UBT_DigiRet2021 - Beyond the "Digital Return": "New Heritage/s," Sustainability, and the Decolonisation of Music Archives in South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana

Beyond the Digital Return researches repatriation/restitution and re/appropriation of submerged but now digitally accessible musical and cultural material. The significance of the relatedness of “digital return” to processes of heritage and identity production as well as the decolonisation of institutional music archives/repositories are investigated in three African countries: South Africa, Kenya, an Ghana, with affiliated research in Nigeria. The project contributes to Advocacy/Engaged/Applied Ethnomusicology, Archival Studies, Anthropology, African Heritage Studies, and Popular Music Studies. The project’s concerns are about assessing the value of digital return to the development of sustainable cultures and in what digital return reveals about global demands for decolonising archives and museums. Key questions are: what happens after the “digitised musical object” has been returned to its community of origin? Is digital return the answer to developing sustainable music cultures or reviving an interest in them where it may be the case that they are on the brink of collapse or extinction? The main objective of the project is to enhance our understanding of how repatriation in the field of music yields new forms of cultural creation associated with heritage, and, more precisely, intangible cultural heritage. This objective is informed by identity re/construction/affirmation as a result of accessibility, current trends of decolonising archives and the opening up of music archives, collections, and digital repositories (where much digitization has been achieved). These processes have for decades been frustrated by notions of colonial and corporate authority and ownership. The project thus also aims to contribute to currently increasing debates on restitution and related rights issues such as ownership, copyright, and intellectual property rights.