Lauren Istvandity (editor) - Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory-Heritage-History

Lauren Istvandity and Zelmarie Cantillon

Introduction

The growing interest, globally, in the preservation of popular musics material past is beginning to yield a substantial range of scholarly explorations into how popular music, as heritage, is produced and legitimized (Brandellero et al. ).

In this collection, we emphasize the interrelated nature of memory, heritage and history, which work alongside one another, particularly in the context of the recent past, where heritage and history of popular music is both lived and remembered by communities, subcultures and societies. The following chapters focus on a diverse array of topics but are unified by inquiry into the construction, curation, display, negotiation and perception of popular musics past. The collection presents a critical perspective on academics involvement in historians work of reconstruction of the past through archival and analytical research. The cultural studies framework adopted in the collection encompasses unique approaches to popular music historiography, sociology, film analysis and archival and museal work. The breadth of popular musics influence is recognized in the range of formats and mediums that serve as chapter topics. From physical and built heritage photographs, objects and buildings to the intangible soundtracks, online writing, tributes and commemorations this collection underscores the rich origins of popular music heritage. Other chapters traverse the theoretical, looking to both the past and the future to understand possibilities in construction and preservation of popular musics past.

The Precarity of Popular Music Heritage

This collection centres on the notion that popular music heritage is precarious, by which we mean it is at risk, fragile and insecure, in its tangible and intangible forms. The state of heritage as needing protection is widely recognized, including through major conventions and guidelines released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for example. The idea of heritage as precarious has been drawn upon in other academic work, such as the intersection of tourism and heritage, where popular physical heritage sites are at risk of damage due to not only foot traffic and adjacent architectural development but also the stories and myths that are perpetuated about these places (e.g. Dines considered intangible cultural heritage but a language in itself is not). Rather than protect intangible traditions, such attitudes can further entrench the precarious existence of significant cultural histories.

Through the chapters in this book, we present the broad argument that popular music heritage, despite originating in the recent past, is especially precarious due to a range of factors, including its global and local circles of dissemination, the ephemeral nature of music, the fallibility of paper or material records on which it is recorded and its changing value to societies from the past to the present. The subtitle of this book, memoryheritagehistory, suggests there is not just one lens through which to view popular music heritage. Rather, the challenges and futures of popular musics past can be readily assembled within and between these three areas.

Memory

Memory in both personal and collective forms is a key component of understanding popular musics past. Through lived experience and collective reconstruction, we draw on memory to get a sense of the impact of popular music, and the influences on individual lives through large communities. Memory also encourages the affective reimagining of the past in the present, where personal recollections can be triggered by music in unexpected ways (Istvandity ). Memory is therefore a precarious resource in preserving popular musics past: while the truths within it must be treated carefully, without its collection and preservation, knowledge otherwise untraceable may be lost permanently.

Chapters in this volume represent diverse approaches to working with memory in tandem with issues facing popular music heritage. We begin with Paul Longs examination of the connections between original audiences and heritage materials (), which considers how scene membership can extend beyond its original patronage via an exploration of the British northern soul scene. Raine describes how older generations mediate the experience of the soul scene in the 1970s for newer members, all of whom engage regularly in activities of tribute and celebration, helping to maintain the dominant narratives of the scenes past.