INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC
Study Group on Historical Sources of Traditional Music
Chair: Dr. Susanne Ziegler & Dr. Ingrid Åkesson

Berlin, June 2013
Dear Colleagues,
We are happy to announce that the 20th meeting of our Study Group will take place at the University of Aveiro, Portugal from May 12-17 2014 by invitation of Susana Sardo. The University of Aveiro offers a lot of facilities which would provide for a successful conference. More details about accommodation, travel, and the University
of Aveiro will be added.

We would like to inform you in advance that the local organiser cannot provide any financial support, so please try to get funding for travel, accommodation and stay in Aveiro from your home institution, if possible.

The meeting will focus on the following topic:
Individual memory – collective history. Historical sources as an interface and meeting-point

Collections of historical sources, e.g. sound recordings, oral history, written documents, whether safeguarded in institutional archives or organized by individuals in private collections, may be regarded as sites for encounters of many kinds. The items of collections very often represent cultural expressions performed by individuals or small
groups, and they have mostly been recorded by individual collectors. These individual memories stored and combined in collections and archives are creators of our collective history; they have played significant roles in multiple individual, collective and political discourses of national or ethnic history and identity.

Archives are built on various concepts (historical, ethnic, regional, genre oriented etc.), and shaped by different strategies and specific requirements. In the era of the so-called knowledge society, due to the contribution of information technologies, much knowledge can now be connected through the web. What kind of challenges does this situation
promote for ethnomusicological research and inquiry?

Individual collections have been integrated in institutional archives and thus become part of “cultural heritage”. What are the roles of individuals and cultural institutions in these processes? How can ethnomusicologists integrate the collectors’ knowledge and experience in researching, studying and identifying the collection? How do private
collections contribute to the construction of a collective history? How do we ethnomusicologists pay attention to and study the potential dialogues between different individual cultural memories and expressions from different times and
places? Can we use knowledge about e.g. social contexts or musical characteristics gained from one cultural area to shed light on similar traits in another place or time?

This conference invites researchers to reflect on historical sources, in sound archives as well as in private collections as an interface and meeting-point. Paper proposals, not exceeding 300 words, should be sent to the programme
committee consisting of Susanne Ziegler, Ingrid Åkesson, Gerda Lechleitner and Susana Sardo before October 1st, 2013. We also encourage presentations in the format of panels, which should consist of at least three presenters.

If you have any questions regarding the Study Group on Historical Sources, former meetings and/or publications and the forthcoming meeting, please contact us.

We look forward to seeing you in Aveiro!
Best wishes,
Local organizer: Susana Sardo, University of Aveiro, INET-MD
Conference Committee: Susanne Ziegler, Susana Sardo, Gerda Lechleitner, Ingrid Åkesson.

Susana Sardo, local organiser (ssardo@ua.pt)
Susanne Ziegler, Chair (susanne.drziegler@web.de)
Ingrid Åkesson, Co-chair (ingrid.akesson@visarkiv.se)
Gerda Lechleitner, (Gerda.Lechleitner@oeaw.ac.at)