Annual Update from IASPM-SEA 2024

Dear IASPM Community,

We write to offer a warm welcome to the newest members of our branch and share an annual update of our branch activities for the year 2024.

IASPM-SEA’s main activity is organising an annual conference at a select Southeast Asian city. This year we held our conference on 25 to 27 July at the College of Music, Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University in Bangkok, Thailand. The conference theme was “Human and More-Than-Human Entanglements: Popular Music Performance, Education and Technologies”. The conference was attended by 44 participants, with 39 individual papers, three performance lectures, one organised panel, one roundtable and one laboratory report presented. We would like to humbly thank all the participants, the programme committee and our hosts for an excellent conference.

You may access our 2024 conference booklet here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NaRbyVDXPq-uiOXRz4kEXsgCruAwN3Fo/view?usp=sharing

During the conference, we also held our Annual General Meeting in which we approved our branch’s Terms of Reference and elected a new term of Executive Committee Members (listed below). We congratulate Rachel Ong on accepting her position as branch Media Manager and acknowledge the tireless contributions of Krina Cayabyab who stepped down from her position as branch Secretary (from 2022 to 2024).

We are happy to report a steady growth in our membership since the branch’s inception in 2019. Our records document a sharp rise in membership from 16 members in 2022 to 51 members in 2024. Of our current members, 27 are waged and 24 are unwaged. We take pride in offering a supportive platform for members at an early stage in their academic careers and hope that our growing membership continues to reflect this, while also welcoming branch members from varying stages of their academic career.

We are currently planning our 2025 conference to be held in Taiwan. The tentative date will be 4-6 August 2025, after the Biennial Conference in Paris. We hope to send out our CFP for this in mid-January, so please stay tuned. We welcome all IASPM members to join us next year. We also hope that our conference may provide an accessible alternative for those in Asia and neighbouring regions who are unable to participate in France. Rest assured, we also have branch representatives who have submitted SEA-themed panels for Paris 2025, and we look forward to connecting with the international IASPM membership if our panels are accepted.

Finally, we released two episodes of our SEAnic Solidarities podcast series and hope to continue recording episodes that explore the research backgrounds and interests of our branch members.

“SEAnic Solidarities Episode 1: Adil Johan & Azmyl Yunor”

“SEAnic Solidarities Episode 2: Lara Katrina Mendoza & Pinoy Hip-Hop”

Do reach out to us if you are interested in collaborating with us or working on anything regarding popular music in Southeast Asia (and beyond).

Again, we extend a very warm welcome to all our new IASPM-SEA branch members and we wish you all a very Happy New Year!

Many thanks for your time and attention.

Best Wishes,

Adil Johan (Chair, IASPM-SEA) – adiljo@um.edu.my

Lara Katrina Mendoza (Treasurer, IASPM-SEA) – lkmendoza@ateneo.edu

Hueyuen Choong (Secretary, IASPM-SEA) – hueyuenc@sunway.edu.my

Rachel Ong Shu Ying (Media Manager, IASPM-SEA) – r.ong-shu-ying@kug.ac.at

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IASPM-SEA (International Association for the Study of Popular Music – Southeast Asia)