Vivid Stories: Oral Histories, Collective Memory, and the Scottish Jazz Scene

Medbøe, Haftor; Maclean, Diane; Raine, Sarah

Abstract

This chapter draws on the production and content of the Scottish Jazz Archive (SJA) oral histories collection alongside interviews with Scottish jazz musicians. Specifically, we consider how the Scottish jazz community is co-creating its own diasporic jazz history and identity through the SJA. Emerging from a small and close-knit community, the shared history of Scottish jazz is 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) and Leichter (2012) and drawing upon interviews with Scottish musicians, we consider the ways in which 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 be seen as partially fragmented, particularly in relation to history. Furthermore, we reflect upon the act and legacy of fixing oral histories as published mediated text, and upon our own roles in the interconnected historicizing and identity formation processes of the Scottish jazz scene.

Citation

Medbøe, H., Maclean, D., & Raine, S. (2024). Vivid Stories: Oral Histories, Collective Memory, and the Scottish Jazz Scene. In Á. Havas, B. Johnson, & D. Horn (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003212638-49

• Online Publication Date: Nov 14, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 15, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Book Title: The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies
• Chapter Number: 42
• ISBN: 9781032080383
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003212638-49
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3073555