Due to Covid-19, the 12^th annual meeting of the Music and Media Study Group (MaM) had to be postponed last year. With no end of the pandemic in sight, we decided to schedule the conference of 2021 from the start as a virtual meeting, taking place on June 10-11. The meeting was hosted from two venues: Cleveland State University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland. Theme of the meeting was Pre-existing Music in Screen-Media: Problems, Questions, Challenges.

A new open Call for Papers was widely distributed. Accepted papers from the previous year were automatically incorporated in the new program. We welcomed proposals that examined the theoretical and practical implications of pre-existing music in a variety of screen media—with special emphasis on cinema, music videos, and digital technologies.

The two day conference with 24 speakers in total was scheduled in six panels: ‘Redefining the Use of Pre-Existing Music through Bricolage’, ‘Auteur Cinema and Opera’, ‘Hollywood, European Mainstream, and Pre-Existing Music’, ‘Prototypical Film Genres and Pre-Existing Music’, ‘Incongruency, Isomorphism, and Rearrangement’, and ‘Advertising, Branding, Franchising’.

The participants were offered two keynote presentations, streamed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first was given by dr. James Buhler (University of Texas at Austin) and entitled ‘Composing for the Films in the Age of Digital Media’. The second key note talk by dr. Carol Vernallis (Stanford University) entitled ’Music Video and the Multisensory’ was streamed at a later moment due to technical challenges. 

The program conference committee included both keynote speakers, as well as Michael Baumgartner (Cleveland State University & co-organizer), Ewelina Boczkowska (Youngstown State University & co-organizer), Jason Hanley (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & co-organizer), Chloé Huvet (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), Tobias Pontara (Gothenburg University), and Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University & co-organizer).

The study group meeting of 2022 will coincide with the quinquennial IMS conference, which will take place in August in Athens, Greece. https://pcoconvin.eventsair.com/ims22/

We will host a round table on the topic of Music in Comedy Cinema. The papers presented here will form parts of the upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes. Invited speakers include Mervyn Cooke, James Deaville, members of last year’s program committee (Chloé Huvet, Ewelina Boczkowska, Michael Baumgartner), as well as the two editors of the Handbook.

Prof. Emile Wennekes, Chair of MaM

e.wennekes@uu.nl