St Mary’s Symposium Explores Popular Music

A symposium exploring English national identities and popular music was held at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham last week. Mad Dogs and Englishness was organised as a joint event between the Media Arts, History and Screen Media courses at St Mary’s and saw speakers engage with English popular music traditions to gain inspiration and fresh insights on artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Davies, David Bowie, The Jam and The Sex Pistols. The two-day symposium reflected on the English cultural context of these disparate artists, both in a musical and lyrical sense, as well as the representation of national identity as plural and malleable. The first day opened with a talk from Peter Mills on Jake Thackray and the idea of Northern Englishness whilst other topics included Morris Dancing; the New English Folk Resurgence; Olympism and National Identity; London’s periphery and centre as an inspiration for musical and lyrical production; and the Sheffield music scene.

The evening ended with the launch of a new book Making Sense of Suburbia through Popular Culture by Rupa Huq (Bloomsbury, 2013).

The second day offered delegates the opportunity to hear talks on England as a locus of nostalgia, a Punk panel, a hip hop session and a concluding keynote address from Sheila Whiteley who presented ‘The Beatles: Englishness and Musical Identity’. Lee Brooks, who co-organised the event with Richard Mills and Mark Donnelly, said, "The symposium was a great success, and we thank the delegates for delivering such a wide range of fascinating presentations. We plan to publish an edited collection of papers from the symposium, and have already begun to discuss subjects for our next conference, in what we hope will become a regular series."