Three of the Music Department’s PhD candidates presented papers earlier this month at the joint Royal Musical Association/British Forum for Ethnomusicology annual conference for research students. The conference took place over three days at Canterbury Christ Church University, and had as its theme ‘Exploring Musical Practice’.

Contributions from City students spanned a broad range of specialisms, from composition and the study of film music to ethnographic research on music scenes. Elizabeth Black discussed her approach to conceptualising texture in instrumental composition, with particular attention to the work of Panayiotis Kokoras and his notion of holophony. Roya Arab traced a history of the female voice in Iranian film music, noting its complex and shifting relationships to ideas of permissibility and representation. And Sam Mackay examined the interface of musical culture and gentrification in a central neighbourhood of Marseille, arguing that the particular sonic and spatial mediations of public music-making can generate both solidarities and fantasies in a context of contested social change.

Sam MacKay, PhD Student