Scrapbooking as sanctuary: embodied music fandom, affective attachment and female cultural labor in early 1970s Belfast

This article offers the first scholarly exploration of a set of scrapbooks about Irish blues-rock musician Rory Gallagher, created by Carol Clerk – a teenage girl growing up in 1970s Belfast who would later become a renowned music journalist. It examines how embodied music fandom, affective attachment and female cultural labor are conveyed through the scrapbooks’ layout, composition and sensory dimensions. Using textual, material and semiotic analysis, I argue that the scrapbooks function not only as expressions of music fandom but also as sites of refuge, resistance and self-fashioning for Clerk. In a conflict zone where live music was scarce, the scrapbooks became an alternative form of musical engagement, allowing Clerk to assert agency and identity beyond dominant religious and political frameworks. However, their strikingly professional tone suggests that they doubled as a practice space where Clerk honed skills that would shape her future career in music journalism.