Scripting heritage: broadcasting California's Cornish Christmas carols

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the capacity of radio to develop heritage narratives around migrant musical cultures in their new homelands. It focuses on two series of national radio broadcasts of Cornish Christmas carols made in the 1940s by a carol choir based in Grass Valley, California. Combining a close reading of the surviving scripts and recordings of these broadcasts with archival research, it examines how the choir (historically comprised of Cornish migrants), and their carols were portrayed to American listeners. Utilising Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's theorisation of heritage as a ‘value added’ process, it shows that the radio scripts developed particular values around the musical material and performers that became very important for local perspectives of the tradition, and eventually permeated scholarly perceptions of the choir and its repertoire. The article thus addresses how a specific migrant music culture was recoded for an American radio audience, and explores how radio dissemination may reposition migrant musics and identities within new socio-cultural contexts.