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POP CONFERENCE 2025

Baby, It’s a Look!
Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge

March 13 - 15, 2025

Los Angeles, California

Presented by USC Thornton School of Music

With the  International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) and Critical Minded


Over three exciting days of panels, roundtables, keynotes, and special events, the 23rd annual Pop Conference will explore the deep and complex relationship between popular music, style, and fashion. This year’s theme, “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge,” draws its inspiration from a 2017 Leikeli47 lyric and marks the first joint gathering of PopCon and IASPM-US since 2012.

Fashion and music are inextricably linked, from Josephine Baker’s banana skirt, Cab Calloway’s zoot suits, Billie Holiday’s signature gardenia, to The Beatles’ mop-top haircuts. Today, the connection between pop music and fashion remains stronger than ever. Visualizers thrive on streaming platforms; fashion runways in Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Johannesburg deploy pop music to bring designers’ visions to life; and musicians themselves blaze new trails designing streetwear collections and serving as creative directors for major fashion houses. 

But style has always been much more than just commerce or escapism—it has long been a space for critique, refusal, defiance, and radical expression. At its most powerful, style challenges norms, blurs boundaries, and pushes artistic and cultural frontiers, moving us right to the edge. 

This year’s conference returns to USC’s Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles just months after January 2025’s catastrophic Eaton and Palisades wildfires, and during a time of profound global upheaval and turmoil. The 2025 “Baby, It’s a Look: Popular Music, Style, and Fashion at the Edge” conference presents a remix, an opportunity to reconsider how fashion and music shape the world we live in, reflecting our realities, struggles, and aspirations while leading us toward the very edge of what feels possible.

Open to the public and free admission with conference registration on Eventbrite. Some events may require separate registration.
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RanCholo Rolas y Ropa: A Roundtable Discussion, Listening Session, and Stilo Share about the Rise of AlterNative Sound Scapes and Styles within the Chicanx and Mexican Urban, Rural, and Regional Music Scene
Thursday March 13, 2025 2:00pm - 3:45pm PDT
Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall
From lowrider oldies to rancholo rancheras the soundscapes and styles of Los
Angeles and the Southwest United States have changed with the times and
trends. This gathering of Mexican Regional Music participant scholars will share
research and reflections on paisa and MeXican migrant sensibilities and
aesthetics informed by urban and rural realities in the United States and Mexico.
With Mexican regional music and its over a dozen subgenres breaking records and at
the top of the charts, it is a crucial time and topic to discuss the influence of music on
the clothing, styles, and lifestyle of this bicultural and binational community.
Mexican American and Chicanx subversive youth cultures are instrumental in
shaping cultural trends and politics. Their sound and style detail themes of
immigration, economics, and violence, and tell stories of Mexican heritage, life,
and love. As we witness the globalization of these new and remixed rolas (tracks),
important discussions remain around how gender, class, race, sexuality, and other
positionalities influence representation across geographies and genres– often
blurring borders and crossing lines to impact the consumption and production of
this musical, aesthetic, fashion and overall cultural movement.

This experimental roundtable consisting of Bryan Cantero, Felicia Montes and
Lucero Saldaña will focus on the paisa (Mexican migrant) aesthetics in Mexican
regional music genres such as banda, corridos, norteñas, sierreno, corrido
tumbados, belicos and more. These long-time Paisa participant scholars, artists,
dancers, and fans of this musical culture will gather in a communal conversation
and visual and sonic listening session to show the sounds, steps, and styles
connected to the music. We will discuss the gender and style dynamics that have
birthed brands, trends, and viral sensations across, ranches, rodeos, radio
stations, streets, and social media. A special focus will be on current key artists,
bands, influencers, and designers who are making waves. Caile al baile! (join the
dance)
Moderators
avatar for Jose G. Anguiano

Jose G. Anguiano

Associate Professor, California State University, Los Angeles
José G. Anguiano is Professor in Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Dr. Anguiano is a cultural studies scholar with a primary focus on listeners and audiences of popular music, particularly sound cultures of Southern California. He has published... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Bryan Cantero

Bryan Cantero

Bryan Cantero is the son of an immigrant woman from Jalisco, Mexico and a first-generation student from South Central Los Angeles. He has a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies with a minor in Sociology at CSU Dominguez Hills. and an M.A. in Chicanx/Latinx Studies from CSU Los Angeles and is... Read More →
avatar for Lucero Saldaña

Lucero Saldaña

Instructor, Northwest Vista College
Lucero Saldaña is an instructor of Mexican American Studies at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, TX. She holds a master's degree in Bicultural Studies and a bachelor's degree in Mexican American Studies, both from The University of Texas at San Antonio. Her academic interests... Read More →
avatar for Felicia 'Fe' Montes

Felicia 'Fe' Montes

Assistant Professor, Chicanx Latinx Studies, Cal State Long Beach
Felicia 'Fe' Montes (M.A./M.F.A.) is a Xicana Indigenous holistic artivist, femcee, designer, poet, professor, performer, public scholar, paisa, and practitioner of the healing arts from East Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and director of Mujeres de Maiz, In Lak Ech, Botanica... Read More →
Thursday March 13, 2025 2:00pm - 3:45pm PDT
Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
  Session

Attendees (4)


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