The lost musical histories of Merthyr Tydfil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39561Keywords:
music curation, local music history, popular music memoryAbstract
This article focuses on an analysis of a one-month local music exhibition curated in 2018 and anearlier connected project which was implemented as part of the annual Being Human Festival,funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. Although the MerthyrTydfil-based exhibition could be regarded as following in the footsteps of a tried and testedmethod of curating and exhibiting popular music narratives in public spaces, the week-long BeingHuman activities used memory collection and enactment activities to both depict and help understandhow local popular music histories can resonate not only with the participants who witnessedthem, but also a younger generation who were not born when the activities took place. Based onthe data compiled from both of these activities, the article initially presents an historical accountof the development of popular music in Merthyr Tydfil between 1955 and 1975. It subsequentlyproceeds to consider the potential impacts that undertakings such as exhibitions, memory collection,online communities and re-enactment activities can have on local communities.
References
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Finnegan, Ruth. 1989. The Hidden Musicians. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Lewis, Lisa. 2018. Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Lipsitz, George. 2007. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
MacLeod, Bruce. 1993. Club Date Musicians. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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Millard, Andre. 2004. The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Morris, Ronald. 2012. History and Imagination: Reenactments for Elementary Social Studies. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
Nora, Pierre, and Arthur Goldhammer. 1996. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1 Conflicts and Divisions. New York: Columbia University Press.
Perrenoud, Marc, and Geraldine Bois. 2017. ‘Ordinary Artists: From Paradox to Paradigm: Variations on a Concept and its Outcomes’. Symbolic Goods 1/1: 2–26.
Pickering, Michael, and Emily Keightley. 2015. Photography, Music and Memory: Pieces of the Past in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137441218_6
Power, Martin. 2014. Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck. London: Omnibus Press.
Ryan, John, and Richard Peterson. 2001. ‘The Guitar as Artefact and Icon: Identity Formation in the Babyboom Generation’. In Guitar Cultures, ed. Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, 89–116. Oxford: Berg.
Sarup, Madan. 1993. An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Schulkind, Matthew D. 2009. ‘Is Memory for Music Special?’ In The Neurosciences and Music III: Disorders and Plasticity, ed. S. D. Bella et al., 216–24. New York: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04546.x
Schwartz, Roberta F. 2007. How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Shelemay, Kay, K. 2006. ‘Music, Memory and History’. Ethnomusicology Forum 15/1: 17–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411910600634221
Stern, Barbara, B. 1992. ‘Historical and Personal Nostalgia in Advertising Text: The Fin de Siècle Effect’. Journal of Advertising XXI/4: 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1992.10673382
Tumblety, Joan. 2013. Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203552490
Waksman, Steve. 2001. Instruments of Desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wall, Tom. 2013. Studying Popular Music Culture. London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526401960
Weedon, Bert. 1957. Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day Guide to Modern Guitar Playing. London: Chappel Music Ltd.
Williams, Huw. 2017. ‘Ars Gratia Artis: Popular Culture and the Making of Modern Merthyr Tydfil’. In Merthyr Historian, vol. 28, ed. Christine Trevett and Huw Williams, 9–69. Merthyr Tydfil: Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society.
Bacon, Tony. 2018. ‘The British Guitar Embargo: When Brits were Banned from Buying American’. Reverb. https://reverb.com/uk/news/the-british-guitar-embargo-when-brits-were-banned-from-buying-american (accessed 11 October 2018).
Baker, Sarah. 2018. Community Custodians of Popular Music’s Past: A DIY Approach to Heritage. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315659923
Barnes, Renee. 2018. Uncovering Online Commenting Culture: Trolls, Fanboys and Lurkers. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70235-3
Barrett, Fredrick S., Kevin J. Grimm and Richard W. Robins. 2010. ‘Music-Evoked Nostalgia: Effect, Memory, and Personality’. Emotion 10/30: 390–403. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019006
Barry, Sion. 2018. ‘Plans for £50m World Leading Industrial Heritage Centre in Merthyr Revealed’. Wales Online. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/plans-50m-world-leading-industrial-14631053 (accessed 28 July 2019).
Bennett, Andy, and Kevin Dawe. 2001. Guitar Cultures. Oxford: Berg.
Bennett, Andy, and Ian Rogers. 2016. Popular Music Scenes and Cultural Memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40204-2
Brennan, Matt. 2017. When Genres Collide: Down Beat, Rolling Stone, and the Struggle between Jazz and Rock. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501319051
Brocken, Michael. 2010. Other Voices: Hidden Histories of Liverpool’s Popular Music Scenes, 1930s–1970s. London: Routledge.
Childs, Marti, and Jeff March. 2016. Where Have All the Pop Stars Gone? Volume 3. New York: EditPros LLC.
Collins, Michael. 2004. The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class. London: Granta Books.
Daniels, Mark L. 2010. ‘A Living History Classroom Using Re-Enactment to Enhance Learning’. Social Education 74/3: 135–36.
DeNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489433
Dijck, José van. 2008. ‘Record and Hold: Popular Music between Personal and Collective Memory’. Critical Studies in Media Production 23/5: 357–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180601046121
England, Joe. 2017. Merthyr: The Crucible of Modern Wales. Cardigan: Parthian Books.
Finnegan, Ruth. 1989. The Hidden Musicians. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Frith, Simon, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan and Emma Webster. 2013. The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950–1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club. Abingdon on Thames: Routledge.
Higgins, Lee. 2012. Community Music in Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hoeven, A. van der (2018). ‘Narratives of Popular Music Heritage and Cultural Identity: The Affordances and Constraints of Popular Music Memories’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 21(2): 207–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549415609328
Hunter, Dave. 2013. The Fender Stratocaster: The Life and Times of the World’s Greatest Guitar. St. Paul, MN: Voyageur.
James, Wyn E. 2017. ‘“In Merthyr on a Saturday Night”: The Ballads and Balladeers of Glamorgan’. In Street Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century: Producers, Sellers, Consumers, ed. D. Atkinson and S. Roud, 194–216. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Janata, Petr, Stefan T. Tomic and Sonja K. Rakowksi. 2007. ‘Characterisation of Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories’. Memory 15/8: 845–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658210701734593
Kuhn, Annette, and Kirsten McAllister. 2006. Locating Memory: Photographic Acts. New York City: Berghahn Books.
Laing, Dave. 2009. ‘Six Boys, Six Beatles: the Formative Years, 1950–1962’. In The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles, ed. K. Womack, 9–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521869652.003
Leigh, Spencer. 2012. The Beatles in Liverpool: The Stories, the Scene and the Path to Stardom. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.
Levitin, Daniel J. 2006. This is Your Brain and Music. London: Atlantic Books.
Lewis, Lisa. 2018. Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Lipsitz, George. 2007. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
MacLeod, Bruce. 1993. Club Date Musicians. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Maume, Chris. 2012. Bert Weedon: Musician whose ‘Play in a Day’ Manuals Inspired Generations of Guitarists. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bert-weedon-musician-whose-play-in-a-day-manuals-inspired-generations-of-guitarists-7665827.html (accessed 28 July 2019).
Merthyr Tydfil Library Service. 2001. Valley Lives: Book 3, Music and Musicians of the Merthyr Tydfil Valley. Merthyr Tydfil Library Service.
Millard, Andre. 2004. The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Morris, Ronald. 2012. History and Imagination: Reenactments for Elementary Social Studies. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
Nora, Pierre, and Arthur Goldhammer. 1996. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1 Conflicts and Divisions. New York: Columbia University Press.
Perrenoud, Marc, and Geraldine Bois. 2017. ‘Ordinary Artists: From Paradox to Paradigm: Variations on a Concept and its Outcomes’. Symbolic Goods 1/1: 2–26.
Pickering, Michael, and Emily Keightley. 2015. Photography, Music and Memory: Pieces of the Past in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137441218_6
Power, Martin. 2014. Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck. London: Omnibus Press.
Ryan, John, and Richard Peterson. 2001. ‘The Guitar as Artefact and Icon: Identity Formation in the Babyboom Generation’. In Guitar Cultures, ed. Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, 89–116. Oxford: Berg.
Sarup, Madan. 1993. An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Schulkind, Matthew D. 2009. ‘Is Memory for Music Special?’ In The Neurosciences and Music III: Disorders and Plasticity, ed. S. D. Bella et al., 216–24. New York: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04546.x
Schwartz, Roberta F. 2007. How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Style in the United Kingdom. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Shelemay, Kay, K. 2006. ‘Music, Memory and History’. Ethnomusicology Forum 15/1: 17–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411910600634221
Stern, Barbara, B. 1992. ‘Historical and Personal Nostalgia in Advertising Text: The Fin de Siècle Effect’. Journal of Advertising XXI/4: 11–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1992.10673382
Tumblety, Joan. 2013. Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203552490
Waksman, Steve. 2001. Instruments of Desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wall, Tom. 2013. Studying Popular Music Culture. London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526401960
Weedon, Bert. 1957. Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day Guide to Modern Guitar Playing. London: Chappel Music Ltd.
Williams, Huw. 2017. ‘Ars Gratia Artis: Popular Culture and the Making of Modern Merthyr Tydfil’. In Merthyr Historian, vol. 28, ed. Christine Trevett and Huw Williams, 9–69. Merthyr Tydfil: Merthyr Tydfil Historical Society.
Published
2020-01-24
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Carr, P. (2020). The lost musical histories of Merthyr Tydfil. Popular Music History, 12(1), 112-140. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.39561
