In this
post, guest blogger Zelmarie
Cantillon provides an overview of key ideas emerging from my published work on DIY institutions; research that comes out of the Australian Research Council funded projects 'Popular Music and Cultural Memory' and 'Do-it-Yourself Popular Music Archives'.
***
Popular music’s material
past has not typically been regarded as heritage in a conventional sense. Not
only is popular music a relatively new part of history, but its material
cultures are driven by commercial logics, and thus characterised by mass
production, global distribution and ephemerality. In addition to audio
recordings, these material cultures include posters, costumes, instruments,
t-shirts, promotional material and band merchandise. Over the past several
decades, there has been increasing interest in the cultural and historical
value of popular music cultures, as marked by the growing number of sites
dedicated to the collection, preservation and display of its heritage.
Popular music heritage institutions vary widely in form, incorporating
archives, museums and halls of fame. Baker and Collins (2015) observe that
these can be grouped into broad, fluid categories of officially authorised,
self-authorised and unauthorised institutions, and further categorised by
whether they are physical or online. Baker’s work focuses particularly on
physical, self-authorised, ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) institutions of popular music
heritage. These DIY institutions are usually community-based, founded by
enthusiasts and run largely by volunteers, with limited funding and space. They
operate outside of, but usually parallel to, authorised national institutions,
and may often be seen to lack the symbolic capital and prestige of their
authorised counterparts.
National institutions tend to have selective, representative collections
which reinforce established historical narratives and canons. DIY institutions,
on the other hand, typically have mandates targeted at creating comprehensive,
inclusive, taste-less collections. Within communities of popular music
consumption, there are commonly expressed feelings of fear and anxiety that
artefacts will be deemed as unimportant, discarded as rubbish and forgotten. By
incorporating marginalised materials and narratives, these DIY institutions
work to ensure that popular music cultures are remembered in cultural memory.
At the same time, they contribute to a more complete or complex picture of
popular music’s past.
DIY institutions are usually run by amateurs who possess invaluable
vernacular knowledge, but lack formal training in archiving and curation. Baker suggests that these volunteers constitute ‘communities of
practice’ in which they learn archival skills collectively as they go, through
first-hand experience and interactions with other volunteers. Many DIY
institutions aim to emulate professional archival standards of preservation and
display, as well as implementing the roles, practices and structures typical of
authorised institutions. In this context, institutionalisation can be enabling
rather than restrictive.
Baker and Huber (2013c)
suggest that DIY institutions have cultural, social and affective functions,
all of which are intertwined. Much like national institutions, the DIY
institution’s cultural function is to act as a repository for history – to
collect, preserve, display and provide access to popular music’s heritage.
Through collecting collectively and doing-it-together, DIY institutions can
foster the development of new communities and social bonds. Volunteers, for
instance, can form a sense of collective identity and build friendships based
on these shared interests and practices. This sociality is enabled by the
affective atmosphere of DIY institutions. While national institutions are established
for preservationist and intellectual purposes, DIY institutions are rooted in a
love and respect for the music cultures they document. Volunteers experience
affective connections to the music, the artefacts, the history, the
institution, the work they perform and the other volunteers and visitors they
engage with. Thus, the DIY institution can be a significant source of pleasure
and meaning in their lives, and in turn, their affective investments can enrich
the quality of the DIY institution.
Baker’s work highlights that long-term
sustainability is one of the primary concerns for DIY institutions as they face
a range of financial, spatial and human resource issues. Most of these
institutions rely on inconsistent and impermanent funding sources, including
donations, sponsorships, grants, membership fees and sales from gift shops.
Finding or retaining a suitable space to house the collection can also pose
problems, especially as a collection grows. The most significant issue that
Baker identified, however, is the ageing workforce of volunteers and the
difficulties in succession planning. Without interested younger generations to
take over custodianship of the artefacts, they are at risk of being lost and
forgotten.
DIY institutions play an important role in the preservation of popular
music’s heritage. They have the potential to democratise heritage practices,
often showcasing alternative or marginalised historical narratives. In addition
to this, they are significant for their social and affective elements, which
are often absent from national institutions. Volunteers in DIY institutions, with their affective investments and
vernacular expertise, offer valuable contributions to the collective memory of
popular music cultures.
References
Baker,
Sarah 2015a, ‘Affective Archiving and Collective Collecting in Do-it-Yourself
Popular Music Archives and Museums’, in Sarah Baker (ed), Preserving
Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-Yourself, Do-it-Together, Routledge, New
York, pp. 46–61.
Baker,
Sarah 2015b, ‘Do-it-yourself institutions of popular music heritage: the
preservation of music’s material past in community archives, museums and halls
of fame’, Archives and Records, pp. 1–18.
Baker,
Sarah 2015c, ‘Identifying Do-it-Yourself Places of Popular Music Preservation’,
in Sarah Baker (ed), Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-Yourself,
Do-it-Together, Routledge, New York, pp. 1–16.
Baker,
Sarah and Collins, Jez 2015, ‘Sustaining popular music’s material culture in
community archives and museums’, International Journal of Heritage Studies,
vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 983–996.
Baker,
Sarah, Doyle, Peter and Homan, Shane 2015, ‘Historical Records, National
Constructions: The Contemporary Popular Music Archive’, Popular Music and
Society, pp. 1–20.
Baker,
Sarah and Huber, Alison 2015, ‘Saving “Rubbish”: Preserving Popular Music’s
Material Culture in Amateur Archives and Museums’, in Sara Cohen, Robert
Knifton, Marion Leonard and Les Roberts (eds), Sites of Popular Music
Heritage: Memories, Histories, Places, Routledge, New York, pp. 112–124.
Baker,
Sarah and Huber, Alison 2013a, ‘Locating the canon in Tamworth: historical
narratives, cultural memory and Australia's “Country Music Capital”’, Popular
Music, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 223–240.
Baker,
Sarah and Huber, Alison 2013b, ‘”Masters of our own destiny”: cultures of
preservation at the Victorian Jazz Archive in Melbourne, Australia’, Popular
Music History, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 263–282.
Baker,
Sarah and Huber, Alison 2013c, ‘Notes towards a typology of the DIY
institution: Identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation’, European
Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 513–530.
