KEXP invites Pop Conference participants to a "sneak peek" tour of KEXP's new home at Seattle Center.
Featuring the Microsoft/Listen "Inside the Music of KEXP" installation, plus a short performance by a very special TBA guest in the public gathering space of the new home.
Must show Pop Conference credentials for entry.
Hilarie Ashton, “Are You There, (Oh) G-d: Rapture in Pop Music Sound/Voices”
Ashon Crawley, “Resonance”
Joon Oluchi Lee, “Mary Gaitskill, a Melon Baller, and a George Michael Song”
Eric Lott, “Backup as Foreground”
What would a conference whose theme is the voice be without singers? This keynote conversation welcomes three remarkable vocalists in discussion about how they’ve discovered, nurtured, and continue to develop both their instruments and their musical vision. What makes a pop voice distinctive? How do the challenges of a life in popular music, including the difficulties of touring and the challenges of recording, both help shape and sometimes endanger a voice? What is the relationship between songwriting, song interpretation, and “pure” singing? How do singers preserve the pleasure of vocalizing over the course of their lifetimes? What remains personal about the art of singing, and how does that intermingle with technique? How has technology aided the singer’s craft while also sometimes standing in the way of “real” voices being recognized? These questions and others will be entertained in a casual, fun conversation about what makes a voice, a voice.
In honor of Record Store Day and as part of EMP’s Pop Con, watch as teams representing a few of Seattle’s independent record stores battle it out and put their encyclopedic knowledge of music to the test! Hosted by Greg Vandy of KEXP’s The Roadhouse. Featuring teams from Everyday Music, Sonic Boom, Spin Cycle, and Easy Street.
Michaelangelo Matos, “Prisoner of Your Love: How Tina Turner Came Back”
Charles Mudede, “Fontella Bass and the Philosophy of Sound”
Matthew Valnes, “‘Just a Little Bit of Soul Now’: Voice-Altering Technologies and the Sounds of Funk”
Seattle-based artist Wynne Greenwood, better-known in music circles as Tracy + The Plastics, has been giving voice to feminist and queer politics by way of her eclectic practice for over a decade. In her performances as Tracy + The Plastics, “members” of the band—slightly bossy front woman Tracy, contentious keyboardist Nikki, and spaced-out percussionist Cola, who “play all the instruments and sing” on the band’s albums—appear in live performances as Greenwood performing as Tracy onstage, awkwardly, hilariously interacting with Nikki and Cola as pre-recorded video projections. Between 1999 and 2006 Tracy + The Plastics performed in venues ranging from punk clubs to theaters to the Whitney Museum, and the “band” was recently revisited as part of Greenwood’s 2015 residency at New York City’s New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Greenwood has written of the band’s underlying goal: “A Tracy + the Plastics performance attempts to destroy the hierarchical dynamics of mass media’s say/see spaces by placing as much importance on the video images (the plastics) as the live performer (Tracy).” And, between the stilted, silence-laden on-stage “banter” of Greenwood in her various permutations and the pointedly open stage set-up, wherein the performance occupies a space that bleeds out into the seating, this hierarchy-destroying approach extends to artist-audience dynamics as the viewers are similarly encouraged to blur the line between who is there to “say” and who is there to “see.” And, in Greenwood’s many projects since—in recordings, videos, installations, collaborations with the LTTR collective and, most recently, her Kelly project at The New Museum—she has explored the role of diverse, overlapping, contradictory voices in the activist communities of which she is a part.
In this interview with art historian Maria Elena Buszek, Greenwood address the multiple “voices” she applies and mines, the relevance of music and club culture, and both the pleasures and problems of hybridity in her work, as well as screen examples of her performances and music videos.
Seattle has launched two rappers into the sphere of pop stardom: Sir-Mix-a-Lot and Macklemore. To the rest of the country, these figures appear to have come out of nowhere. And in a way they did. Seattle is kind of nowhere, in the sense that Atlanta or Miami are certainly somewhere. But Seattle’s nowhereness has never been sleepy but very busy, and very creative. It is a place with a deep and complicated racial, class, and musical history. It’s also very green here. Now, no panel could fully capture the richness of this region and all of its oddities in the time available, but we (Mudede, Abe, Mizell) certainly hope to provide an introduction to what makes 206 hip-hop 206 hip-hop. This panel welcomes you to the gates of the Emerald City.
Daudi Abe, “The Roots of Seattle’s Progressive Hip-Hop”
Larry Mizell Jr., “The Sounds of the Frontier”
Charles Mudede, “What Is Green Gothic Hip-Hop?”
What happens when our fan voice conflicts with our critical voice? After last year’s “Poptimism” moment, we began pondering the extinction of “guilty pleasures” in an age when (it is argued) charts are the most reliable barometer of critical consensus. What we are left with, perhaps, are guilty displeasures. Questions followed. Has taste become irrelevant, or, rather, is it being contested by younger social-media-schooled critics who refuse to be intimidated by it? Are we snobs if we prefer the raw-throated classicism of Chris Stapleton over the hip-hop-influenced beer busts of Florida-Georgia Line? Should we question the experiments on To Pimp a Butterfly because they don’t tear up the club? This is what happens when the voices out there become the voices in our head. In this panel we confess to how a critically championed artist or song has left us cold and unconvinced, then ponder the shame.
Popular music loses towering figures every year. But just a few months in, 2016 feels like a deluge of grieving: From Maurice White to Paul Kantner, Natalie Cole to Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie to Glenn Frey, this has already been a staggering year of loss. Here, the Pop Conference will pay tribute to the deceased in a concentrated fashion—and in our idiom, with critical and evocative words, images and sounds on the big Sky Church screen, and a spirit of celebration. Join us for a series of short papers and video clips considering the aforementioned music deities and a few more besides. Participants will share personal reflections and wrestle with these artists’ legacies and unique musical voices.
Christine Bacareza Balance, "The Gangsters We Are All Looking For"
Ricardo Montez, "In Control of Being Out of Control: Grace Jones, Keith Haring and the Ends of Paradise"
Roy Pérez, "Abduction Near Hialeah and Other Startling Transports: Desire and Dissonance in the Martin Wong Papers"