We are delighted to announce that Professor Michael Drewett (Sociology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa) has been appointed as the first IIPC Visiting Fellow.
During his stay at the University of Turku, from late September to early November, Professor Drewett will give two IIPC Debate lectures, and will hold a weekly research seminar for the PhD students of the IIPC and PhD Programme in Popular Culture Studies (PPCS).
Professor Drewett’s central research area is the politics of popular music and the censorship of popular music in particular. His PhD focused on the censorship of popular music in South Africa during the apartheid era. He has also coordinated a national exhibition on popular music censorship in South Africa (at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1999) and a subsection on resistance music in South Africa for an exhibition hosted by the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2008 and 2009. He has produced, researched and co-scripted Stopping the Music, a documentary film about anti-apartheid musician, Roger Lucey. It premiered in Copenhagen at the 2nd World Conference on Music and Censorship in September 2002, screened by the Danish Film Institute. It has since been screened at film festivals and censorship workshops worldwide, including: The WOMEX (World Music Exhibition) in Essen, Germany October 2002; the Folk Alliance Conference in Nashville, U.S.A. February 2003; One World 5th Annual International Human Rights Festival in Prague, Czech Republic April 2003; 3rd International Gathering for Freedom of Expression in Istanbul, Turkey in July 2003; the Zanzibar International Film Festival in August 2003; the Durban Film Festival, South Africa October 2003; Freemuse Censorship of Music Workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe March 2005; the Clandestino Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden May 2005, Wordfest, National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa in July 2006. He has also overseen the re-release of the anti-apartheid A Naartjie in our Sosatie (1999) compilation CD and compiled a new compilation CD of South African resistance music, Shot Down (2007), working in conjunction with Shifty Records.
Professor Drewett is on the advisory board of Freemuse, an international organization concerned with the freedom of musical expression (http://www.freemuse.org/), he is Chairperson of the South African branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and coordinator of the Cutting Grooves Censorship of Popular Music archive (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cutting-Grooves/195586047155683). He is presently involved in developing the archive and researching different issues relating to popular music including popular music and war, popular music censorship, politics and popular music in South Africa and issues relating to sex, gender and popular music.
Professor Drewett’s WWW-pages:
http://www.ru.ac.za/sociology/staff/academicstaff/professormichaeldrewett/
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