Communist Politics of Archives: The Case of the Ethnomusicology Archive at the Institute of Folk Culture in Tirana

Abstract

"Constructive identity strategies articulated by cultural elites and cultural policies, starting with the nationalist movement of the nineteenth century, have instrumentalized tradition to communicate local identities within a multicultural world. This is why reactions in favor of the initiation of cultural policies for the collection and preservation of tradition, such as the archives, have increased with the establishment of these valuable nationalist sectors. In this study I focus on the role and dynamics of the ethnomusicology archive at the Institute of Folk Culture in Tirana between two political epochs: communism and postcommunism. I discuss the politics of culture and the importance of the archive under the communist regime as it made the object of special attention from the government. In this context a reciprocal relation was established, between the archive activities and the state funding for the dissemination of Marxism-Leninism, the national-communist ideology. Ultimately, I depict how the Soviet paradigm and the methodology continued also after the fall of communism, and how some young scholars, ethnologists and ethnomusicologists attempt for a paradigm shift (Roth 2014)."