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Community Collaborative Participatory Archive (CCPA): Towards a New Archival Practice in Ethnomusicology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2025

Subash Giri Open the ORCID record for Subash Giri [Opens in a new window]
Subash Giri*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Canada
*
Email: girisubashchandra@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article addresses the gaps between ethnographic archives and community members who are often deprived of accessing their own materials. In reflecting on results from collaborative research with a Nepalese immigrant community in Alberta, Canada, where we created a Digital Community Archive (DCA), I draw attention to the benefits of combining strategies from applied ethnomusicology and Participatory Action Research (PAR). I propose a new model for archiving in ethnomusicology, the Community Collaborative Participatory Archive (CCPA). This model can improve ethnomusicological archival practice by focusing on collaborative, egalitarian, and grassroots participation, shared roles, and authority in the archival creation and development process.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Traditions of Music and Dance , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , July 2025 , pp. 95 - 114
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance

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Footnotes

This article is a revised version of the paper titled “Engaging Community in Creating an Ethnomusicology Archive: A Digital Archive Project in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada” presented at the 46th World Conference of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD), Lisbon, 21–27 July 2022. The initial paper was awarded the 2022 Student Paper Prize from the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance.

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