SMT - Milwaukee

I recently presented at my first national conference - the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was an AMAZING conference. I was particularly proud of my fellow University of Texas colleagues, as we had quite impressive representation among presentations. Josh Albrecht, Michael Austin, Ellie Boisjoli, Garreth Broesche, Jim Buhler, Jennifer Chu, and Jane Mathieu all gave papers, and those that I saw were great!

My own paper was entitled "Girls Who Are Boys Who Like Boys to be Girls: Mashups and Androgyny," and based on audience response, I think it went swimmingly! Being a mashup scholar its easy bits, and among those are the fact that my musical examples always go over well. People like mashups and think they're humorous, and especially at someplace like a (stuffy?) conference, they seem to be very well-received when I play examples. One of my favorite tracks from the presentation was "Enter Telephone," a mix of Metallica and Lady Gaga by DJs from Mars. I talked a lot about struggle for control in regards to this track. The way I'm reading it, Lady Gaga starts out as the more dominant element - Metallica's guitars are serving strictly as her accompaniment. Later in the song, however, the guitars become more aggressive, and Gaga has to get louder in order to compete. I concluded that Lady Gaga won out in the end, however. There is a climactic break-down section when Metallica's music becomes shaped into a dance beat; their metal sound has been altered to fit the club music style.

Agree? Disagree? Let me hear your thoughts on this or any other mashup!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjzF0Zf8oSU

#smt #conference #ladygaga #metallica #djsfrommars #milwaukee