thoughtmesh
thoughtmesh
what's this ?
what's this ?
excerpts here
excerpts out
peer review
Click on a tag above to see relevant excerpts from this site.
Click on a tag above to see relevant excerpts from other articles in the mesh.
Search this article for any word:

This article is a position paper addressing the author's plan to build a collaborative multimedia database of Maltese music. The proposed collaborative project will use wiki technology to capture a living archive of past, present and future works of interest in connection to music from and in Malta. Such a project raises various critical issues related to intellectual property rights, preservation policies and techniques, technical infrastructure strategies, and other similar topics. Research on these issues is directed through specially developed postgraduate research studentships, which will ensure the project's longevity.

Contemporary Maltese popular culture consists of an interesting compendium of colonial traditions and postcolonial reactions. The lack of scholarly research in this area makes it possible for cultural memory to fade into anecdotal legend, at best, or at worst become forgotten and lost forever over time. The problem is evident even without delving back into a distant past. The liberalization of broadcasting in 1991, after over 50 years of state-funded monopoly within the sector, has given rise to a glut of uncollected documents and data, which have increased exponentially with the recent proliferation of digital technologies and the Internet. The rise in output can be felt particularly through the amount of popular music being produced and recorded now in comparison to similar activities just 20 years ago, when Malta had only one radio station, one television channel, three or four record shops, and only a couple of multitrack recording studios.

The National Archives of Malta aim to preserve the collective memory of the Maltese nation, and they have a remarkable collection of records — written documents, maps, photographs, moving images, audio material and electronic files. However, collections at Malta's National Archives are closed for 30 years before they are made available to the public. This means that there is no public access to any records of contemporary popular arts, even those financed by public funds. Furthermore, the acquisition of private records is not one of the priorities of the National Archives, even if there is a declared official interest in any documents that might have a certain degree of national importance.1

Significantly, there is no cohesive multimedia database or any other sort of collection of most Maltese music. Minor but noticeable exceptions exist for some elements of traditional folk music,2 a sprinkling of popular mainstream releases,3 one commercial radio station with nationwide reach,4 and two alternative record labels established within the last five years or so.5 More recently, sporadic entries on MySpace,6 Facebook7 and a handful of other social networking websites8 have enabled musicians to easily distribute their work to new audiences. In the ad hoc process of making so many new recordings available to a larger public, it has become evident that there is a clear need for a comprehensive repository, which amounts to a substantial collaborative multimedia database of contemporary Maltese music and associated activities.
The proposed database project can be approached in three phases: preparation, implementation and elaboration.

1. Preparation:This part of the project is essential for the work to start, and it consists of two key elements. One relates to the technical requirements involved in the principal methodological tool, and the other involves establishing a clear, sustainable policy for the strategic gathering of data for the database.

2. Implementation: Phase two starts by capturing detailed information about live performances and recordings from shows, studio sessions, and public releases on CD and through the Internet, along with photos, posters and other similar materials. The database also needs to collate details of all the technologies used to create and document music — from the equipment used for recording and live performances, to individual websites and social networking websites used by both artists and their fans.

3. Elaboration: If data for this project are captured systematically, they can serve as the basis for a broader collection within a relatively short period of time. More importantly, however, they will help establish an ongoing research base with a pedagogical dimension closely associated with postgraduate research projects. The research projects will subsequently feed back into further development on the database itself.

Contributions to the collection should come from the same people and venues creating the original artefacts in collaboration with their admirers and private collectors. This methodology stems from developments spearheaded since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, 9 a non-profit charitable organization best known for Wikipedia.10 As with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation, the proposed project should aim to develop and maintain open content, through a wiki-based project, and to provide the full contents of the project to the public. This is easily achieved through the creation of a specific multimedia wiki and regular solicitation of participatory networking. The instant the data start trickling in, they can be analysed for content, discourse and network flows. This analysis should lead to the acquisition of further contributions and the expansion of the database beyond obviously related entries.

A wiki ”" derived from wikiwiki, the Hawaiian word for quick ”" is a prime example of a collaborative technology that operates in direct correlation with social networks. Wikis are designed to facilitate conversational knowledge management and group collaboration. Ward Cunningham created the original wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, in 1994.11 In 2001 he co-authored The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web with Bo Leuf. However, the Wikimedia Foundation has led significant developments with this technology since 2003. Aside from the ubiquitous Wikipedia, the WikiMedia Foundation also operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wiktionary12 (a multilingual free content dictionary in every language), Wikiquote 13 (a repository of quotations, proverbs, mnemonics and slogans), Wikisource 14 (a multilingual collection of texts distributed as free and open content), and more importantly Wikimedia Commons 15 (a central multimedia repository that hosts close to five million multimedia files). The server-based software used for all these wikis is called MediaWiki.16 Wikis owe their success in large part to the ease of creating and editing pages containing information about a specific theme or anything else its users are interested in. MediaWiki is particularly popular through its use for Wikipedia, of course, but also because it is licensed as free software under the GNU General Public License. Although the MediaWiki software package is written in PHP, knowledge of this programming language is only required of system administrators. Other MediaWiki users do not need to know or learn PHP to add or change data in the wiki's database. This is done easily through a web-based WYSIWYG editor17 or a simple markup language called wikitext, which makes knowledge of web authoring essentials like XHTML or CSS unnecessary. Collaboration and community-building are at the heart of any wiki. Although a MediaWiki installation is designed specifically to allow anyone to add to or edit material in a particular collection of electronic files, it is not uncommon for wikis to organize a hierarchical system for moderating submissions and to control irrelevant rambling or contributions from misleading sources, and even to curb vandalism. Specific pages or sections of the database can simply be frozen if this is deemed necessary. Furthermore, regular database backups and MediaWiki's 'revision history' feature allow for easy reversal of any unwarranted tampering or inappropriate contributions.

While the wiki methodology remains problematic, or at least controversial, for anyone who values fixity and authoritative sources above anything else, wiki technology and the cultural dynamics associated with it are significantly present in new media studies. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006) by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams is the first extensive study of the topic in book form. Tapscott has been commenting on the paradigm shift brought about by the Internet since 1992, but in this book, co-authored with Williams, the emphasis is on the idea that collaboration through wikis and similar technologies of mass cooperation is having a noticeable impact on various socio-economic spheres. Marketing author Seth Godin (2008) argues that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has embraced an unconventional leadership style, based on forming movements out of tribes of like-minded people. According to Godin, Wikipedia's success owes much to the way Wales chose to connect contributors to one another 'with ever-evolving technology that made it easier and easier for them to engage and communicate' (Godin 2008: 24). In the process, Wales has given Wikipedia contributors a platform they can use to engage others to not only consume their work, but also join them in enhancing it. Similarly, in Zittrain's The Future of the Internet (2008), Wikipedia is discussed as a notable example of generative technology, aligning it with the Free Software Foundation, 18 which advocates sharing towards collective benefits (Zittrain 2008).

All social media utilities, including wikis, blogs and online social net- working websites, support and thrive on content generated by their users, rather than a central authoritative source. Many of their core functions are being used to facilitate knowledge sharing within 'communities of practice' (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1999). This term comes from scholars who observe participatory informal learning among 'groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems or a position about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis' (Wenger et al. 2002: 4). Groups that operate this way are united in a shared commitment to common topics and through the importance found in discovering new things cooperatively. Wenger et al. trace the history for such communities back to the earliest knowledge-based social structures of early human societies involving survival concerns. They later manifested themselves clearly in the craftsmen of ancient Rome, the guilds of the Middle Ages and in families. This view sees learning as a social participation characterized by the creation and exploration of identity through individual and collective meaningful experiences in communities of belonging.

Basing itself on the working models of communities of practice created by the WikiMedia Foundation, the proposed collaborative database of Maltese music has the potential to develop into a living archive of works produced by Maltese musicians and associated aspects of popular culture, such as radio, television, theatre, visual arts, sports, dance, and other related arts and popular entertainments.

The creation of the proposed collaborative multimedia database will benefit greatly from a close study of similar projects. The French Institut national de l'audiovisuel, 19 the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project housed at Baylor University in Texas, 20 and the European Commission's eContentplus-funded programme Video Active 21 are three large-scale initiatives with similar aims. While they may employ assorted methodological tools and operate under different conceptual parameters, these projects share one common goal: they all seek to preserve endangered cultural memory for future generations.

Although the WikiMedia architecture and software implementation is being recommended for adoption on this project, further data-gathering models must also be considered. This would necessitate the involvement of an existing archival repository, such as the University of Malta's Library or the National Archives of Malta. While the wiki technology fulfills one principal function of the provision of more comprehensive archive services, that of providing widespread dissemination of independently understandable digital objects, it does not satisfactorily address the second: providing long-term preservation for those artefacts, both digital and non-digital. 22 The longer-term storage of the highest possible fidelity copies or versions of digital objects is also known as dark archiving because it is not meant for public access. These dark archives may be used for the purposes of disaster recovery, or for generating copies of objects at lower fidelity for more general access. This process can also be part of the way commercial intellectual property is protected from general misuse during its term of copyright. Repository projects such as the Fedora Commons 23 attempt to address these issues (Lagoze et al. 2006). An ongoing technical appraisal of the proposed database will also allow for fine-tuning of the software, and may indeed generate software architecture/organization overhauls in the medium and long term.

Such a project raises various critical issues related to intellectual property rights, preservation policies and techniques, technical infrastructure strategies, and other similar topics. Engagement with these issues should ideally be handled through specially developed postgraduate research studentships once the basic infrastructure of the research project has been established. The interdisciplinary nature of the technical and cultural research on this project should be emphasized. The rapid developments taking place in both creative and archival technologies also need to be given special attention. Possible topics of research include intellectual property rights in online social networks spanning divergent legal frame- works, technical infrastructure management strategies for digital artefacts, preservation policies and techniques for Internet databases, the relationship between social networking and technologies of cooperation across Europe, and other similar areas.

Postgraduate research projects would also ensure the collection's longevity beyond the initial implementation phase. However, before the potential postgraduate research can begin, there is a basic need for a solid infrastructural foundation. To this end, the preparation phase of the data- base project needs to be supplemented with regular staffers in the role of a software engineer to coordinate the implementation and maintenance of the MediaWiki installation, and an information architect to coordinate the public interface with the database. The software engineer will ensure that the MediaWiki software is installed on appropriate hardware from the start, ideally a system that is easily scalable as the project grows. The soft- ware engineer would also handle software updates, particularly security patches and new feature support. After the initial installation is implemented, there should be minimal need for technical support beyond the occasional upgrade and ensuring that a proper backup system is running efficiently and effectively. By contrast, the information architect needs not only to design the initial policy for the way contributions are displayed on the wiki, but also to coordinate bespoke tutorials and workshops to enable collaborative participation from potential contributors to add new materials to the database and enhance existing holdings.

Starting with a limited geographic area for the proposed collaborative database provides an opportunity to see how the power of networking works in a specifically designed open environment. In this case, the collaboration will extend from the local population in the relatively small community that is the Maltese islands to the immediate physical neighbours around the Mediterranean, as well as making connections with other European countries and beyond. Malta's accession to the European Union in 2004 makes it part of the new Europe, and therefore a very appropriate choice for a study on the mobility of culture across boarders and national boundaries. This angle can also prove to be a fruitful area for study in related postgraduate research projects. The possibilities depend in part on funding opportunities and potential graduate student interest.

In relation to the proposed database project, an example of the power of networks (Rheingold 2002; Barabási 2003; Benkler 2006) can be seen through Malta's involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest. Malta became a participant in this popular song contest in 1971 and has taken part every year since 1991 (Kennedy O'Connor 2007); there were no Maltese entries between 1976 and 1990, mainly due to lack of funding at the local level. The cultural networking involved in this event is an appropriate way to demonstrate how networks work on both centralized and decentralized models. In this case, a centralized model circulates around the European Broadcasting Union, which initiated this contest as part of the creation of a pan-European television network in 1956, while a decentralized model operates as a function of the hundreds of related Eurovision fan clubs that have appeared in the last decade or so, with numbers growing exponentially in recent years through both the expansion of the Eurovision network itself (Raykoff and Tobin 2007) and the general uptake of Internet communication since the mid-1990s.

The growing relationship between social networks and technologies of cooperation is fast becoming an important element in the immediate future of the music industry. Things have clearly moved on considerably since the rise of Internet use across the world. The scenario envisioned in the early 1990s by media culture theorist Burnett (1996) has come to pass in magnitudes that are clearly evident to anyone who either produces or consumes recorded music anywhere in the world (Kusek and Leonhard 2005). There seems to be a growing interest within the study of this phenomenon in relation to music that does not have an easily detectable impact on the global economy (Wikström 2009; Knopper 2009; Kot 2009). This approach makes it possible to explore the interrelation between social and technological network topologies through an analysis of the use of participatory media in digital cultural heritage. Evidence of the cultural dynamics afforded by the combination of these two types of networks can be witnessed in such commonplace examples as Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter, as well as numerous lesser-known social networking sites and online multimedia networks.

A research group at the Institute of Integration Studies at Trinity College Dublin has conducted a series of studies that range from mapping migration networks and intercultural performance, to fandom within social networking around the Eurovision Song Contest (Fricker and Lentin 2007). This work demonstrates that there is great scope to look at exploring the use of digital networking within fan cultures across Europe and beyond using a variety of methodologies, from web content and discourse analysis to ethnographic control group research. The proposed database would provide excel- lent primary sources for study on similar research projects related to Malta, and other aspects beyond the geographical boundaries of the country.

Another research angle relates to examining the economic impact of these cultural communities on local, international and global economies. Research in this vein would identify characteristics of social networks applying several cases of cultural networks through methodological approaches such as social network analysis. The goal of this research would be to identify network characteristics (i.e. growth rate, centrality, size, degree distribution) that may be associated with successful economic factors within a community, starting with Malta and potentially moving to any other economic zones associated with it.

To summarize, the following is an initial list of potential postgraduate research topics that would find a worthwhile case study in the proposed database project. Others would undoubtedly be developed once the data- base's preparation phase has come to full fruition and the implementation phase has begun:

- Intellectual property rights in online social networks spanning divergent legal frameworks
- Technical infrastructure management strategies for digital artefacts
- Preservation policies and techniques for Internet databases
- Observable characteristics from the relationship between social networking and technologies of cooperation across Europe
- Mapping migration networks and intercultural performance
- Data analysis of fandom within social media networks
- Examining the economic impact of cultural communities on local economies in a global context

The outline proposed here is meant to highlight the fact that aside from developing into a popular utility, this collaborative database will undoubtedly also be of value to researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines, from performance and cultural studies to International and European studies, and from the social sciences to computer science. A collaborative multimedia database built in line with the ideas discussed here brings together existing elements and preserves as much as possible of the new output being produced. In the process, the project will serve both as an archive and a showcase for new developments in what it seeks to preserve.

1. The National Archives of Malta's mission statement is available at www.libraries-archives.gov.mt/nam/general_info.htm. Accessed 19 August  2009.

2. See Allmalta.com created, maintained and edited by John J. Cassar in Glasgow, Scotland, available at www.allmalta.com. Accessed 19 August 2009.

3. See Music, a Malta-based website by Code Design, available at www.music.com.mt and The Lib66 Homepage of Malta Music created, maintained and edited by Michael Bugeja in Malta at www.lib66.tk. Both sites accessed 19 August 2009.

4. Bay Radio 89.7 FM launched Bay Bands in 2009 as a way for Maltese music acts to submit their tracks to the radio station. See www.baybands.com.mt. Accessed 22 August 2009.

5. Reciprocal Records is available at www.reciprocalrecords.com. Pinkpube is available at www.pinkpube.com. Both websites accessed 19 August 2009.

6. Available at www.myspace.com. Accessed 19 August 2009.

7. Available at www.facebook.com. Accessed 19 August 2009.

8. Examples include Reverbnation at www.reverbnation.com, Last.fm at www.last.fm, SoundClick at www.soundclick.com, and MP3.com at www.mp3.com. All websites accessed 19 August 2009.

9. See www.wikimediafoundation.org. Accessed 17 August 2009.

10. See www.wikipedia.org. Accessed 27 August 2009.

11. For a full history of WikiWikiWeb and other details see http://c2.com/cgi/wiki. Accessed 27 August 2009. 

12. See www.wiktionary.org. Accessed 27 August 2009.

13. See www.wikiquote.org. Accessed 27 August 2009.

14. See www.wikisource. org. Accessed 7 August 2009.

15. See commons.wiki- media.org. Accessed 27 August 2009.

16. Available as a free download at www.mediawiki.org. Accessed 27 August 2009.

17. WYSIWYG stands for 'what you see is what you get'. A web-based WYSIWIYG editor enables users to format text into the way they want it to be seen by others.

18. See www.fsf.org. Accessed 20 August 2009.

19. See www.ina.fr. Accessed 26 August 2009.

20. See www.baylor.edu/lib/gospel. Accessed 26 August 2009.

21. See www.videoactive.eu. Accessed 26 August 2009.

22. For recommendations on space data system standards, see the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems' Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System: Blue Book, Issue 1. Available at public.ccsds.org/ publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf. Accessed 24 August 2009.

Barabási, A. (2003), Linked : How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life, New York: Plume.

Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Networks : How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, Conn. ; London: Yale University Press.

Burnett, R. (1996), The Global Jukebox : The International Music Industry, London: Routledge.

Fricker, K. & Lentin, R. (eds.) (2007), Performing Global Networks, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.

Godin, S. (2008), Tribes : We Need You to Lead Us, London: Piatkus.

Knopper, S. (2009), Appetite for Self-Destruction : The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, New York: Free Press.

Kot, G. (2009), Ripped : How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, New York: Scribner.

Kusek, D. & Leonhard, G. (2005), The Future of Music : Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution, Boston: Berklee Press.

Lagoze, C., Payette, S., Shin, E. & Wilper, C. (2006), 'Fedora: an architecture for complex objects and their relationships, International Journal on Digital Libraries, 6: 2, pp. 124-138.

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leuf, B. & Cunningham, W. (2001), The Wiki Way : Quick Collaboration on the Web, Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

O'Connor, J.K. (2007), The Eurovision Song Contest : The Official History, London: Carlton.

Raykoff, I. & Tobin, R.D. (eds.)(2007), A Song for Europe : Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Rheingold, H. (2002), Smart Mobs : The Next Social Revolution, Cambridge, Mass.: Basic.

Tapscott, D. & Williams, A.D. (2006), Wikinomics : How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, London: Portfolio/Penguin.

Wenger, E. (1999), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A. and Snyder, W. M. (2002), Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge, Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.

Wikström, P. (2009), The Music Industry : Music in the Cloud, Cambridge: Polity.

Zittrain, J. (2008), The Future of the Internet : And How to Stop It, London: Allen Lane.

The Malta Music Memory Project was created in 2010 In direct response to this position paper.

The launch event in October 2010 included a symposium. (see http://www.m3p.com.mt/wiki/M3P:Inaugural_Symposium)

Since 2011, the M3P Foundation, a non-profit voluntary organization, is the legal entity registered in Malta as the operator of this project. The Foundation organized a conference in June 2011 on the theme Ensuring Longevity On Collaborative Online Memory Projects, discussing several points raised in this position paper. (see http://www.m3p.com.mt/wiki/M3P:Inaugural_Conference)

In March 2012, the Media & Memory Research Initiative was launched at the University of Hull's Scarborough Campus in the UK, embracing the academic research around the Malta Music Memory Project, which is now included as a case study in the research three postgradute students within the School of Arts & New Media. The second M3P Symposium was also organized as part of the launching of the Media & Memory Research Initiative. (see http://www.m3p.com.mt/wiki/M3P:Symposium_2012)

As of December 2012, the M3P wiki has over 500 records created by almost 300 registered users. These are searchable and available for open browsing at http://www.m3p.com.mt

Music from Malta varies greatly in genre and while there is such as thing as Maltese music that both uses the Maltese language and Mediterranean musical idioms, most popular music produced now and in the last five decades or so is primarily in styles and genres that are aligned with Anglo-American pop and rock music, and is sung primarily, but not exclusively, in English. This can be seen and heard clearly in this YouTube playlist, featuring most of the video produced by Maltese music artists during 2012:



This playlist comes from the weekly podcast Muika Mod Ieor ma' Toni Sant (which roughly translates to Another Way for Music with Toni Sant). The podcast profiles a broader range of musical styles from Malta and often includes music by Maltese performers based outside the Maltese islands, including artists who are of Maltese descent. The podcast first appeared in 2005 and all the episodes are available to download freely from iTunes or from the Internet Archive (where files are not yet organized into a collection, but they are searchable).