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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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Transborder Musical Practices: Gender, Leadership, and Cultural Continuity in Oaxacalifornia (Roundtable)
Saturday March 15, 2025 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall
This innovative roundtable unites Oaxacan music educators and scholars to explore the dynamic soundscape of Oaxacalifornia, focusing on Midcity and South-Central Los Angeles—home to the most significant Indigenous Oaxacan community outside of Mexico. Through critical dialogue and live musical demonstrations, our panel examines how gender, leadership, and cultural preservation intersect within traditionally male-dominated musical spaces, particularly in Oaxacan philharmonics and community-based bands. Drawing from their roles as practitioners, cultural bearers, and scholars, the presenters will demonstrate how women's increasing participation has transformed leadership paradigms while maintaining deep connections to cultural heritage. Additionally, how Oaxacan youth seek musical opportunities in higher education and mainstream venues. 
Addressing the conference themes of "Music, gender, and performance" and "Music, rebellion, agitation, protest," our roundtable explores how musical practices in Oaxacalifornia push against traditional boundaries and hierarchies. We examine how these musical borderlands serve as sites of both cultural preservation and innovation, challenging conventional notions of gender roles, leadership, and artistic expression. Integrating live performances by panelists will provide attendees with direct engagement on the sonic dimensions of these transformations, illustrating how musicians navigate the edges and borders of place, sound, genre, and style.
Our discussion illuminates how transborder networks facilitate the exchange of musical knowledge while creating new possibilities for cultural expression and community building. Through this combination of scholarly analysis and musical demonstration, we offer unique insights into how Oaxacan musical traditions adapt and evolve across borders while maintaining their cultural essence.


Moderators
avatar for Xóchitl C. Chávez

Xóchitl C. Chávez

Music Department, University of California Riverside
Dr. Xóchitl C. Chávez, is an activist scholar, musician, and associate professor at UC Riverside's Department of Music, making history as the first tenured Chicana in any UC system music program. Her ethnomusicological research examines transborder musical practices of Mexican Indigenous... Read More →
Speakers
YC

Yamili Conde

Yamili Conde, Zapotec musician and educator Yamili Conde began her musical journey in the community wind band of Yatzachi el Bajo, Oaxaca. A graduate of Universidad Autónoma "Benito Juárez" of Oaxaca, she now dedicates herself to teaching Indigenous Angelino youth in South Central... Read More →
avatar for Ernesto Cruz

Ernesto Cruz

Ernesto Cruz, a native Angelino and graduate of CSUN (BM) and CalArts (MFA) in Clarinet Performance, bridges the classical and traditional Mexican music worlds. As the Former Director of Banda Filarmonica Santa Maria Xochixtepec, he has played a vital role in preserving Oaxacan musical... Read More →
JH

Jessica Hernandez

Jessica Hernandez, the first female Oaxacan conductor in the U.S. to earn a Bachelor of Music from UC Riverside, began her musical journey at age 10 in her family's Banda Nueva Dynasty of Zoochila. Following her musical roots from Santiago Zoochila, Oaxaca, she participated in the... Read More →
JM

Johnny Miguel

Johnny Miguel, an LA-based Zapotec composer and arranger, navigates the intersection between Oaxacan musical traditions and contemporary innovation. His compositions honor cultural heritage while creating space for artistic evolution within Oaxacalifornian culture. As a musical bridge-builder... Read More →
HT

Hugo Tomas

Hugo Tomas, a trumpeter who began his musical journey at Hobart Elementary and Harmony Project, earned his Bachelor's in Commercial Trumpet Performance from the LA College of Music and his Master's from CSU Fullerton. Currently teaching with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, he recognized... Read More →
Saturday March 15, 2025 4:15pm - 6:00pm PDT
Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
  Roundtable

Attendees (4)


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