The participatory archive of the sites of Danish rock music culture

When setting out to tell the story of rock music culture, one approach is a focus at the “meeting places” where bands, fans and those behind the scenes have gathered. With this approach the cultural heritage of rock music becomes situated and site-specific, and it is nearby to think of ways to engage those who “inhabited” these specific sites of the previous 60 years of rock music culture. This paper will discuss how the issues of locality and rock music culture can be gathered and researched by a participatory (web 2.0) archive.
The research is empirically focused at “The Map of Danish Rock History” as an example of such a digital participatory archive. This digital online project is initiated by the Danish Rock Music Museum and intends to gather material that portray the sites’ and meeting places’ (such as venues, festivals, youth clubs etc.) of Danish rock music culture. Danish rock music is a broad geographical and institutional phenomenon, not only present in the main cities but also flourishing in small towns, and not only at the well-known venues but also on the edges of the commercial scene as well as the institutionalized Danish welfare state. The history of many provincial hotbeds of rock culture (for example in the area of southern Jutland) have not been collected, documented and told yet.
The museum wishes to bring this broad story of the places of Danish Rock music to the surface as cultural heritage by help from those who have had their lives and musical experiences in these places (rock fans and musicians) and those who have gathered material from these places (local archives, rock journalists, private enthusiasts, venue owners, volunteers etc.).
This leads to the main question of this paper: What type of story is actually formulated when a heterogeneous group of people from outside the museum contributes with content to throw light on Danish rock music sites and localities?
During several workshops with a group of people representing the potential contributors (as described just above) combined with a more broad (internet based) beta-testing of the participatory archive various content has been gathered. Site specific facts, stories, pictures, documents and videos have been uploaded to the archive and now represent the beginning of a conglomerate picture of the specific sites’ evolvement, their local circumstances and their influence on rock music environments, genres and collaborations. See www.rockensdanmarkskort.dk.
In this paper, based on my phd.-project research, I wish to present some examples of these collaboratively generated portrays of Danish sites of rock music. In addition, I wish to explore more theoretically how these portrays of sites gathered in the participatory archive can be understood as collective expressions or networked knowledge (rather than narratives of individuals) of locally situated, but globally influenced, rock music communities?