Vivid Stories: Oral histories, collective memory and constructing Scottish jazz pasts within the contemporary scene

Maclean, Diane

Abstract

This chapter draws on the production and content of the Scottish Jazz Archive (SJA) oral histories collection alongside interviews from a PLACE (Scottish Government) funded research project focused on the contemporary jazz scene in Scotland. We consider how the Scottish jazz community is co-creating its own diasporic jazz history and identity through the SJA. As a small and close-knit community, this shared history of Scottish jazz is particularly contained and intricately tangled up in the personal relationships of members and the internal politics of the scene. The creation of oral histories for the SJA offers researchers – in the roles of interviewers, production team, and archivists – access to moments within which histories are constructed through mediated collective memory. Building on the work of Gebhardt (2017), White (2014), Ricœur (2003), and Leichter (2012), and drawing upon interviews with Scottish musicians undertaken in 2019-2021, we then consider the ways in the history of jazz in Scotland is constructed, accessed, and experienced by different generations of the current scene. We argue that the diasporic identity of Scottish jazz can therefore be seen as partially fragmented, particularly in relation to history and legacy. Furthermore, we reflect upon the act and legacy of fixing oral histories as published mediated text, and upon our own roles in the interconnected identity formation and historicising processes of the Scottish jazz scene.

Citation

Maclean, D. (in press). Vivid Stories: Oral histories, collective memory and constructing Scottish jazz pasts within the contemporary scene. In Á. Havas, B. Johnson, & D. Horn (Eds.), Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies. Routledge

• Acceptance Date: Apr 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3073555