Cultural identity, community, and collective memory in post-industrial South Wales: Investigating the role of shared musical experiences

该项目将研究是否以及如何共享音乐体验影响后工业南威尔士州的文化身份，社区和集体记忆的想法。尽管人们对流行音乐遗产及其与文化身份的关系越来越感兴趣（Cohen et al. 2015），但南威尔士城镇居民的日常音乐生活在音乐学文献中却被忽视了。这一遗漏意味着这一人群的文化音乐身份被低估了。因此，关于如何使这一人口群体进一步参与艺术和威尔士文化遗产的问题，几乎没有提供什么见解。该项目旨在纠正这种不平衡。汇集流行音乐研究，社区研究和文化社会学的最新趋势，这种跨学科的研究将有助于流行音乐遗产的新兴领域，并提供一个新的视角，威尔士身份的文化研究。在强调代表性不足的人口的声音和生活经验，这个项目的目的是重新评估在全球化的世界区域的过去和未来，并认为许多不同的经验，构成“作为威尔士人。与权力下放后坚持公民威尔士身份（布鲁克斯2009）相反，研究表明威尔士继续被“等级制国家”所分割-一些地区被认为比其他地区更“威尔士”（埃文斯2019）。虽然威尔士人的身份被认为具有强烈的地方归属感和对地方的依恋（2010年第一天），这种“威尔士性”的本质是有争议的，可以根据地点、地区和地方的生活体验进行不同的构建。音乐可以在人们定义与当地的关系方面发挥重要作用，日常环境（Whitelely et al. 2004），作为“社区、归属和共同过去的标志”（刘易斯，1992，144）。尽管目前音乐学者对文化身份和遗产的关注（Cohen et al.2015，Brandellero et al.2014），威尔士音乐的研究要么集中在卡迪夫等城市的城市“场景”上（科茨2012），或对“传统”音乐制作和威尔士语流行（Jones 2015; Hill 2007），强化了一些地方或地区比其他地方更“民族”的流行话语（Edensor 2002）。这个项目将探索角色本地音乐体验在身份建构中的作用，并以特定的空间和文化为重点：英语，后工业化的南威尔士社区，Balsom（1985）称之为“威尔士威尔士”。“虽然“威尔士威尔士”一直是许多社会科学研究的焦点，但它显然被排除在音乐研究之外，对这一人口群体的日常音乐生活的民族志研究是不够的。该节日是世界上最大的猫王主题活动，每年在后工业化海滨小镇波斯考尔举行，吸引的游客超过了孟菲斯猫王周，2018年有3. 5万人参加（BBC 2018）。尽管如此，它被其组织者描述为一个“非常威尔士的事件”，特别是得到山谷的大力支持（BBC 2018）-一个“工人阶级的廉价食品”（Minhinnick 2012）。地点是这个“威尔士”活动的核心; Porthcawl以其“矿工两周”而闻名，对二十世纪南威尔士工人阶级的休闲活动至关重要（Pincombe 2011）。因此，这个节日被束缚在怀旧的话语中，这些话语被特别地置于集体记忆中，提出了关于音乐、威尔士和地方之间关系的复杂问题。

This project will examine if and how shared musical experiences affect ideas of cultural identity, community, and collective memory in post-industrial South Wales. Despite burgeoning interest in popular music heritage and its relationship withcultural identity (Cohen et al. 2015), the everyday musical lives of people in the towns of South Wales have been overlooked in musicological literature. This omission means that the cultural-musical identities of this population areunderrepresented. As such, little insight has been provided on how to engage further this demographic's participation with the arts and Welsh cultural heritage. This project aims to redress this imbalance. Drawing together recent trends in popular music studies, community studies and cultural sociology, this interdisciplinary research will contribute to the emerging field of popular music heritage and offer a new perspective to cultural studies of Welsh identity. In emphasising the voices and lived experiences of an underrepresented demographic, this project aims to re-evaluate regional pasts and futures in a globalised world and considers the many diverse experiences that constitute "being Welsh."In contrast to post-devolution insistence on a civic Welsh identity (Brooks 2009), research suggests Wales continues to be divided by "hierarchical nationhood"-thatsome regions are perceived to be more "Welsh" than others (Evans 2019). Although Welsh identity is regarded as having a strong sense of local belonging and attachment to place (Day 2010), the nature of this "Welshness" is contested and can be constructed differently depending on locality, region, and a lived experience of place.Music can play an important role in the way people define their relationship to local, everyday surroundings (Whitelely et al. 2004), as "signs of community, belonging and a shared past" (Lewis 1992, 144). Despite the current attentiveness of music scholars to cultural identity and heritage (Cohen et al. 2015, Brandellero et al. 2014), studies of Welsh music have either focused on the urban "scenes" of cities such as Cardiff (Coates 2012), or on "traditional" music-making and Welsh-language pop (Jones 2015; Hill 2007), reinforcing the popular discourse that some places or regions are more "national" than others (Edensor 2002). This project will explore the rolelocal music experiences play in identity construction with a specific spatial and cultural focus: the English-speaking, post-industrial South Wales communities, what Balsom (1985) terms "Welsh Wales." Whilst "Welsh Wales" has been the focus of much social science research, it is noticeably excluded from music studies, and ethnographic research on the everyday musical lives of this demographic is insufficient.One such event this project will explore is the Porthcawl Elvis Festival. The festival, the largest Elvis- themed event in the world, takes place annually in the post- industrial seaside town of Porthcawl and attracts more visitors than Memphis Elvis Week, with 35,000 attending in 2018 (BBC 2018). Despite this, it is described by its organiser as a "very Welsh event" that is particularly well-supported by the Valleys (BBC 2018)-a "working-class Eisteddfod" (Minhinnick 2012). Place lies at the core of this "Welsh" event's identity; Porthcawl was renowned for its "miners' fortnight" and was vital to the leisure activities of the South Wales working classes in thetwentieth century (Pincombe 2011). As such, the festival is bound in discourses of nostalgia which are specifically placed within collective memory, raising complex questions about the relationship between music, Welshness and place.