Full disclosure before we go any further: I had a vested interest in this year’s IASPM-US conference, given that I played a bit part in the event as area co-chair for local arrangements (assisting Diane Pecknold, IASPM-US’ vice president). It was the formidable Diane Pecknold and the Program Committee that made this a success. What follows are my own post-conference thoughts.

The conference itself continues to be hosted at universities, rather than at the hotel conferences common to larger conferences’ annual meetings. Campus locations give the conference a kind of cozy informality. While the relatively small size of the conference might be seen as a reflection of popular music studies’ relatively marginal status in the U.S. as opposed to other Anglophone countries (most notably, the U.K.), it has also allowed the event to remain theoretically and methodologically open to a wide diversity of approaches and opinions.

While this approach can at times risk incoherence at its limits, it also can offer space for the kind of meaningful interdisciplinary that Stuart Hall practiced and championed for decades. This year’s IASPM-US conference, “Notes on Deconstructing Popular Music (Studies): Global Media and Critical Interventions,” was in tribute to Hall’s life and work. Following in Hall’s own methodological footsteps, the study of popular music remains an interdisciplinary pursuit. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been changes in the conference’s makeup over time. In recent years, music studies’ increasing interest in the popular has led to a greater influence from musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and music history. At the same time, conference presenters from a wide array of disciplines offered their own takes on the multi-faceted subject of popular music. This year’s conference included researchers in cultural studies, media and communication studies, global and transnational studies, gender and queer studies, race and ethnic studies, sociology, history, literature, American studies, sound studies, performance studies, and folklore.

Perhaps because of the conference’s dual focus on music as media and music in a global context, various panels took on these subjects in detail. Presentations by featured speakers Deborah Vargas assessed feminist queer interventions in pop music studies (“Musical Sociality and Queer Latinidad”) while Barry Shank outlined the political power and efficacy of musical beauty (“Popular Music Studies at the Limits of Hegemony”). The “Material Economies” panel looked at the intersection of music, media, materiality, and labor, while “The Business of Pop” examined recording industry texts, cultures, and practices over the last century. The “Roots and Routes of the Far East” panel mapped the globalization of Japanese pop music, while the “Transnational Music, Transnational Identity” panel investigated complex musical configurations and multivalent identities across national boundaries.

“Local Histories: Louisville’s Independent Music Scene” panel. Pictured (L to R): Brett Eugene Ralph, Ethan Buckler, Britt Walford, Rachel Grimes, David Grubbs, and moderator Cotten Seiler. Not pictured: Heather Fox.

Roundtables that featured Louisville musicians, archivists, and cultural producers offered a glimpse into the peculiar culture of Louisville across time. The Louisville Underground Music Archive opened its doors to show conference attendees its nascent collection. A roundtable on Louisville music festivals provided insight to how organizers understood their audience and the city they serve. In the “Local Histories: Louisville’s Independent Music Scene” roundtable, the audience heard Rachel Grimes (Hula Hoop, Rachel’s), David Grubbs (Squirrel Bait, Bastro), Ethan Buckler (King Kong, Slint), and Britt Walford (Slint, Watter), and others talk about their own experiences in the city’s music scene, while mapping that scene’s ethos and idiosyncrasies.

Evening events gave the conference a sense of place. The welcome event at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft allowed a peek at flyers to be included in the book White Glove Test: Louisville Punk Flyers, 1978-1994 (forthcoming, Drag City). Musical performances by David Grubbs, Wussy, and 1200 at the New Vintage provided a bill that reflected the musical, theoretical, and methodological breadth of the conference.

My take on IASPM-US 2015 – my first reaction in just the past few days – is that the study of popular music remains as hard to map as the city in which the conference was held. And while that risks playing out as a weakness, in Louisville it felt like strength.

Bellarmine Radio has been an Internet-only affair from its inception.  As Brian Fauteux convincingly argued in a  recent Antenna column, traditional (or “terrestrial”) college radio stations run the risk of losing their community focus as universities sell off valuable FM licenses. These stations then often turn to Internet radio. If college radio’s historical strength was an ability to focus on local culture, then what about stations like ours, which never had an FM license in the first place? Can an Internet station cultivate a local audience in such a diffuse media environment?

I had my doubts. My own connection to college radio was shaped by the pre-Internet scarcity of the music I heard. As a 1980s teen, I went to sleep in my west suburban Indianapolis home, listening to college radio from Cincinnati’s Xavier University. I kept a notebook by my bed to write down the most interesting bands I heard (V-E-L-V-E-T-U-N-D-E-R-G-R-O-U-N-D) and worked at deciphering Michael Stipe’s lyrics when REM was still a mystery.

It all felt like I’d stumbled upon a glorious secret: in the voices of college students I heard, in the information they had seemingly mastered, and in the music that opened up entirely new ways of thinking and feeling. Local commercial radio couldn’t compete, and even 1980s MTV paled in comparison. While my undergraduate school didn’t have its own station, my relationship to college radio continued when I started my own show on Bowling Green’s WBGU, fueled by conversations with generous and inventive colleagues and the university’s wonderful popular music library. After I left for Ph.D. work at the University of Texas, I listened to Austin’s KVRX, but considered my own college radio days to be over.

As a professor, I found myself involved in college radio again. When I arrived on the Bellarmine campus, I found eager students and a formidable task. Students had started the station on their own, but the previous faculty adviser had shaped the station to reflect Clear Channel-style corporate radio. The station was completely automated. We began to transform Bellarmine Radio into a college radio station, in which students would program the station and their voices would be heard on air – preferably live. We listened to other college radio stations, noting what we wanted to emulate (openness, experimentation) and what we wanted to avoid (snobbery, knee-jerk exclusion).

The majority of our listeners are connected to the university. This also includes study abroad students and alumni that check in from far away, sharing how much they appreciated hearing us on the other side of the world. We increasingly have the sense that our local focus in an online context has allowed us to reach a variety of listeners with Bellarmine and Louisville ties in far-flung locales, from Belfast to Shanghai. When my students ask if it’s OK they sound like they’re from Kentucky, I say yes. A given DJ’s Kentucky twang may not work in contemporary commercial radio, but we consider that a strength.

Selling our campus on college radio is an ongoing process. While Bellarmine has undergone dramatic transformations in the last decade or so, it is not particularly known for an adventurous campus culture. Because of this, we spend a lot of time trying to translate college radio to our specific context, explaining college radio’s larger mission. We do this through campus promotional activities and participation in larger initiatives such as College Radio Day. We playfully profess our approach in an unofficial slogan: Bellarmine Radio plays the hits and misses.

Program director Andrew Condia (left) and production director Shawn Gowen (right) touting Bellarmine Radio at a recent campus event. (Photo: Tatiana Rathke)

It is helpful for any college radio station staff to remember that many students arrive at college each fall having never heard college radio before. In 2011, my radio directors and I collaborated on a column for the student newspaper to explain Bellarmine Radio’s mission. “Think for a moment about your favorite song,” we wrote. “There was a time when you had never heard it before. You had to take a chance and listen for it to become meaningful for you. We would like to introduce you to your new favorites.” In an era when liberal arts colleges increasingly sell familiarity and comfort to attract students, we wanted to assert that college should be transformative – in ways that might be unfamiliar or even uncomfortable. We understand college radio as part of that transformation.

Our radio station has emerged during a period in which college radio’s future seems uncertain. As my former WBGU colleague Jen Waits pointed out in her 2012 overview for Radio Survivor, college radio remains vulnerable to takeovers by university administrations seeking a profit in selling off FM licenses. At the same time, traditional college radio stations reached new milestones, with continued support from universities. In 2012, the University of Minnesota celebrated 100 years of radio on campus.

On our campus, college radio still matters – even online. Bellarmine Radio is a work in progress mind you, but DJs leave their shifts feeling energized. We champion our favorite local bands, peruse Pitchfork and CMJ without letting it dictate our tastes, and ponder dubstep’s circuitous path from London to Louisville. And we are conscious that whether our listeners are across campus or around the world, it’s better to be rooted in who we are – and where we are – at any given moment.