The Archives and the Community

Abstract

The Community and the archive – preservation, ownership and dissemination. Archives had been thought of remote ivory tower spaces with dim vaults and dusty shelves. However archives have been changing as what is archives has changed from state documents to include audio visual documents and cultural expressions. With this change , there is also the shift of who such an archive is for and who uses it and for what. The relationship of archives to the communities that it interacts with is one that has been undergoing change in the past decade, as the concept of the community comes to the centre of the discourse in many areas. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage places the community and its rights at the centre in many of its directives, WIPO works on community rights for archives, libraries and museums, and so forth. These are not initiatives of large international bodies. The concept of heritage has gone from that of 'high art' to cultural expressions, Masterpieces have been replaced by Representative Lists, the voice of the subaltern, the concept of “bottom up” approaches are at the centre of discussion in many areas, and community archives is not a term that is uncommon any more. I plan to discuss some of these issues as they relate to archives, and trace the path taken by an ethnomusicology archive through its development and its changing aims and profile.