Rock and soul: humanizing heritage, memorializing music and producing places

Place production through the formal process of place-making and the more informal evolutionary expediency of place-marking has become a major theme of sustainable development, conservation and regeneration in recent decades. Popular music heritage has played a part in this, and has great potential to contribute more. This article explores the ways in which tangible and intangible heritage combine to underpin place-production linked to popular music. Examples of the achievements of popular musical heritage in relation to three discernible kinds of place-production are explored: linear places epitomized by roads and routes such as Highway 61 and Route 66; dispersed places represented by memorial plaques and statues on buildings and in open spaces; and concentrations of connected elements such as can be found in Liverpool (UK) and Memphis (USA). It is concluded that popular music culture continues to have an important role to play in the creation of powerful places and that social conventions and commercial interests now contribute to the perpetuation of interest in these places and the traditions they represent.