Troubling Inheritances - by Sara Cohen & Line Grenier & Ros Jennings (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Explores the relationship between music, memory, and ageing through a focus on "inheritance tracks," with contributions from leading scholars of popular music studies"--

Book Synopsis

This book provides an interdisciplinary focus on music, memory, and ageing by examining how they intersect outside of a formal therapeutic context or framework and by offering a counter-narrative to age as decline. It contributes to the development of qualitative research methodologies by utilizing and reflecting on methods for studying music, memory, and ageing across diverse and interconnected contexts. Using the notion of inheritance to trouble its core themes of music, memory, ageing, and methodology, it examines different ways in which the concept of inheritance is understood but also how it commonly refers to the practice of passing on, and the connections this establishes across time and space. It confronts the ageist discourses that associate popular music predominantly with youth and that focus narrowly, and almost exclusively, on music's therapeutic function for older adults. By presenting research which examines various intersections of music and ageing outside of a therapeutic context or framework, the book brings a much-needed intervention.

Review Quotes

"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." --Richard Elliott, Senior Lecturer in Music, Newcastle University, UK, and author of The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music

About the Author

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.