AMS PMSG Statement of RationaleApproved by the American Musicological Society, November 5, 2010Despite decades of scholarship, popular music research has only limitedly achieved mainstream status within musicological study and publication. In order to engage the wider musicological community with the varied questions—both specialized and universal—that popular music studies as a subfield and attempts to answer, we propose the formation of a Popular Music Study Group within the American Musicological Society. This desire to include popular music discursively within the broader discipline and to reach beyond the boundaries of pop’s now established academic niche is a significant part of what would differentiate this organization from others concerned with popular music. Like popular music itself, the scholars aiming to start this group are diverse, with varying musical interests. The group is envisioned as being broadly inclusive in scope, incorporating not just contemporary Anglophone mainstream popular music, but also music of other cultures and from earlier periods. |