Troubling Inheritances

Sara Cohen is Professor at the University of Liverpool, UK, where she holds the James and Constance Alsop Chair in Music and is Director of the Institute of Popular Music. She is author of Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture (2007) and Rock Culture in Liverpool (1991), co-author of Liverpool’s Musical Landscapes (2018) and Harmonious Relations (1994), and co-editor of Sites of Popular Music Heritage (2014). Line Grenier is Associate Professor at the Département de Communication at Université de Montréal, Canada, where she teaches predominantly in the areas of media theory, memory and media, and popular culture. More recently, in the context of the research partnership ACT (Ageing Communication Technology) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and of which she is one of the co-founders, her research focuses on intersections of ageing and music. Her current project focuses on Deaf cultures of ageing and Deaf musics. Ros Jennings is Professor in Cultural Studies, Director of the Centre for Women Ageing and Media (WAM) and Head of Postgraduate Research at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She is a founding member of the European Network in Ageing Studies (ENAS), author of the WAM Manifesto (2012), and contributor to the UK Charter against Ageism and Sexism in the Media. She is co-editor with Abigail Gardner of Rock On: Women, Ageing and Popular Music (2012) and leader of the annual WAM International Summer School.

Troubling Inheritances uses a shared and sharing methodology to collect a fascinating collection of stories that songs have allowed or encouraged people to tell. Through an impressively wide range of international case studies, this collection highlights the centrality of music to our everyday experience as well as the ways we understand and narrate our lives. It also centres the role of those who came before us and those who will follow us, making rich connections between music, memory, mentorship, solidarity and inter-generational influence. These intimate, moving and memorable essays remind us of the things music reveals to us about ourselves and others.

• Introduction Line Grenier, University of Montréal, Canada, Sara Cohen, University of Liverpool, UK, and Ros Jennings, University of Gloucestershire, UK1. Reflections on Women and Musical Inheritances: Exploring the Musical Threads of Memory and EmotionRos Jennings, University of Gloucestershire, UK2. Inheritance Tracks, Shared Memories, and Collective Self-TherapyAndy Bennett, Griffith University, Australia3. Bordering Musical InheritancesHelmi Järviluoma, Elina Hytönen-Ng, and Sonja Pöllänen, University of Eastern Finland, Finland4. Storytelling and Disrupting Borders: A Sicilian WorkshopAbigail Gardner, University of Gloucestershire, UK5. Songs That Matter: Assessing through Trinidadian Storytellings the Power of Music, Memory, Age and AgingJocelyne Guilbault, University of California, Berkeley, USA6. Collective Music Listening, Reminiscence, and the Tensions of Ageing: Lessons from two Workshops with Older Adults in LiverpoolSara Cohen, University of Liverpool, UK, Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool, UK, and Jacqueline Waldock, University of Liverpool, UK7. Journeys of Attachments, Trajectories of (Mis)fitting: Musicking in Deaf Communities in MontrealLine Grenier, University of Montréal, Canada, and Véro Leduc, University of Montréal, Canada8. Sharing and Reflecting on Inheritance Tracks: Some AfterthoughtsMurray Forman, Northeastern University, USANotes on ContributorsIndex