This article examines the relationship between popular music, memory and cultural identity. It draws upon narrative approaches to memory and identity in order to explore how engagement with music from the past can both afford and constrain identity construction. On the basis of in-depth interviews with, among others, heritage practitioners and audience members, I discuss how practices in the cultural and heritage industries affect the way in which popular music’s past is narrated. Although those narratives offer a sense of belonging and identity through their connection to experiences of time and place, there are also factors that compromise this potential. The article discusses limits to the accuracy of memories and impediments to representations of local diversity. Furthermore, I argue that copyright regulation affects which stories about popular music’s past can be told.
BagnallG (2003) Performance and performativity at heritage sites. Museum and Society1(2): 87–103.
2.
BakerSHuberA (2013) Notes towards a typology of the DIY institution: Identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation. European Journal of Cultural Studies16(5): 513–530.
3.
BennettA (2009) ‘Heritage rock’: Rock music, representation and heritage discourse. Poetics37(5–6): 474–489.
4.
BielbyWTBielbyDD (1994) ‘All hits are flukes’: Institutionalized decision making and the rhetoric of network prime-time program development. American Journal of Sociology99(5): 1287–1313.
5.
BourdonJ (2003) Some sense of time: Remembering television. History & Memory15(2): 5–35.
6.
BourdonJ (2011) Media remembering: The contributions of life-story methodology to memory/media research. In: NeigerMMeyersOZandbergE (eds) On Media Memory Collective Memory in a New Media Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.62–73.
7.
BoymS (2001) The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
8.
BrandelleroAJanssenS (2014) Popular music as cultural heritage: Scoping out the field of practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies20(3): 224–240.
9.
BrandelleroAJanssenSCohenSRobertsL (2014) Popular music heritage, cultural memory and cultural identity. International Journal of Heritage Studies20(3): 219–223.
10.
BrockmeierJ (2002) Remembering and forgetting: Narrative as cultural memory. Culture & Psychology8(1): 15–43.
11.
BrockmeierJ (2010) After the archive: Remapping memory. Culture & Psychology16(1): 5–35.
12.
BrockmeierJCarbaughD (2001) Introduction. In: BrockmeierJCarbaughD (eds) Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, pp.1–22.
13.
BrunerJ (1991) The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry18(1): 1–21.
14.
CohenS (2013) Musical memory, heritage and local identity: Remembering the popular music past in a European Capital of Culture. International Journal of Cultural Policy19(5): 576–594.
15.
CollinsJCarterO (2015) ‘They’re not pirates, they’re archivists’: The role of fans as curators and archivists of popular music heritage. In: BakerS (ed.) Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-It- Yourself, Do-It-Together. London: Routledge, pp.126–138.
16.
CouldryN (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism. London: Sage.
17.
DavisF (1979) Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: Free Press.
18.
DeNoraT (1999) Music as a technology of the self. Poetics27(1): 31–56.
19.
FinneganR (1997) Storying the self: Personal narratives and identity. In: MackayH (ed.) Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Sage, pp.65–104.
20.
FrithS (1996) Music and identity. In: HallSDu GayP (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage, pp.108–126.
21.
GainesJ (1991) Contested Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
22.
GuesdonMLe GuernP (2014) Retromania: Crisis of the progressive ideal and pop music spectrality. In: NiemeyerK (ed) Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.70–80.
23.
HalnonKB (2005) Alienation incorporated: ‘F*** the mainstream music’ in the mainstream. Current Sociology53(3): 441–464.
24.
HayesD (2006) ‘Take those old records off the shelf’: Youth and music consumption in the postmodern age. Popular Music and Society29(1): 51–68.
25.
HesmondhalghD (1999) Indie: The institutional politics and aesthetics of a popular music genre. Cultural studies13(1): 34–61.
26.
HesmondhalghD (2008) Towards a critical understanding of music, emotion and self- identity. Consumption, Markets and Culture11(4): 329–343.
27.
HesmondhalghD (2013a) The Cultural Industries. London: Sage.
28.
HesmondhalghD (2013b) Why Music Matters. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
29.
HolbrookMBSchindlerRM (1989) Some exploratory findings on the development of musical tastes. The Journal of Consumer Research16(1): 119–124.
30.
KhabraG (2014) Music in the margins? Popular music heritage and British Bhangra music. International Journal of Heritage Studies20(3): 343–355.
31.
KrausW (2006) The narrative negotiation of identity and belonging. Narrative Inquiry16(1): 103–111.
32.
LarsenLONærlandTU (2010) Documentary in a culture of clearance: A study of knowledge of and attitudes toward copyright and fair use among Norwegian documentary makers. Popular Communication8(1): 46–60.
33.
LeaverDSchmidtR (2010) Together through life, an exploration of popular music heritage and the quest for re-enchantment. Creative Industries Journal3(2): 107–124.
34.
LeonardM (2010) Exhibiting popular music: Museum audiences, inclusion and social history. Journal of New Music Research39(2): 171–181.
35.
LongPWallT (2010) Constructing the histories of popular music: The Britannia series. In: InglisI (ed.) Popular Music and Television in Britain. Farnham: Ashgate, pp.11–26.
36.
MasseyD (2005) For Space. London: Sage.
37.
MisztalB (2003) Theories of Social Remembering. Buckingham: Open University Press.
38.
NegusK (2012) Narrative time and the popular song. Popular Music and Society35(4): 483–500.
39.
NeigerMMeyersOZandbergE (2011) Tuned to the nation’s mood: Popular music as a mnemonic cultural object. Media, Culture & Society33(7): 971–987.
40.
NelsonK (2003) Self and social functions: Individual autobiographical memory and collective narrative. Memory11(2): 125–136.
41.
OlickJK (1999) Collective memory: The two cultures. Sociological Theory17(3): 333–348.
42.
PickeringMKeightleyE (2006) The modalities of nostalgia. Current Sociology54(6): 919–940.
43.
RedfernN (2005) ‘We do things differently here’: Manchester as a cultural region in 24 hour party people. Entertext5(2): 286–306.
44.
ReynoldsS (2011) Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber.
45.
RobertsL (2014) Talkin bout my generation: Popular music and the culture of heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies20(3): 262–280.
46.
RoweSMWertschJVKosyaevaTY (2002) Linking little narratives to big ones: Narrative and public memory in history museums. Culture & Psychology8(1): 96–112.
47.
SmithL (2006) The Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge.
48.
SomersMR (1994) The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society23(5): 605–649.
49.
StrawsonG (2004) Against narrativity. Ratio17(4): 428–452.
50.
Van der HoevenA (2012) The popular music heritage of the Dutch pirates: illegal radio and cultural identity. Media, Culture & Society34(8): 927–943.
51.
Van der HoevenA (2014) Remembering the popular music of the 1990s: dance music and the cultural meanings of decade-based nostalgia. International Journal of Heritage Studies20(3): 316–330.
52.
Van der HoevenA (2015) Remembering the 1960s: popular music and memory in Europe. International Journal of Cultural Policy21(3): 258–272.
53.
Van der HoevenABrandelleroA (2015) Places of popular music heritage: The local framing of a global cultural form in Dutch museums and archives. Poetics51: 37–53.
54.
Van DijckJ (2006) Record and hold: Popular music between personal and collective memory. Critical Studies in Media Communication23(5): 357–374.
55.
WallT (2003) Studying Popular Music Culture. London: Arnold.
56.
WertschJV (2000) Narratives as cultural tools in sociocultural analysis: Official history in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. Ethos28(4): 511–533.
57.
WertschJV (2002) Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
58.
WertschJV (2011) Beyond the archival model of memory and the affordances and constraints of narratives. Culture & Psychology17(1): 21–29.
