MDG Colloquium 37 - CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The MayDay Group Colloquium 37 will take place at New York University Abu Dhabi in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from Sunday, March 14, through Wednesday, March 17, 2027.

The MayDay Group invites scholars, music makers, educators, and innovators from around the globe to submit proposals to this year’s colloquium centered on the following action ideal:

Collaboration Across Cultures

We engage in mutually beneficial collaboration(s) and thoughtful inter-, intra-, cross-, and trans-cultural exchange(s) with musicians outside our own cultural practice(s) to further understanding of one another’s worldviews and related ways of being and doing. 

Music and its modes of transmission occur within contexts shaped by the relationships that connect us to one another and to the myriad ways we construct knowledge. Acknowledging that power differentials are embedded in each inter-, intra-, cross-, and trans-cultural exchange, we commit to ethical ways of engagement, which support multiple modes of thinking and doing that lead to meaningful musical actions. Because we participate and collaborate in living cultural praxes, discussions of music’s meanings and educative values must concern not just sound itself and how we listen to it, but also how we engage with, respond to, and perpetuate music’s (de)humanizing functions. 

Participants might consider (but are not limited to) the following questions:

1. How might musicians and music educators engage in cross-cultural collaboration in ways that are reciprocal and mutually beneficial rather than extractive or tokenizing?

2. How do histories of colonialism and unequal relations of power continue to shape musical encounters across cultures?

3. What might be gained, lost, transformed, or misunderstood as musical practices move across cultural contexts?

4. How might situated forms of musical learning resist the commodification of culture or simplified celebrations of “diversity”?

5. What forms of knowledge and understanding might emerge through reciprocity, listening, humility, and sustained engagement across cultural difference?

6. How might cross-cultural musical collaborations challenge, or inadvertently reproduce, dominant assumptions about culture, identity, and musical value?

7. What ethical responsibilities arise when musicians, educators, researchers, and communities engage with musical practices beyond their own cultural contexts?

COLLOQUIUM FORMAT

Presentations—better understood at MayDay Colloquia as provocations—are designed to stimulate discussion and debate. Therefore, each presenter will be allocated 45 minutes, to include no more than 25 minutes for the presentation and no fewer than 20 minutes for discussion. Proposals that go outside the conventional scope of a provocation are encouraged. Musical engagements will also be considered. Projectors, speakers, and screens will be available, but it is completely acceptable to use no supporting technology. Presenters must register and are expected to attend the colloquium. While the colloquium will be held primarily in person, a limited number of online presentations will be accepted. Please indicate in your proposal whether you intend to participate in person or online. Because online presentation slots are limited, priority will be given to proposals intended for in-person participation.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION PROCESS:

Please submit both: a proposal of no more than 800 words (references not included in word count) and an abstract of no more than 100 words as email attachments. Incomplete submissions will not be considered. State your name, institutional affiliation, email address, other contact information, and whether you intend to participate in person or online in the body of the email only. There should be no identifiers on proposals or abstracts. Submit by October 8, 2026 to hvazquez@uvic.ca

Notification will occur by email no later than November 14, 2026. Proposals will be reviewed anonymously by the committee and evaluated according to the following criteria: clarity of ideas, contribution to/interest in the profession, and relevance and contribution to the collaboration across cultures action ideal. If accepted, the primary presenter and any co-presenters must register for the conference no later than January 7, 2027, or forfeit their acceptance. Registration information will be posted on the MDG 37 Colloquium website. Accepted abstracts will be posted to the Colloquium website by January 14, 2027 and cannot be changed after that date.

QUESTIONS?

Please contact Dr. Warren Churchill wnc1@nyu.edu or Dr. Hector Vazquez-Cordoba hvazquez@uvic.ca