Record and hold: Popular music between personal and collective memory

Abstract

Recorded music is vital to the construction of personal and collective cultural memory. My examination of the interrelation between personal and collective memories of popular music assumes both that human memory is simultaneously embodied, enabled, and embedded, and that (re)collective experiences are constructed through narratives. Analysis of an online set of narrative responses to a national radio-event, the Dutch Top 2000, shows that we need public spaces to share narratives and to create a common musical heritage. © 2006 National Communication Association.