The Museum of Polish Song in Opole and the Association of Pop Culture and Pop Culture Education Researchers “Trickster” is inviting participants to a nationwide interdisciplinary scientific conference on the phenomenon of disco polo. The conference will take place on 23 and 24 September in Opole, applications (title of the speech together with an abstract of up to 600 characters) will be accepted until the end of July.
The invitation to participate in the conference is addressed to cultural scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, media scholars, literary scholars, linguists and researchers in other fields interested in the topic.
Disco polo is a music genre which has made the transition from being identified with douchiness and lack of good taste in pavement music to a phenomenon of unflagging popularity, filling the biggest stadiums in Poland. For the last 30 years, the genre has thus become a cultural phenomenon provoking researchers to deepen their scientific reflection.
During the conference, the organisers intend to reflect not only on the theoretical aspects of the functioning of disco polo music in popular culture, but also to look at individual phenomena related to this music genre.
Proposed specific conference topics include: the genealogy of disco polo and related genres; the poetics of disco polo music; disco polo and other “national” music genres in Europe; disco polo in a period of economic transition (the first half of the 1990s) and the role of the media in the promotion and distribution of disco polo; the development of dedicated media.
The organisers also promise to address the issue of disco polo as a background to artistic biographies, and the links between disco polo and popular culture. They will also deal with legal and copyright aspects of creativity in the disco polo genre and the image of the world in the lyrics of disco polo songs, as well as politics towards disco polo and disco polo towards politics, and the relationship of disco polo with student culture and the music business.
Arkadiusz Słomczyński