Popular Music Interest Group

Mission statement

Founded in 1998, the SMT Popular Music Interest Group is dedicated to promoting the scholarly study of popular music through methods including musical analysis and theory. Our goals include:

• Ensuring academic recognition for popular music research.
• Encouraging more scholars of music theory to engage popular repertoires.
• Encouraging scholars of popular music to make effective use of musical analysis and theory.

Activities

The activities of this group include:

• Proposing and presenting special sessions or round tables at the SMT Annual Meetings.
• Holding a meeting at the SMT Annual Meetings for networking and exchange of ideas.
• Maintaining a website and a Humanities Commons page for networking and promotion of ideas related to popular music theory and analysis.
• Granting an annual award to an outstanding publication in the field of popular music theory and analysis.

Upcoming and past conference activities can be found on the website.

Online presence and discussion

A website maintained by the members of the SMT Popular Music Interest Group may be found at https://smtpmig.hcommons.org. Archives from the old listserv List Archives are housed at that website. 

In lieu of a listserv, the Popular Music Interest Group also operates a Humanities Commons page , where members can share their writing or teaching materials, collaboratively edit documents like our Bibliography and Glossary, and post on a discussion board. Create an account at Humanities Commons, then proceed to join the group.

How to join

There are no requirements for membership; simply attend our meetings at annual SMT meetings to participate.