frum Women Sing: Voice, Agency, and Orthodox Jewish Subjectivity
CUNY Graduate Center
Portable, Iridescent Heritage: Liturgical Musicking of Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Montreal
Concordia University,
Mediated Mourning on a Global Stage: Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest, 2024–2025
Independent Researcher, Brazil
Archive and Experimentation across Transnational Arab Cultural Geographies
Presentations in the Session
Water as Archive: Tamara Al-Mashouk’s I’d search forever, I want to remember (2023)
Archival Play with the “Halim El Dabh Papers”
Market as Archive / Market as Method: Music and Materiality in Cairo’s Used Goods Markets
AI Anti-ICE Protest Songs: Aesthetic and Sociopolitical Considerations
Indiana University,
Resistance Music in Occupied Minneapolis
Minneapolis, MN
Refracted National Identity through “Island’s Sunrise”: Protest Music as Crafting—or Cracking—Taiwan
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lyrics in Contention: Song, Power, and Identity in Latin America
Presentations in the Session
Lyrical Insults and Collective Fun: The Social Dynamics of Carnival in a Panamanian Town
México Canta y la Apología del Delito: Music, Authority, and the Idea of Justice
Buscando Al Caballo: Song Lyrics and the Conjuring of Dominican Identity
Voicing against Voicelessness: An Ethnomusicology of Voice through Rupture
Presentations in the Session
Sounding the “Blank Slate”: Examining the Roles and Ramifications of the Refugee Child’s Voice in Cold War Propaganda
Voicing Long-Term Refuge in Cambodian American Lowell, Massachusetts
A Vocal Politics of Empathy in Palestinian Personal Narrative Storytelling
In-group and Expanded Understandings of Diverse Timbre Patterns
Presentations in the Session
Listener Expectations of Recurring Timbres in Rap Lyrics and Drum Patterns in Ta Dhom Project’s “K-Rap”
Comparing Two Experiences of Beat with Tanya Tagaq's "Ilunikavi"
Drumset Orchestration: Expanded and In-group Understandings of a Ubiquitous Concept
Timbre-Enabled Conversation in Afro-Haitian Drumming
Answering to Whom? Addressivity and the Creative Act in the Causasus and Central Asia
Presentations in the Session
Musical Polyaddressivity in Late Soviet Central Asian Cinema
Voice, Vocal Timbre, and Addressivity in Creativity of Azerbaijani Musicians
Responding to the self: Qurbonsho’s Wakhi poetry in Tajikistan
Khap of the Tai Dam: Timbre, Language Sounds, and the Vocable
The University of Mississippi
Practice, Performance, and Repetition: Vocal Training and Attunement of the Senses in a Buddhist Ordination Ritual
University of Pennsylvania
Ornamentation in Thai SATB Repertoire
University of Michigan
Booing the Thai Royal Anthem: Contesting National Identities in Contemporary Thailand
Stony Brook University
“This Is Dingqu”: Remixing Ding Zhen into Dissent on Bilibili
The University of Texas at Austin
Alhaji Beats: Afrobeats and the Mediation of African Muslim Identity within the Global Popular Music Market
University of Michigan
Alternative by Accident: WhatsApp, Music Circulation, and the Margins of Platform Capitalism in Equatorial Guinea
University of Jaén (Spain),
Allah Still Calls: Improvisation as Healing and Muslim Legibility in Post-9/11 African American Jazz
Stony Brook University
Amiri Baraka’s “Advanced Workers” Funk Up the ‘77 Berliner Jazztage: Hearing the “Changing Same” of Black Music as a Constellation of Transnationalisms, Histories and Art Forms
Cornell University
Patrice Rushen's Black Musical World-Making
University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Cyro Baptista's Musical Anthropophagy: Weighing the ethics of eclectic experimentalism for a Brazilian percussionist in New York’s downtown scene
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Intimate Community Building: Women Making Music Communities Across Asia and Its Diasporas
Presentations in the Session
Work before Practice: Women, Intimate Moments, and Embodiment in North Indian Art Music
Intimate Publics in the Moral Economy of K-pop
Skin in the Game: Taiko Drum Makers in Arizona
Refusing ‘Plague Logic:’ Sonic Mundanity and Affective Care in Bristol's Trans+ Drag Scene
University of Bristol
Parenthood and (Music) Academia. A Rantflection about Institutional Structures
Harvard University,
Reducing HIV-stigma through music, dance, and theatre: An action research approach
1: Conceptualisation; 2: Data curation; 3: Formal Analysis; 4: Validation
Up to Code: Interrogating Fatphobia in AmericanYoung Artist Programs’ Audition “Uniforms”
Brandeis University
Barulho and Belonging: Noise, Tradition, and Creolized Auralities in Mindelo
University of Vienna,
Hidden in Plain Earshot: Examining Covert Racializing Discourses at Work in Metal Music
Minneapolis, MN
"Closer to God": Nine Inch Nails and the Popular Allure of the Abject
University of Pennsylvania,
Communities of Care in Academic and Applied Ethnomusicology
Música Urbana as Mediated History: The Role of Genre and Scholars in the Music of Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro
Presentations in the Session
Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos is Applied Ethnomusicology
Plena as a Resilient, Mollifying yet Disruptive Resource in the Art World of Bad Bunny
Reorganizing the Past: Archival Temporalities and Ethnomusicological Mediation in platform music industries
Founding Mothers of Ethnomusicology: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Critical Trans Ethnographies of Music and Sound
Presentations in the Session
Liberia’s Daughters: The Legacies of “Women Working as Women” in San Diego/Tijuana
Tr/animal Voices at the Furry Convention
“So Many Women Are Boring:” Ordinary Auralities in East London
Archiving Ethnomusicology: The American Folklife Center at 50 and the Future of Sound Stewardship
Innovative Approaches to Public Engagement in Ethnomusicology & Folklore
Intersectional Disruptions: Interrogating Hegemonic Understandings of Musical Talent/Musicality through Disability, d/Deafness, and Race/Ethnicity
