“Really Saying Something?” What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Popular Music Heritage, Memory, Archives and the Digital?

Activist participatory communities in archival contexts: theoretical perspectives

“…Although our focus here, as for Choudry and Vally, is on those archives run by activists who overtly seek to contest political power and the structuring of society, we must also acknowledge that there are today a host of other participatory DIY archiving initiatives and 'amateur digital archivists' who wish to document all aspects of life and culture, from popular music and fan culture to gaming and fan fiction, without recourse to professional structures and support. 39 As with Stuart Hall's focus on the moment of the African and Asian artists to 'constitute' their archive as an intervention against the marginalisation in existing art histories, 40 Baker and Collins emphasise the need to recognise not just the level of authorisation of the archive but also crucially the intentionality of the participation, of moving from collecting and sharing and the 'unintentional archive' to actively constituting the archive as an action and direct intervention. 41 The role these archives (from materials and objects relating to historical events to online video documenting contemporary events such as war, revolutions and interactions with the state) play can, following Choudry and Vally, be characterised as recovery, resistance and creative aspiration.…”

Popular music heritage, community archives and the challenge of sustainability

“…Upstairs at the Mermaid is a public Facebook group that describes itself as follows: ‘Remember when the gigs were Upstairs at the Mermaid, Stratford/Warwick Road, Birmingham in the 80s?’ (Facebook, n.d.). The group ‘elicits the posting of memories’ related to a pub venue called the Mermaid, with members responding ‘to invitations to remember, evaluate or comment further by posting their own materials, questions and links’, this being a structure common to online community archives housed on social media platforms (Long, 2015: 67). The Mermaid operated in an inner city suburb of the city of Birmingham, England’s second most populous city, from 1930 to 2006.…”

“…The Upstairs at the Mermaid Facebook group comprises posts by members that are based on their own materials and memories related to the Birmingham venue and the bands that played there. Long (2015: 67) observes that ‘while many sites involve the posting of some highly original historical evidence, it is the memories of the membership that are the characteristic and most prodigious feature of such communities’. The group’s 632 (as of 9 October 2015) members enter into conversation and recollection of the bands they saw perform at the venue, the friendships made and lost, and offer fond remembrances of characters associated with the Mermaid.…”

“…As Long argues: while the digital might offer a utopian vision of democracy and communality, any DIY – or, for that matter, any official preservation – activity online is also tasked with the perennial business of the archivist in evaluating what counts, what is to be stored, and to what uses might be put such materials. (2015: 74)…”

“…‘Little h’ heritage sites of popular music’s past have great meaning for their followers and the potential to be a significant resource for scholars exploring diverse historical practices, processes and networks of popular music culture. However, as Long (2015: 73–4) notes, ‘in terms of usability and in light of the informal, unsystematic manner in which they are often arranged and present themselves to users’ achieving this potential will be challenging. If these are to be sustainable archival resources then there needs to be consideration in the heritage sector more broadly about how the long-term future of these sites might be assured both in terms of the digital artefacts posted on these sites and the vernacular knowledge shared by the communities that form and are sustained by them.…”