Ballads and Memory. International Conference of the Ballad Commission/Kommission für Volksdichtung

Songs are often thought of as capturing the memories of a people or community. They reflect cultural experience and, as David Buchan put it, they give expression to the “cultural preoccupations of—and sometimes the sense of identity of—a given group”. They are a record of human experience. But how is that record constructed? Whose memories are being recorded? How is that record maintained? And how do we use that record? Do we alter it, or try to preserve it unchanged? Do we accept its version of our past, or do we reshape and reuse it for our own purposes?

This 4-day international conference will explore the idea of memory in relation to ballads and folk songs by looking at songs as carriers of cultural and community memory, by looking at the mechanisms whereby songs old and new have been perpetuated, and how they are being remembered and reshaped in the digital age. It will delve into the reasons for maintaining memories through song.