Retromania? Problematizing Popular Music Heritage Futures
Panel feat. Robert Knifton (University of Leeds), Marion Leonard (University of Liverpool), Paul Long (Monash University), Áine Mangaoang (University of Oslo) and Synnøve Engevik (Rockheim Popular Music Museum).
How can we theorise popular music as an emergent and future sub-category within heritage discourse, given the productive yet problematic relationship between these two disciplines? Taking Reynolds’ Retromania (2011) critique as a start point, we will ask what underpins the duality of attraction and antagonism between popular music and heritage theory?
Recent years have witnessed a growth in academic investigation into heritage themes in popular music studies, via the work of academics such as Baker, Bennett, Brandellero, Cohen, Henning, Leonard, Johnson, Long and Le Guern, for example. Publications such as Site of Popular Music Heritage (2015) and The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (2018) have engaged with heritage themes and theories, whilst often utilizing such terminology in alternate modes, arguing for the exceptionalism of popular music as a category, or resisting the designation of popular music as heritage entirely.
This growth of academic scrutiny is a result of heritage organisations developing popular music exhibitions, displays and experiences in increasing frequency – from the V&A’s series of blockbuster popular music exhibitions such as David Bowie Is (2013) and Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains (2017) through to local heritage archives, displays and activities (see for instance, Home of Metal, 2011-Present) and mapping of music heritage such as The Dublin Music Map (2016).
We will discuss how popular music studies and heritage theory may extend, deepen and complicate the critical dialogue between the disciplines, and consider what the future of popular music heritage might look like. Questions explored will include:
· Nostalgia and memory in popular music heritage discourse
· Collecting and documenting ephemeral popular music practices as heritage
· Representing global heritages and popular music heritage under threat
· Popular music as intangible cultural heritage and the new digital folkloric
· Risks to the preservation of popular music heritage for the future
Panel presented as part of the ACHS 2020 Futures international and interdisciplinary conference.
About ACHS 2020 Futures:
It is run by a local organising committee drawn from a range of institutions and disciplinary backgrounds. The local organising committee is supported by a scientific committee who will review proposals and help to shape the intellectual agenda of the conference.
The Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) is an international network of scholars, researchers and practitioners working in the broad and interdisciplinary field of heritage studies. The primary aim of ACHS is to promote heritage as an area of critical enquiry. Inspired by the paradigms of change inherent in postcolonial studies, and the developing interest in critical heritage studies as a field of research and academic engagement, it was officially founded in 2012, in Gothenburg, Sweden. The fifth biennial ACHS conference aims to build on and consolidate the networks established by previous conferences held in Gothenburg, Sweden (2012), Canberra, Australia (2014), Montreal, Canada (2016) and Hangzhou, China (2018), some of which have attracted almost a thousand international delegates.
Keynotes:
Dolly Jørgensen, Professor of History at University of Stavanger, Norway.
Sharon Macdonald, founding Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) and Alexander von Humboldt Professor in Social Anthropology (with an emphasis on Museum and Heritage Studies) at the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humbolt University of Berlin.
Karen Salt, director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Kavita Singh is Professor and Dean in the School of Arts & Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Organised by the UCL Institute of Archaeology in association with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Heritage Priority Area and the Association of Critical Heritage Studies.