"You Can Feel It All Over" - Places of Popular Music Performance in Historical and Contemporary Archaeology
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2018
Popular music production and performance are central to place-based experiences and heritage narrartives, past and present, with cities like New Orleans, Memphis, Liverpool, and Detroit intimately connected with histories of music-making and consumption. Through a focus on popular music legacies and their connections to particular places, people, and musical genres, contributors examine how deeper-rooted musical traditions inspire and counterbalance the fleeting fame of chart-topping music. The papers in this session discuss a variety of archaeological approaches to places, materials, and people associated with legacies of popular music from the 19th century to the recent past. Contributors examine the interplay between material culture and acoustic landscapes to reveal the potential for music-making legacies to address issues of urban well-being, preserve memories of musical heritage, and participate in revitalization efforts, reaching disparate communities in the process.
Other Keywords
Music •
Historic Preservation •
Shrines •
African American •
Landscape •
Stoneware •
Memorialization •
Materiality •
Contemporary Archaeology •
Ruination
Temporal Keywords
20th Century •
19th-20th Centuries •
20th C. •
20th century, Contemporary •
Contemporary/Modern
Geographic Keywords
North America •
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-5 of 5)
- Documents (5)
-
From Brixton to Paisley Park: Tribute shrines to rock legends in the UK and USA (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
On 10th January 2016, many people flocked to Brixton, London to leave tributes in front of a mural depicting Aladdin Sane, a character developed by the musician David Bowie, who had died that day. The same acts of pilgrimage were seen in April 2016 when ‘Prince’ Rogers Nelson died at his private estate in Minnesota; fans laid flowers and tied purple balloons to perimeter fencing. Such practices of public grieving can tell us a good deal about attitudes to death, commemoration and celebrity. In...
-
From Jugs to Jazz: Examining the Role of 19th Century Stoneware in the Rise of African American Jug Bands (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, African American musicians harnessed the acoustic capacities of stoneware jugs in musical groups that came to be known as "jug bands". These bands played tunes on variety of household objects turned instruments, blending African musical styles with experimental rhythms. In many cases, jugs were the centerpiece of these musical ensembles. Jug players produced tuba-like intonations by blowing and vocalizing into their instruments at different angles...
-
The Grande Ballroom, Detroit: Four Decades of Music History in Ruins (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This paper discusses the archaeological and historical survey of the Grande Ballroom, an epicenter of entertainment and socializing for generations of musicians and young adult music fans in Detroit, from the time of its opening as a big band-era dance hall in 1928 until it closed as a rock club in 1972. The Grande lies in ruin today, but archaeology demonstrates how its extant material traces and historical transformations over the course of four decades charts the course of popular music...
-
"It sounds second class, but the music was first class entertainment:" Mapping the Chitlin Circuit. (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Experiencing its heyday between the 1920s - 1960s, the Chitlin Circuit was the route between concert venues for black musicians and entertainers in eastern, southern, and mid-western America. Often located in African-American rural communities and segregated urban neighborhoods performers including Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Gladys Knight, and Little Richard played on the circuit as they began their musical careers. The venues along the route frequently included other elements ranging from...
-
Streets of Royalty: African-American Music and Memorialization in West Baltimore (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Popular music heritage holds a meaningful place in public memory and in the construction of social identities. Sites associated with musical legacies that have significant meaning to a community are often memorialized to emphasize their connection with a particular place. This paper explores the relationship between music, heritage, and placemaking in the historic African-American neighborhood of West Baltimore, where decades of racism, economic decline, and failed urban-renewal plans have...