South by Southwest Music Conference panels have become increasingly interactive – not solely in the sense of audience and experts commingling, but in the ever-widening dialogue of reinvention between the industry and both its careerists and consumers. Trends such as crowdfunding bubble under the larger mushroom cloud/crowd of Facebook, while MCs reinvent hip-hop’s street CNN with a social-media savvy ready-made for Twitter and Foursquare. Maybe “Sturgeon’s Revelation” (see “I’m Not Old Your Music Does Suck“), the idea that all is dross, isn’t overtaking contemporary music as fast as everyone thinks. We cherry-picked nine SXSW Music panels whose issues and personalities speak to the moment, then threw in a dance lesson of sorts for good measure.

This article appears in March 4 • 2011.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.