Unauthorising popular music heritage: outline of a critical framework

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to set out a critical and analytical framework with which to explore the ways in which popular music heritage in the UK (or in England more specifically) is variously understood, discussed, critiqued, practised or performed. Developed as part of a large-scale European project examining popular music, cultural heritage and cultural memory, our analysis is based on qualitative studies of popular music heritage discourses that reflect a broad cross section of sectors, institutions and industries. Adapting Smith’s concept of authorised heritage discourse, we propose a three-way analytical framework that theoretically and methodologically foregrounds those practices and processes of authorisation that variously ascribe music heritage discourses with value, legitimacy and social and cultural capital. Focusing our discussion on the example of music heritage plaques, we identify three categories of heritage discourse: (1) official authorised popular music heritage, (2) self-authorised popular music heritage and (3) unauthorised popular music heritage. The arguments developed in the final section of the paper in relation to unauthorised music heritage are presented as a critical point of orientation – heritage-as-praxis – that works in dialectical opposition to authorised heritage, or what we have more loosely termed ‘big H’ heritage.