Remembering Popular Music’s Past

A study of the role of memory and history in the transformation of popular music into heritage

'Remembering Popular Music's Past' focuses on the transformation of popular music into heritage, and the role of history and memory in this process. The book interrogates diverse examples of the way popular music's past is remembered, with particular emphasis on precarity in the construction, curation, display, negotiation, and perception of popular music's past.

Remembering Popular Music’s Past capitalizes on the growing interest, globally, in the preservation of popular music’s material past and on scholarly explorations of the ways in which popular music, as heritage, is produced, legitimized and conferred cultural and historical significance. The chapters in this collection consider the spaces, practices and representations that constitute popular music heritage to elucidate how popular music’s past is lived in the present. Thus the focus is on the transformation of popular music into heritage, and the role of history and memory in this process. The cultural studies framework adopted in Remembering Popular Music’s Past encompasses unique approaches to popular music historiography, sociology, film analysis, and archival and museal work. Broadly, the collection deals with the precarious nature of popular music heritage, history and memory.