15-18 annual conference of the Society for American Music (SAM) in
Charlotte and Davidson, which is being hosted by Davidson College. SAM
is a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of U.S. music.
Davidson College Professor of Music Neil Lerner serves as secretary of
SAM, and, as the chair of the local arrangements committee, helped
organize this year's conference.
More than 120 papers on U.S. music will be read at the conference. It
will also feature a Friday morning panel of eminent African-American
composers and a Friday evening presentation of an Honorary Membership
to traditional music legend Doc Watson.
While most of the conference activities will be in Charlotte and open
only to registrants, the public is invited to the Davidson campus on
Thursday, March 15, to attend four sets of papers and a free gospel
concert.
From 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. that day, the public is invited to attend any
of four scholarly sessions on diverse topics of American music
research. The sessions are "Hip Hop and Local Histories" (Hance
Auditorium, Chambers Building), "Sacred Tunebooks" (Lilly Gallery,
Chambers Building), "Spirituality in Celluloid (Tyler Tallman Hall,
Sloan Music Center) and "Negotiating Nationalism in theNineteenth
Century (Semans Lecture Hall, Belk Visual Arts Center).
A "GospelSHOUT!" concert that evening begins at 8 p.m. in the Duke
Family Performance Hall of the Knobloch Campus Center. It will feature
three prominent examples of southern religious roots music: The
Cockman Family (bluegrass gospel), Men Standing for Christ (an African
American a cappella quartet), and Cedric Mangum & Company (a trombone
shout band).
GospelSHOUT! is co-sponsored by the Davidson College Friends of the
Arts , the Department of Music, and the Levine Museum of the New
South, and there is no charge to attend. For more information email or
phone Neil Lerner
(nelerner@davidson.edu<mailto:nelerner@davidson.edu>, 704-894-2850).
For more information about SAM and the conference, consult this
webpage: www.american-music.org<http://www.american-music.org>.
