The drum and the community
Abstract
In this audio paper we will explore aspects of sonic citizenship as expressed through a cultural heritage object: the town drum. Town drums are central to Danish cultural history and have been used as tools for civic communication – to regulate, warn, gather, represent, built and connect communities. This audio paper focuses on one drum: the town drum used in Struer from mid 19th century to around 1930 – now part of Struer Museums collection.
Due to preservative measures the drum is now almost silent and can only be touched gently by the museum staff. The paper follows our investigation of the drum and its sonic properties and functions within the framework of sonic citizenship. Building on Ahmed’s notion of stickiness (2014), Riegel’s concept of age value (1982) and Højlund et al. (2024) we investigate the affective potential in interactions between sound, object and listener. Listening to the city drum through gentle physical interactions and readings of archival and published sources, we explore how the sound of the drum has circulated notions of authority, identity, and territoriality, and we ask how cultural heritage objects like this might serve as entrances to historical sound cultures.
Audio paper
Keywords
Bibliography
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