Pop Convergence 2021

The Quarantine Boogie: Music in the Times of Pandemics (Room B: Oscillator)

It's a massive understatement to note that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the flows of "normal" life and this is no less true in the musical community than any other. This panel features four papers that highlights how music and musicians have responded to disruptive forces like pandemics, not just our current one but earlier examples as well. The paper topics range from looking at how individual artists have pivoted to adjust to new realities of social interaction, to how entire geographic regions have responded to the disruptions in their midst, to traveling back nearly 100 years to see how an earlier generation of musicians responded to similar pandemics in the past.

1.”Old Hits Verzuz New Technology: How a Pandemic Ushered Legacy Artists' Catalogs into the Clout Economy”
Jabari Evans, Center on Media and Human Development, Northwestern University

2."Dolly Parton in the Pandemic: New Constructions of Authenticity and Transmedia Storytelling"
Leigh H. Edwards, Department of English, Florida State University

3."TB Blues: Infectious disease and health communication in pop music"
Jessica Cassyle Carr, the University of New Mexico College of Population Health

4."Maldito Coronavirus! Mapping Musical Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic Across Latin America"
Dan Margolies, Virginia Wesleyan University + J.A. Strub, University of Texas at Austin