The notion and process of collecting, recording, and representing Irish traditional music, song, and dance: The Muckross House collection (original) (raw)

Thi:, paper louks at the notion and pnKess of cullecting, recording ,mLl representing Irish traditional music, song and dance ttl]' archival purposes. It examines the role of the archive in the Western world and f,xuses Oil the Muckross Hnuse Cnllection and my experience as a collectn!" for Muckross House. [n additinn, it provides an overview of the different research methods and techniLjues I applied in the field. The Muckross House Collection is examined within the broader context of the nineteenth-century European movement of collecting Illusic, song and dance, and I suggest that these projects and processes were significant tn the fllfll1ation of Western identity. The Notion of Collections Since 1990 inclusive colleerions of 'Mankind' have hecome institution'llized in acadL'mic disciplines like anthropology and in museums of art lH ethnology. A restrictive 'art-culture-system' has come to cO!ltrol the authenticity, value' allll circulation of arte{,ll'ts and dara. Anah1sing rhis systcm I proposc thar any collenilm implies a temporal vision gcnl'rating rarity and worth, a lllctailistory. This histllry defines which groups or things will he redeemcd from a disintcgr<ltin.g human past and which will he defined as the dynamic, or tragic, agents of a common destiny. (james CliHmd 1 12-11) The institutionalised collections to which James Clifford makes reference above are those that arc associated with disciplines such as anthropology and lllllseums of art or ethnology. He dates these collections from the 1990s. However, collections in the broader sense in the Western worldi.e. publications-date back to the eighteenth century and the Age of Enlightenment (RoYLe 2), while institutionalised collections of sound and audiovisual recordings of traditional music and dance for archival purposes may be dated from the beginning uf the twentieth century.

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