Materialising music worlds: heritage-as-praxis in everyday music objects and vernacular memories

This paper extends Crossley’s concept of ‘music worlds’ by foregrounding the role of material assemblages in shaping collective memory, fan practices and vernacular heritage. Drawing on object-oriented interviews with fans of Irish blues-rock musician Rory Gallagher, it examines how everyday music-related keepsakes mediate four sequential rites of passage in the fan experience: discovering Gallagher’s music, seeing him in concert, meeting him and hearing the news of his death. By situating these objects at the centre of analysis, the study shows how they act as vessels of memory and emotion, sustaining heritage-as-praxis through everyday sociocultural practices. In doing so, it demonstrates that studies of music worlds would benefit from a material culture approach, which captures how fragile, unofficial and ageing collections of fan objects complicate their inclusion within authorised heritage frameworks yet remain vital to the construction of alternative, community-based histories of popular music. The paper, therefore, advances theoretical debates on music worlds and heritage-as-praxis while signalling the urgent need to recognise, preserve and critically revalue the overlooked material traces through which fans actively shape and sustain popular music heritage.