Marion Leonard

Performing identities: music and dance in the Irishcommunities of Coventry and Liverpool

This article will examine how British-born second- and third-generation Irish people use Irish music and dance in the production of an Irish cultural identity. The article draws on research undertaken with members of the Irish communities in the English cities of Coventry and Liverpool. The research was conducted with music and dance practitioners in Liverpool who strongly identify as Irish and also with schoolchildren in Coventry whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. The paper first explores the comments of the Liverpool respondents and points to how music and dance can offer a space in which different generations can mark out their affiliation or embody their Irishness. Secondly, the paper considers interview work with schoolchildren in Coventry, concentrating on their responses as listeners to Irish traditional music. Their comments point to the capacity of this music to resonate with multiple, even conflicting, productions of Irishness. The comments of all the respondents raise key debates about authenticity and the construction of identity.

Exhibiting Popular Music: Museum Audiences, Inclusion and Social History

Abstract In recent years the relationship between museums and their visitors has been subject to much discussion in relation to debates about the role that these institutions can play in widening participation and tackling social exclusion. Focussing on the display and representation of popular music in UK museums, this article considers the way in which popular music and its related material culture has been displayed, interpreted, valued and mobilized for museum audiences. One particular exhibition, The Beat Goes On, will be examined as a case study through which to explore the issue of popular music and museum audiences in more detail. The article addresses specific issues relating to the representation of music and music culture in the museum context. It explores how social history is constructed by museum professionals and how visitors interpret the material within an exhibition drawing on personal and collective memory. On the one hand, the case study exhibition sought to reflect the ways in which people engage with and experience popular music. On the other hand, the exhibition was necessarily informed by existing research about how visitors negotiate exhibition content and gallery spaces. Drawing on visitor feedback, gallery observation visits and formal evaluation, the article will examine the challenges of effectively communicating concepts and themes around music within an exhibition.

Staging the Beatles: ephemerality, materiality and the production of authenticity in the museum

This article examines how popular music and its material culture have been exhibited within museums. More specifically, it is concerned with how decision-making and processes within museums impact on how materials are interpreted and presented to museum visitors. The article uses one central case study relating to a highly mythologised moment within popular music history, claimed as the starting point of the Beatles. On 6 July 1957, John Lennon, member of the Quarrymen, was introduced to Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church fete in Liverpool. Consideration will be given to how the church stage on which the Quarrymen played, along with a sound recording of their performance, have been presented within displays by National Museums Liverpool. Drawing on interviews with staff, the article will discuss how the curatorial and conservation treatment of the stage aimed to intensify its connection to a moment in history. It will also discuss to what extent a sound recording can capture and communicate the ‘presentness’ of a musical performance. The article raises a number of issues concerned with the production of authenticity, the ‘reliability’ of material evidence, and the extent to which sound recordings and material culture can enable museums to represence the past.

A musical nation: protection, investment and branding in the Irish music industry

In 2001 the Music Board of Ireland (MBI) was established by the Republic of Ireland’s Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sı́le de Valera. Made up of a number of prominent figures involved in music within Ireland, the board was established to act as a champion for Ireland’s music industry with a brief to assist in the development of the music sector and to work towards policies to increase its contribution to the national economy. The establishment of this board is, in many ways, a realisation of a longstanding dialogue between the Irish music industry and the national government aiming towards the establishment of a national music policy. This essay traces this process over a ten-year period from the early 1990s whilst considering the ways in which policy arguments have often centred on issues related not only to economic growth but also to national identity and cultural heritage. The following discussion suggests that the policy process has been subject to an uneven trajectory that has been affected both by macro-political developments and an underlying difficulty in integrating the music industry into established government business support initiatives due to its sectoral specificity. Finally, the article assesses the differing levels of success enjoyed by the music industry lobby pertaining to individual policy areas.

Introduction: Special Issue on Popular Music and Heritage

Marion Leonard and Robert Knifton present the special issue of Popular Music History on Popular Music and Heritage.

The “Lord Mayor of Beatle-land”: Popular Music, Local Government, and the Promotion of Place in 1960s Liverpool

This article offers an analysis of the relationship between city government institutions and popular music through an examination of the discourses, attitudes, and actions of Liverpools city officials in relation to the Beatles. Focusing on the mid-1960s it presents the first academic analysis of a substantial archive of original correspondence relating to the Beatles which was sent and received by the Lord Mayors Office in Liverpool. Drawing on this material, it discusses the relationship between popular music and city strategy at a time when institutional thinking about such relations was utterly unformed or embryonic at best. Capturing a particular moment within the social and cultural life of Liverpool, the archive reveals how some city officials and local citizens were registering a nascent realization of the role that popular music could play in a reimagining of the city.