Popular Music, Cultural Memory, and Heritage
Author(s)
Bennett, Andy
Janssen, Susanne
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2016
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The purpose of this special edition of Popular Music and Society is to bring together a series of articles from an international group of scholars who consider, in particular and locally specific ways, how popular music has become an object of memory and, in turn, a focus for contemporary renditions of history and cultural heritage. Popular music’s links to and evocation of the past have been evident for many years. Frith has highlighted popular music’s inherently nostalgic properties, a point reinforced by DeNora in her highly instructive work on the propensity of music both to link individuals with their past and to ...
View more >The purpose of this special edition of Popular Music and Society is to bring together a series of articles from an international group of scholars who consider, in particular and locally specific ways, how popular music has become an object of memory and, in turn, a focus for contemporary renditions of history and cultural heritage. Popular music’s links to and evocation of the past have been evident for many years. Frith has highlighted popular music’s inherently nostalgic properties, a point reinforced by DeNora in her highly instructive work on the propensity of music both to link individuals with their past and to emotionally ground them in the present. In an everyday sense, the untimely deaths of rock and pop icons such as Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain have triggered mass mourning that forcibly demonstrates the extent to which such artists come to signify the complex interplay of generational identification and collective generational memory (Gregory and Gregory; Elliott; Strong). However, it is not just popular music artists themselves but rather the vast array of music-related objects, images, texts, and places that become inscribed with memory (Bennett and Rogers, “In Search,” “In the Scattered”) by music fans and members of specific music scenes. While the study of cultural consumption is well established (see, for example, Miller; Dant; Woodward) in the field of popular music studies, a focus on memory and heritage is less so given the dominant emphasis in scholarship on artists, texts, performance, media, and industry. There are some notable exceptions, such as Waksman’s highly innovative work on the electric guitar and Hayes’s study of vinyl records. Similarly, there is an emerging focus on technological artifacts of popular music history (see, for example, Shuker, Wax). However, the broader field of popular music’s material legacy, and its connections to cultural memory, remains largely unmapped.
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View more >The purpose of this special edition of Popular Music and Society is to bring together a series of articles from an international group of scholars who consider, in particular and locally specific ways, how popular music has become an object of memory and, in turn, a focus for contemporary renditions of history and cultural heritage. Popular music’s links to and evocation of the past have been evident for many years. Frith has highlighted popular music’s inherently nostalgic properties, a point reinforced by DeNora in her highly instructive work on the propensity of music both to link individuals with their past and to emotionally ground them in the present. In an everyday sense, the untimely deaths of rock and pop icons such as Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain have triggered mass mourning that forcibly demonstrates the extent to which such artists come to signify the complex interplay of generational identification and collective generational memory (Gregory and Gregory; Elliott; Strong). However, it is not just popular music artists themselves but rather the vast array of music-related objects, images, texts, and places that become inscribed with memory (Bennett and Rogers, “In Search,” “In the Scattered”) by music fans and members of specific music scenes. While the study of cultural consumption is well established (see, for example, Miller; Dant; Woodward) in the field of popular music studies, a focus on memory and heritage is less so given the dominant emphasis in scholarship on artists, texts, performance, media, and industry. There are some notable exceptions, such as Waksman’s highly innovative work on the electric guitar and Hayes’s study of vinyl records. Similarly, there is an emerging focus on technological artifacts of popular music history (see, for example, Shuker, Wax). However, the broader field of popular music’s material legacy, and its connections to cultural memory, remains largely unmapped.
View less >
Journal Title
Popular Music and Society
Volume
39
Issue
1
Funder(s)
ARC
Grant identifier(s)
DP1092910
Subject
Sociology
Creative and professional writing
Communication and media studies
Cultural studies not elsewhere classified