engleski

Music as heritage: On do-it-yourself curators, culture bearers, and ethnomusicologists in the context of experience economy, liquid governance, and other facets of late modernity

After many years of my involvement as an expert, facilitator and researcher in the UNESCO-led programme of safeguarding ICH, this talk will discuss the programme by focusing on culture bearers, who are supposedly its central actors, and comparatively by focusing on do-it-yourself curators in the realm of popular music heritage. Their comparison can help to discern more clearly the overall purposes of the heritagization processes. Both realms can be described as symptoms and, in part, a homeopathic remedy for liquid modernity theorized by Zygmunt Bauman, especially in terms of exercising new, liquid forms of governance, as well as of voluntary labour, and social cohabitation (if not bonding) built in a bottom-up fashion. By raising awareness and visibility of authorized heritage elements, the ICH programme helps their ability to partake in experience economy, especially tourism, and to serve as a shelter in the recurring times of trouble (that is, to effectuate their role in much-desired sustainable development). The realm of popular music heritage, on the other hand, brings into fore a more personal memory work, a preservationist impulse directed to tangible aural and extra-aural objects, and an innate human need to leave a trace in infinity. This also has to do with performative power of music to connect the past and the present, to bring communities into being, even if only transitory, and to transgress boundaries. Not enough attention is given to music as a specific domain of ICH. It is up to music scholars to minutely describe why and how music may serve as a guide for other domains of ICH thanks to its long-lasting use in community building, national representation, revival, festivalization, appropriation, professionalization, commercialization, spactacularization, etc. The act of declaring reggae music the representative heritage of humanity (in 2018) will serve as an exemplary case bringing together different aspects of heritagization. As for the role of ethnomusicologists, the ICH programme convincingly signals its transformation in the context of liquid modernity, same as in the case of scholars in general, towards facilitating the processes and implementing expertise when requested, combined with close partnership with communities concerned that is in tune with ethical demand for the decolonization of the discipline. However, an another set of merits may be taken to be suggested by do-it-yourself curators and researchers of historical commercial recordings: the ethnomusicologists’ gradual excelling in knowledge about different – and ideally all – facets of the actual subject under study, the use of puzzle- solving methodology in data analysis and interpretation, and the overall dedication to and playfulness in work leading to relatively complete results. Such groups could also be taken as potential partners in the pursuit of decolonizing the discipline from within, as well as in response to the traps set by the more powerful players of liquid modernity.

music ; heritage ; do-it-yourself curators ; culture bearers ; ethnomusicologists ; experience economy ; liquid governance

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