Interest in archival materials remains a compelling topic of research within ethnomusicology and music studies more broadly (Gunderson and Woods Reference Gunderson, Woods, Gunderson, Lancefield and Woods2019; Kummels and Cánepa Reference Kummels and Cánepa2023). Music, Dance, and the Archive makes significant new contributions to understanding the broader cultural and artistic potential embedded within archival resources. Importantly, the edited volume shifts the focus from the materials to instead focus on experiences beyond archival contexts, such as in new performances, ceremony, exhibitions, and artistic projects. In the eight case studies within the book, archival resources are often an inflection point for new emerging projects, experiences, and revelations. A key feature of this volume is the focus on archival initiatives led by Indigenous artists and scholars with ancestral connections to the historical resources studied. Readers will find that Music, Dance, and the Archive offers new critical and innovative creative work with archival collections, and that the book carries forward our understandings of historical materials into new fascinating directions.
In the introductory chapter, editors Amanda Harris, Linda Barwick, and Jakelin Troy present an overview of the book’s concerns and the origins of the project. As they describe in the preface, the volume is a result of a four-year, Australian-funded, group collaboration called “Reclaiming Performance under Assimilation in Southeastern Australia, 1935–75.” The project involved new research built upon “creative methods of recuperation and reconnection” (xiii), with some of the resulting projects presented in the book’s chapters. The authors helpfully frame the discussion of “ephemeral forms” beyond the limits presented by archives, and in doing so they turn to “collaborative and creative research that explores relationships between people and their material and ephemeral culture” (1). Three major themes explored in the introduction are also threaded throughout the book’s chapters: the importance of collaborative practices, understanding the obscured meaning that may come from “written and archived renderings of ephemeral culture,” and the process and layers of collaboration involved in presentation and exhibition (1). While a focus on Indigenous Australian cultures and materials covers four of the volume’s chapters (and the introduction), other chapters offer a wider focus, including of Māori, Haudenosaunee, and Indigenous Taiwanese perspectives. Moreover, the chapters engage with a range of archival sources, including audio, visual, material, and written records. The full volume presents a diverse variety of global research perspectives on the meaning and contestation of archival objects.
The four chapters focused on Indigenous Australian perspectives offer insightful case studies of the meaning and potential of historical materials in the present. In chapter 2 Reuben Brown and Solomon Nangamu explore practices of manyardi in Western Arnhem Land, how they are remembered, and the importance of archival connections to place and people. In chapter 4 Genevieve Campbell, Jacinta Tipungwuti, Amanda Harris, and Matt Poll examine a range of historical resources that extend from the Tiwi Islands. In chapter 6, Clint Bracknell, in collaboration with Gina Williams, draws connections between archives and new performances in Nyungar song revitalisations, while in chapter 9 Jodie Kell and Cindy Jinmarabybana investigate the Arnhem Land song “Diyama” through different interpretation and accounts across time. The case studies of these four chapters suggest an abiding interest in historical music and dance materials within communities and for individual performers.
Among chapters with a broader geo-cultural focus, two chapters engage with Indigenous Māori practices. In chapter 3, Jack Gray and Jacqueline Shea Murphy present a vivid and engaging dialogue about Gray’s choreography related to his ancestral house, Ruatepupuke, now held in the Chicago Field Museum. This is a compelling chapter that brings together concerns of material and intangible culture, anchored by Gray’s thoughtful reflections. In chapter 7, Marianne Schultz presents a second chapter with a focus from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work explores the two singers Princess Iwa and Bathie Stuart and their early-twentieth-century touring performances. In chapter 5, Rosy Simas writes from a Haudenosaunee perspective focused on “Recuperating the Archive,” especially through the installation called “We Wait in the Darkness,” which foregrounded creative techniques of memory, music, and listening. In chapter 8, Chi-Fang Chao explores the importance of Indigenous Taiwanese theatrical performances with a focus on sound and movement memory from the Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe.
In total the nine chapters offer eclectic yet compelling accounts about the cultural and artistic potential for archival resources in the creation of new knowledge and experiences. As the chapters demonstrate, the voices, images, and materials held within archives offer possibilities for new dialogues and reflections, and raise new questions about ethics, ownership, and reciprocity. The diversity of perspectives across the distinct case studies is excellent, and this is a compelling area of distinctiveness for the volume. Nevertheless, some readers might expect more synthesis across the broad variety of topics and within the framing of individual chapters. Music, Dance, and the Archive will be of wide interest within ethnomusicology but also in areas of Indigenous studies, archival, and media studies. What unites the chapters is how archival resources—sonic, visual, material—exist within in a rich web of new stories, shared conversations, and performances. Within this capacity, music and dance remain a focal point of future creativity between archives and communities.
