Cultural memory and the heritagisation of a music consumption community

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army. Findings The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band. Research limitations/implications This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and consumption communities. Practical implications The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time. Social implications The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity and membership. Originality/value The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as well as memory, in this process.

Co-constructing loyalty in an era of digital music fandom

“…The length of time fans claim to have invested in the band is a tool they use in exercising the discretionary right to curate U2’s cultural output. Consumption communities can remember their pasts through “the output of a collective memory produced from the collected memories of community members” (O’Reilly et al , 2017, p. 186). The use of time within the U2 forum is a device to control and dictate what cultural artefacts should resonate with other fans in the construction of this collective digital memory.…”

“You make me miss Pune so much”: memory making and documenting in a Virtual Zenana

“…People use constructs to discuss their past, both individually as well as collectively, and they form a part of what is a socially accepted way of talking about it. “Group memory is always already social because it involves social interaction in discussions about the past” (O'Reilly et al , 2017, p. 175). Here memory is not viewed as a storage a function or an abstract idea, instead it is seen as a “dynamic, social, process of remembering” (O'Reilly et al , 2017, p. 2017).…”

“…“Group memory is always already social because it involves social interaction in discussions about the past” (O'Reilly et al , 2017, p. 175). Here memory is not viewed as a storage a function or an abstract idea, instead it is seen as a “dynamic, social, process of remembering” (O'Reilly et al , 2017, p. 2017). Memory is cultural for a wide range of reasons, but more so because it is mediated and uses symbols in communication, and the act of remembering is always culturally as well as socially situated.…”