The Experience Music Foundation's Pop Conference will take place at NYU this year. The theme of this year's conference is "Sounds of the City," and they have a panel focusing on Prince:

"From Counterculture 2 Cyberculture and Back Again"

Matt Thomas

For much of his career, Prince openly fantasied about panracial and pansexual utopia. The 1980 song "Uptown," for instance, trades on the sentimental mythos of the city as melting pot: "Black, white, Puerto Rican, everybody just a freakin'." Such attitudes have their roots in the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s. In the mid-'90s, Prince's countercultural sentiments got transmogrified by a particularly virulent strain of cyber-utopianism, and Prince became the first major pop artist to really embrace the Web.

Far from being just a forward-thinking, post-Warner Bros. business move, I see Prince's online exploits as an extension of his countercultural sympathies. The Web at the time was billed as the ultimate utopian space, and one Prince strongly associated with freedom. For over a decade Prince used the Net to distribute music. Then, in 2010, as quickly as he had embraced it, Prince turned on the Web, declaring the Internet "completely over." As tempting as it is to dismiss this remark as just Prince being Prince, I think it deserves to be taken seriously. Prince is saying the Web failed to live up to the hype. It's an expression of disillusionment. Prince's journey maps strangely well on to Fred Turner's "from counterculture to cyberculture" narrative. Prince's anti-Web stance thus might be read as a critique of cyber-utopianism, and his recent multi-night gigs in London, New York, and Los Angeles seem to suggest that he thinks the alternative to the Web is … the city.

"MPLS (Minneapolis): As Site and Sound"

Zaheer Ali

By his 1982 release 1999, Prince had consolidated all the sonic elements that would come to be known as the “Minneapolis sound”—a genre-bending mix of thick layered R&B horn synths, funk bass lines and “chicken scratch” guitar, New Wave electronic rhythms, and searing rock guitar solos. With the success of his 1984 follow up album and film Purple Rain, and the proliferation of his productions through protégé acts like The Time, Apollonia 6, and Sheila E., the Minneapolis sound began to inspire a range of productions by non-Minneapolis-based artists like Flint, Michigan’s Ready for the World and New York’s Lisa Lisa & the Cult Jam. Yet, for Prince—the most successful artist to be identified with the Minneapolis sound and arguably its pioneer—Minneapolis figured as more than a sound, but as a site of production, one to which he has been fiercely loyal. Against the advice of industry insiders, Prince built his recording studio complex Paisley Park in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen; and while he spent time recording in Los Angeles or New York, he reflects ambivalence to those locales in songs like “Big White Mansion” and “Dream Factory.”

This paper examines the historical emergence of Minneapolis as both a musical subgenre and as a place—a site of music production and an imaginary represented in the music of Prince. The story of the Minneapolis sound is partly the story of local music scenes, fostered by local-based radio programmers, venues that catered to local acts, and a healthy rivalry among local bands; but it is also the story of the geographic isolation and insulation of a relatively small population of black culture workers with limited access to the kinds of black urbanity that were more easily accessible in larger cities. The paper will close by pondering the state of Minneapolis--as site and sound--and look at recent attempts to preserve the local integrity of its musical culture.

The Conference is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required. For more details: http://www.empmuseum.org/...egoryID=26

Hope to see some folks there!

[Edited 2/27/12 19:08pm]

sounds good!!

inneresting!

Same I can't attend as it gpoing to be an interesting diverse pre-formed notions.

For those of you who can come through this Saturday....

http://iaspm-us.net/iaspm-uspop-conference-preview-zaheer-ali/

NuPwrSoul,

It's been a while since we last spoke.

I am rooting for you, your performance and your critique.

Will you be able to share any bootleg recordings of your work with those of us who cannot attend in person?

I hope you are well.

love,

Spirit

reminds me a little too much of the torture of grad school

Storify of Tweets from the session here.