Philip Tagg - An expanded Musicology: from musematics to edutainment.
Philip Tagg - An expanded Musicology: from musematics to edutainment.
Philip Tagg (1944 – 2024) began his musical career in the early 1960s. A Professor since the 1970s, he is the author of an extensive intellectual output of books, texts, and videos. He was largely responsible for the establishment and development of an expanded Musicology, having taken the studies of and about popular music to Academia. As one of the founders of IASPM – International Association for the Study of Popular Music, in the early 1980s, he encouraged the assembly, exchange of knowledge and debate among researchers, initially from Europe and North America and, gradually, from various regions of the planet. Throughout his work, understanding of music - as language and practice – appears as the result of the interface of various sound and musical elements mediated, whether in audiovisual products or in phonograms, contributing decisively to the formation of meaning by the listener/receiver. He dedicated a large part of his academic work to analyzing the layers of musical elements that, together, allow us to situate a musical product perceptually and culturally. Tagg was especially inspired by Semiotics to develop his exhaustively detailed methodological approach, which includes, among other procedures, reception tests, comparison of musical elements among phonograms and audiovisual products and their cultural contextualization. From this point of view, musical analysis should not be an end in itself. On the contrary, it should pave the way for the understanding of how rhetorical mechanisms of media languages operate as well as how individuals, situated in time and place, carry out semantic processes. This would lead to new analysis keys for interpretation.
Tagg should be remembered and regarded not only for the teacher he was, but also by his activism as an educator and the theoretical relevance of his work which opened new horizons for the conception of musicological studies.
MusiMid pays homage to this important English Professor, researcher and academic with a special dossier edited by Cláudia Azevedo, Martha Ulhôa and Laura Jordán. Authors are invited to submit original work (research in progress or completed) referring to popular music and other media languages based, to some extent, on the methodology developed by Tagg. Texts that address the author's trajectory are also appreciated, including his conception of the world which led to initiatives towards the democratization of musical knowledge to “non-musos” and the creation of the digital channel Edutainment.
In addition to contributions to the dossier, MusiMid welcomes articles, interviews and reviews related to its scope.
Deadline for submissions: August 10th
Notification of acceptance: September 23rd
Revision: September 23rd to October 14th
Publication: November 18th
The editors strongly suggest that submissions in native language be accompanied by a version in English to allow a broader sharing of content.
