Reflection on the process of creating “Played Here – Musical Venues of
the Queen City”
“History with its flickering lamp
stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to
revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days”
Winston Churchill
The first step in the process of creating our web site was
of course to choose a topic and our group chose the topic of Music. The next, much larger step, was to locate the
potential archival material that would inspire and populate our web site. To that end we ventured down to the Carolina
Room, to explore their Music Archive. The archive focuses on North Carolina alternative
music and includes a significant collection of vinyl records in their original sleeves
as well as extensive newspaper clippings and programs from a wide variety of
local music genres. It needs to be noted
that the Music Archive has not been recently supported and that materials were
sometimes incomplete, disorganized or missing.
However, this was more than compensated for by the professional
assistance of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, who also introduced us
to their extensive collection of reference books and other archival materials
that pertained to the subject of Local Music.
In addition to the amorphous nature of the topic we all had
different responses to the potential offered by these materials. Based on her previous study, Anna was
immediately interested in radio aspects of local music; Reggie was drawn to the
rich area of African American music in the city; Ian, as an accomplished
musician himself gravitated towards the contemporary music scene in Charlotte; and
I became fascinated by the roots of mainstream music, popular and classical in Charlotte
and how it fit into the history of the city.
Our responses were both a benefit and a challenge. We had all found the material fascinating and
motivating, but in widely different ways.
We needed a structure to bring these interests together. We wrestled with this dilemma in our initial
discussions and decided on a temporary framework based on genre and era as
possible organizational principles. At
the same time we decided to do more individual research in the downtown
library, Special Collections at Atkins Library and within the community to
discover more accurately what the scope of the primary materials was.
On reconvening we realized that neither genre nor era gave
us a good structure for our project as they did not match our individual
interests and there were too many overlaps to make it work. They also created a structure, which was too
broad for such a pervasive cultural element as music. One option we did not explore seriously was
to throw out our individual areas of interest at this point and find a narrower
focus that we would all pursue. One idea
would have been to look at the music scene of students at UNC Charlotte over
the last 63 years, but changing directions would have been a major upheaval and
there were logistical concerns, as this would have necessitated research in
Special Collections at Atkins Library, which has restrictive opening
hours. Even though the downtown library
necessitated driving and parking fees, or bus journeys and bus fares, it was
open on the weekend, which was a big advantage to our group.
Our break-through came when we realized that by focusing on
“Venue“ as a unifying theme we could
allow individual interests to flourish within an overarching framework. The concept of venue also had a strong
resonance because of the powerful allure of venues as places with personalities
of their own: imagine Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, Woodstock, and
the smoky basement jazz, blues, and rock clubs of New York City such as Birdland.[1] Charlotte’s music venues, though not famous,
have all had their own unique relationship with the local community and its
history. As we worked on this theme it
also became apparent that “Venue” has an additional value as it ties together
the music, the performer, the audience and the physical, social and political
context of the city. Venue also solved
the problem of having such a wide topic, as it alleviated the need to be
comprehensive. Our web site would
provide a “snap shot” of the wide
variety of music that has impacted life in the Queen City over time through a
selection of the venues where the music took place. This framework would allow for additional
contributions over time.
I also want to reflect on the use of Omeka as a web tool for
building online exhibits. Although it is an excellent tool for people who have
little or no experience with web design , its tight structure does limit the
user to certain schemes and impacts the content of the web site by restricting
space and imposing limits on how many images or blocks of text there will be on
a page and in what combination they will display. This was challenging to work with from an
aesthetic point of view and also from an authorial point of view. Historical arguments are hard to make within
this kind of structure and aesthetics becomes a prominent concern. Also since the Omeka web site is focused on
items, it is items that tend to drive the content. Any historic information that does not have a
complementary item will tend to be excluded.
However, as an exercise in Public History, which has to grapple with
aesthetics and general audiences on a daily basis, Omeka provides a very
suitable opportunity.
Our Mission Statement
and our performance
In our Mission Statement we stated that our major goal was
to use venue to explore the wide diversity of music genres, musicians, and
audiences and the impact of music on local culture over time. I believe that our web site has achieved this
goal. After some deliberation about how
to proceed within the architecture of Omeka we decided to create four sections
within one exhibit called “Musical Venues of the Queen City”. Sections
of this exhibit have the following titles:
·
Charlotte’s Early Music Venues
·
Radio Stations of the Queen City
·
Black Music Venues
·
Contemporary Music Venues
These follow somewhat chronologically and focus on varied
aspects of Charlotte’s Music past and present, from the old Opera House with
its variety and minstrel shows, operas and virtuoso musical performances to the
jazz jams of the Excelsior Club, the barber quartettes of 1940’s WBT radio, and
the wide range of contemporary sounds, metal, hip hop, indie and hardcore that
can be heard in Charlotte’s contemporary clubs such as the Tremont today. Within these sections we each examine significant
places, people and events.
In our Mission Statement we stated that we would achieve
this goal by researching in local archives and libraries and within the
community to produce a variety of resources to illustrate the history of
Charlotte’s varied and changing music scene.
I strongly believe that we have also achieved this goal
within our web site. After extensive
research each of us has discovered, scanned, uploaded and annotated all of the
many different kinds of primary sources we expected to use to tell the story of
music in the Queen city. This includes
such items as programs, news releases, audios, videos, photographs, maps, still
images and more. Examples from my
section of the web site include a program from a concert given by the St.
Cecelia Society in 1891 at the Y.M.C.A., a photograph of the Charlotte Symphony
in its first year of operation in 1932, a link to a video of two women singing
a part song using shape notes, sections of Sanborn Maps that indicate the
location of the Opera House and the Academy of Music on South Tryon Street, an
audio of the Great North State which was sung at Charlotte’s Second Music
Festival of 1891, postcards of Charlotte showing venues such as the City
Auditorium or Presbyterian College where many classical concerts were performed. Other members of the group have similar
exhibit items that cover a rich range of different resources. We have also used a variety of secondary
texts in our research to give context to the primary documents we have
discovered. I for example have found two
PhD theses of particular help in illuminating the early history of mainstream
classical and popular music in Charlotte in addition to the history of the
venues where the music was performed.[2] I have also learned much about the wider
context of local history and music in the U.S.A. by reading more general texts. This is illustrated in our bibliography.
There have also been some challenges along the way
associated with our original goals for special web based elements of our web
site. As we began to learn about Omeka
and the plug in options that were available, we planned for the site to be
interactive and to harvest local knowledge and memory to widen the scope of the
project through the “Contribution” plug in.
Unfortunately this was thwarted, as no such tool was available at the level
of Omeka available to us. We had a
similar set-back with respect to an Omeka map and time line plug in called “Neatline”,
which we wanted to use to aggregate information about our venues, but which was
unavailable to us. However, our resourceful
web master, Ian, has overcome the map issue by linking to an excellent
interactive Google map, which he has configured to display locations of venues
and information about them. Other Omeka
plug ins have proved invaluable. Exhibit
builder is of course our basic organizing system for our exhibit and Zoomit and
Docs Viewer allow excellent visibility of items in detail. We hope that our Social Bookmarking will give
us publicity.
In addition to our own sections each member of our team has
had extra responsibilities, which I feel satisfied we have all taken seriously
and met. I have taken responsibility for
authorship of the information elements that tie the web site together and create
context, including text for the home page, details about the authors,
introduction summary and acknowledgements.
Ian has taken responsibility as our web master, setting up our account
and creating a framework within which we could work. He has also manipulated the aesthetic
elements of the web site to customize the site for our topic. This includes designing a custom header. Anna has acted as our editor and has taken
responsibility for the group Bibliography.
She has also been very helpful with respect to communicating group
information and organization. Reggie has
been our master of photography and where appropriate has taken excellent
photographs of the locations of a selection of our music venues. All members of the group have been responsive
and supportive, have attended meetings regularly, have contributed ideas and
have taken responsibility for their own sections.
Turning back the clock to August of this year and
recollecting the process of sorting our graduate history class into units to
tackle one of four defined research projects, I recall a mixture of eager
anticipation and anxiety about doing a group project. Now at the end of the project I see that I did
not need to be anxious. I am reminded of
the story of “The Bremen Town Musicians”,
which illustrates the advantage of
the whole over the individual parts when, past their prime, the donkey, the
dog, the cat, and the rooster cooperate to deceive a group of robbers and
cleverly secure their own future. It was
with this spirit that I believe our group came together. Though not past our prime, we were a diverse
group coming together to meet a common mission and from the beginning I feel
that we adopted the interests of the group over the parts. During the subsequent process we have learned
a great deal about group dynamics, communication and cooperation, in addition
to learning about our individual areas of enquiry, our overall project and the
technology we have mastered to display our products. It has been a fun ride!
[2] Robert Allen Engelson, “A History of adult community choirs in
Charlotte, North Carolina: 1865-1918,” DMA Thesis, Arizona State University,
May 1994,
Rupert T Barber Jr., “An Historical Study of
the Theatre in Charlotte North Carolina, From 1873-1902,” Ph.D. Thesis,
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1970
