The aim of the project Echo affects was to investigate how different musical networks produce, manage and organize the past. While the analytical focus of the project is intact, the empirical frame has both been narrowed down and problematized over the course of the study. Initially we worked with a more open angle on contemporary music with roots in Swedish 1970s music. The Swedish music has been narrowed down to Swedish 70s prog, which has continually forced us to problematize both "Swedish", as well as "prog" and "70s".

In our application we sketched a model for understanding network historiographies, departing from the concepts fragment, affective alliances, network and retrologies. The model has had a cohesive function in that it has focused discussions. It has also worked as a forceful analytical tool and as a methodological resource through which the implementation of the investigation has been planned both with regards to the overall organization of the fieldwork and as concrete aspects for observations and interviews.

A hypothesis already at the outset of the project was that popular musical genres are defined from specific positions, and this idea has been reinforced during the course of the study. The translocal character of time and space has been central. Geographically distant places have been placed together, as neighbors in time. We have seen how the local settings of agents and network nodes display a kind of generic similarity, i.e. often gentrifying urban environments inhabited by a creative middle class. At the same time, the interviewees' conceptions of distant epochs and places have appeared similar depending on where we have been situated. The past has come forth as an open-ended room rather than something towards which you can "look back", a concrete set of tools to use in the present - from visual aspects to sounds and ideological fragments. Affect has been an analytically fruitful way to understand the emotional registers and expressions that unite actors in different places, often intricately intertwined with different distinctions. Affect is the glue that organizes and makes the transnational networks hold together. In the same musical expression, actors have found something raw and primordial that widens the senses, and through the same musical directions have been able to distance themselves to music that is experienced as too commercial, mainstream or conventional. We have also been surprised by how Swedishness, and perhaps even more frequently Scandinavianness or Nordicness, has come forth as a relevant aspect of varying importance (Hyltén-Cavallius 2011, Kaijser 2011b). A further result of the project and the model we have worked from is that it has enabled reinterpretations of material from earlier studies, for example analyses of material from an earlier study of formations of history in Beatles tourism in Liverpool (Kaijser forthcoming).

The results discussed above have also led to more in-depth investigations of certain areas of inquiry. The description of music in terms of Swedish (or Nordic/Scandinavian) has been an established way in international contexts to identify and label Swedish 70s prog. In these understandings, Swedishness not only has to do with the location where music has been produced, but also with aesthetics and sounds. However, when it comes to contemporary Swedish music, we have seen a greater ambivalence towards using "Swedish" as a description. The Swedish has partially been understood as a specific sound register that unites Swedish with other Scandinavian and Nordic music, and partially as a non-category: Swedish music sounds like other Anglo-American music and thereby constitutes no specific expression.

Contemporary Swedish popular music has been relatively successful in an international perspective. In which genres does Swedishness matter? In what way? It is also possible to identify a Nordic sphere that can be related to both Europe and the US. What networks, categorizations and relations can be identified in the increasingly globalized popular music of today? During the course of the investigation, we have distinguished an affective register that characterizes the studied contexts. Likely it would be possible to detect corresponding registers in other genres. Here it would be possible to follow further paths of inquiry: how do different genres differ along the lines of register, do the registers change with time and setting, and are there any continuities? In other words, it is tempting to study affective registers in popular musical formations of other pasts - i.e. today's transnational interest in the various (often synthesizer-based) genres of the 1980's.

The concept of retrology has contributed to our understanding of how different kinds of fragments are pieced together, for example tape echos, important records, visual formations and clothing. The cohesiveness of the networks depend on a complex interplay of affective charges, legitimization processes and social networks. However, new questions arise: how are retrologies pieced together in other networks? In one article, we suggest the political field as an area where retrologies could constitute a way of understanding the common cores of parties and movements (Hyltén-Cavallius & Kaijser 2012). One reason for this would be to explore how less formalized constellations cooperate with more formalized historiographies.

During the course of our study the web-based musical distribution in the form of streaming and downloading, has replaced the formerly dominant medium, the CD, and there have been discussions of record stores becoming extinct. In the networks under study, the Internet has been an absolute condition for social contacts as well as for the dissemination of music. At the same time, these networks are contexts where vinyl records and cassette recordings are cherished. A new path of inquiry would be to investigate the distribution of music. One possible angle would be to study the history of record stores.

It has been our ambition to present results in two primary research areas, ethnology and popular music studies. Results have been presented in international and national peer reviewed journals. The analytical model discussed above has been presented in Ethnologia Scandinavica with the title "Affective ordering: On the organization of retrologies in music networks". Both participants are currently working on one book each. Hyltén-Cavallius' book (in Swedish), with the title Retrologies: a book on music, networks and affective timespace, discusses the pasts that are formed in technologies and material, in corporeal practice, narrative discourse and musical quotation and recycling within prog and stoner rock. The analyses revolve around questions of authenticity and sincerity, exoticism and on the malleability of genre. Kaijser's book (in Swedish) forges together results from an earlier project on Beatles tourism with results from Echo affects. The overarching question deals with how histories of popular music are presented in different contexts, such as guided bus tours, within the music industry and on fan meetings. For both book projects we will apply for publishing support from The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

The key scientific contribution of this project is the formation and development of our theoretical model. It is thoroughly discussed in the article in "Affective ordering: On the organization of retrologies in music networks" in Ethnologia Scandinavica 2012. It is also discussed in "Retro Culture and national (dis)continuity: situating Swedish progressive music in world prog/psych" (forthcoming in: Holt & Kärjä. Popular Music in the Nordic Countries. Oxford University Press).

We have taken part of the research network Nordpop, that has so far met in Helsinki and Copenhagen. An international publication is under work. We have also made individual and joint presentations at international conferences (such as the IASPM and ICTM world conferences and the American Folklore Society's annual meeting).

Publications

Sverker Hyltén-Cavallius & Lars Kaijser
UU:  Retro Culture and national (dis)continuity: situating Swedish progressive music in world prog/psych. I: Holt, Fabian &Antti-Ville Kärjä. Popular Music in the Nordic Countries. Oxford University Press.
2012: Affective ordering: On the Organization of Retrologies. Ethnologia Scandinavica. A Journal for Nordic Ethnology 2012. Vol. 42..
2009: “Ekoaffekter. Hur “sjuttiotalet” formas idag”. I: Samtid & museer. Nummer 2 2009. Årgång 33.

Sverker Hyltén-Cavallius:
u.u.: Back to the future? Two musical pasts and their futures. Norient Online Academic Journal. Special issue: The Future(s) of Music.
2012: Memoryscapes and mediascapes: musical formations of “pensioners” in late 20th century Sweden. As Time goes by. Popular music, ageing and the elderly. Special issue of Popular Music (Cambridge Univ. Press). Vol 2, 2012: 279-295.
2011: Internet och fältarbete. I: Etnologiskt fältarbete. (2:a utökade uppl.) Kaijser, Lars & Magnus Öhlander (red.) Lund: Studentlitteratur.
2010: Trovärdiga färger? Om att beskriva webbmiljöer. Nätverket nr 1, 2010. http://natverket.etnologi.uu.se/volym/17/17_9.pdf
2010: Rebirth, resounding, recreation: making 70’s rock in the 21st century. IASPM@journal vol 2, 2010. http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal
2009: A Swedish generation? On musical chronotopes and pensionerhood. SAMPLES. Online-publikationen des Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik. Årg. 8, 2009. http://aspm.ni.lo-net2.de/samples/8Inhalt.html (10 s.)
2009: Klicka på ikonen. Populärmusikaliska historieskrivningar på youtube. Kulturella perspektiv nr 3-4 2009.
2008: ”Sekunder förvandlas till år”: återfödelse, återskapande och återklingande i sjuttiotalsrock. Kulturella perspektiv 2008:3-4:56-67.

Lars Kaijser
UU:” The Pink Floyd Happening”.  I: Brusila, Johannes, Bruce Johnson & John Richardson. Music, Memory and Space. Intellect Books.
UU: :”The Pink Floyd Happening”. Ek-Nilsson, Katarina & Birgitta Meurling (red.) Berättande och materialitet. Uppsala: Institutet för språk och folkminnen.
UU: ”Mångtydiga leenden. Om skratt, ironi och affektiva allianser”. I: Jönsson, Lars-Eric & Fredrik Nilsson (red.). Utan titel.
UU: ”Beatles-fragment i rörelse: En guidad bussturs narrativa ordnande av tid och rum”. I: Gustafsson Reinius, Lotten, Ylva Haberl och Solveig Jülich. Bussen är budskapet. Perspektiv på mobilitet, materialitet och modernitet. Stockholm: Kungliga biblioteket. Mediehistoriskt arkiv 23.
2012: Fragments in motion. Reflections on a guided tour, the Beatles and the organizing of history I: Conference Proceedings. Soundtracks: Music, Tourism and Travel Conference. 6-9 July 2012, Liverpool, United Kingdom. (ISBN 978-1-907240-31-7)  © 2012 International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism and Hospitality (ICRETH), Leeds Metropolitan University, UK and the contributors.
2011: Etnologiskt fältarbete. En antologi. Andra upplagan. Lund: Studentlitteratur. (red. tillsammans med Magnus Öhlander). Bidrog själv med artiklarna: ”Fältarbete” och ”Fotografi och film” (sistnämnda tillsammans med Lizette Gradén).
2010: ”Authority among fragments. Reflections on representing the Beatles in a tourist setting” I: Jarniewicz, Jerzy & Alina Kwiatkowska (red.). Fifty Years with the Beatles. The Impact of the Beatles on Contemporary Culture. Lodz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
2010: ”Reflektioner kring ett skivsläpp.” I: Nätverket 17:2010, Etnografiska utmaningar på nätet. (https://natverket.etnologi.uu.se/).
2010: (Tillsammans med Jacob Östberg) Konsumtion. Malmö: Liber.
2009: ”That was me”. Reflektioner om Paul McCartney och relationen till den egna biografin. I: Kulturella perspektiv. Svensk etnologisk tidskrift. Nr 3-4 2009. Årgång 18: s19-28.