2012 EMP Pop Conference

Franklin Bruno is the author of Armed Forces, in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series; he is currently writing a book on popular song-form for Wesleyan University Press. His criticism has appeared in The Nation, Oxford American, The Believer, and two editions of Da Capo’s Best Music Writing annual. He has released 14 albums of original songs since 1990, solo and with the bands Nothing Painted Blue and (currently) Human Hearts. His most recent... Read More →

Greil Marcus is the author of, most recently, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years and Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America, published by Harvard in 2009.   Abstract: | | "'Maybe Someday Your Name Will Be in Lights': Robert Johnson Takes the City" The great producer John Hammond referred to Robert Johnson as a primitive blues singer... Read More →

Sonnet Retman teaches African American literature and culture at the University of Washington and she is the author of Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression (Duke 2011).   Abstract: | | "Muddy the Waters: Other Stories of Love and Theft in the Making of the Delta Blues" This presentation begins with simple question: while Alan Lomax, the white folklorist who collected the blues and so many other folk genres may be a... Read More →

David Suisman is associate professor of history at the University of Delaware. His is author of Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music recipient of numerous awards and honors (including honorable mention for IASPM-US’s Woody Guthrie Prize) and co-editor of Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He is also associate editor of the Journal for Popular Music Studies and a sometime disc jockey at... Read More →