Sample Conference Paper Abstract
EXAMPLE OF SUCCESSFUL CONFERENCE PAPER ABSTRACT
Accepted for presentation at the SEM national conference in Hawai`i, November 2006. 249 words; maximum is 250.
REES, HELEN (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES)
Master Musicians of Very Small Traditions: Tales from China's Hinterland
A flurry of recent publications has focused long overdue attention on the biographies, individual impacts, and personal experiences of prominent musicians, and on the place of individual agency in shaping cultural trajectories. Studies of "greats" such as Umm Kulthum (Danielson) and Tito Puente (Loza) productively examine the lives and art of household names, while Rice's "modern world system" is the catalyst for exciting, subject-centered musical ethnographies, often predicated on unprecedented levels of migration and globalization. Representatives of canonical Asian traditions such as gamelan and Indian classical music are now profiled even in textbooks; among Chinese artists, Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang, iconic folk musician Abing, and Inner Mongolian singer-songwriter Tengger have all generated sophisticated person-centered treatments.
Less narratively compelling, perhaps, but of equal cultural significance, are life-stories of countless stay-at-home farmers, teachers, and local entrepreneurs who maintain micro-traditions crucial to the soundscape of China's impoverished hinterland. Among the Confucian-affiliated amateur Dongjing associations of southwest China, for example, each county has its own ritual and musical repertoire, often kept going by a few dozen experienced performers, of whom maybe two or three are true experts capable of passing the torch. Even in the genre's heyday, before 1949, lines of transmission could be frighteningly attenuated, and individuals' sense of responsibility correspondingly great. This paper examines the distinctive dynamics that arise when just a few master musicians hold in their hands the fate of a tradition imbued with great cultural capital in their own locale, but totally irrelevant and unknown outside it.