Open Collections

Triponez, Tristan

University of British Columbia

This dissertation, written from the perspective of archival science, studies the original recordings created in the production of contemporary independent popular music as cultural heritage generally neglected by memory institutions. Inaccessible to the public, such recordings may be demos, live recordings, multitrack and production masters, alternate versions, and more. From a musicology perspective, these materials can be equally insightful as commercially published material. The thesis focuses on how music is produced. Understanding music production is fundamental to addressing not only preservation questions but also issues of representation of popular music in the collective memory. The purpose of this dissertation was to produce an explorative qualitative study, guided by the research question of how the practices of creation and keeping of music recordings by individuals involved in independent popular music production impact the potential long-term preservation of such recordings. The research is designed as a constructivist grounded theory study. Seventeen artists were intensively interviewed. The analysis of the interviews resulted in theoretical concepts grouped in four analytical categories addressing the social and physical environment, the technological environment, the creativity of the process, including the shift to self-producing, and the materiality of its results and creators’ struggles to preserve them. The theoretical conclusion, based on archival analysis, was that the social, technological and material complexity of independent popular music production renders its preservation difficult, resulting in the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of this type of documentary heritage in the collective memory. The dissertation suggests that, pragmatically, a “Community Archives” approach would serve independent popular music well. As these initiatives appear to be rare, diverse approaches to enabling participatory community engagement are considered valuable. It is suggested that archival education and practices needs to foster initiatives based on an increased appreciation of popular culture. Helping preserve popular music as documentary heritage and ensuring its representation in collective memory are regarded as matters of archival deontology.

Text

2024-03-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87644

Library, Archival and Information Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/