Music as Heritage: Performing, Sharing and Preserving Cultural Value
Musicology and ethnomusicology have predominantly studied music cultures’ relationship to their pasts through the lens of tradition. The 6th Joint Graduate Student Music Conference
(University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill / King’s College London) asks what we can gain by shifting our focus to the concept of heritage. This framework prompts us to study how music is imagined as a cultural good. How is musical heritage instrumentalised and monetised? How is its ownership contested and in what ways does sharing heritage constitute communities?
Heritage also raises questions of construction, destruction, and preservation. Is heritage invented and for whom? What role does heritage play in creative processes such as performance and composition? How can musicologists, composers, and performers challenge conceptualisations of heritage? What are the forces that have demolished musical heritage and how has it been protected? And what are the technical, economic, and ethical challenges facing current preservation projects, of both material and immaterial musical cultures (such as UNESCO’s ‘intangible cultural heritage’)?
As part of the strategic alliance between UNC and KCL, the graduate student music conference is an excellent opportunity for Masters and PhD students to present their research, meet other graduate students, and to develop professional acquaintances with researchers at leading institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Conference admission is free but registration is required. Please register for the conference by sending an email to lisa-maria.brusius[at]kcl.ac.uk.