Forgotten, Manipulated, Created: Archiving Cornish Music

Hagmann, Lea (17 September 2021). Forgotten, Manipulated, Created: Archiving Cornish Music (Unpublished). In: EthnomusicologyandIntangibleCulturalHeritage inthe21stCentur. Valladolid, Spain. 13.–18. September 2021.

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With Kresen Kernow (the largest combined archive of Cornish records and documents) opening in 2019, as well as the recent completion of three PhD theses on music in Cornwall and music in the Cornish diaspora (2011, 2017, 2018), there is growing momentum behind the development of a dedicated archive of Cornish music. The current incarnation of this ambition is built on the holdings of the now defunct Cornish Music Guild (a charitable organisation that collected and researched Cornish music), which were recovered by a group of researchers and musicians from uncatalogued storage in 2015. This collection is now held by Kresen Kernow as the Cornish Music Archive.

The aim of the Cornish Music Archive’s initiators is to build upon this foundation by digitising the current contents, and continuing to collect material, eventually making them freely accessible for researchers and musicians. However, given Cornwall’s complex and contested constitutional and political situation within the UK, its strong identity as a Celtic nation, and the aim of some cultural ambassadors to present Cornish music as separate and distinctive from other British music styles, many questions remain regarding the archive’s remit.

In this joint paper, the authors reflect on the background of this project, and explore a number of questions regarding its future, including: why is there a need for an archive of Cornish music? Is calling it a Cornish National Music Archive problematic? What range of musical genres could – or should – be included? Who should be involved with this archive? How should newly-composed Cornish tunes and songs of various styles be treated, given their prominent role in contemporary musical representations of Cornish identity? This exploratory paper is proposed with the suggestion of an extended discussion section to enable debate regarding the identification, preservation – and potentially creation – of Cornish music as intangible cultural heritage.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Division/Institute:	12 Faculty Centers > Center for Cultural Studies (CCS) 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Musicology
UniBE Contributor:	Hagmann, Lea Salome
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 390 Customs, etiquette & folklore 700 Arts > 780 Music
Language:	English
Submitter:	Lea Salome Hagmann
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2022 08:04
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 16:11
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Cornwall Revival Cornish music archive
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/166275