Gendered and Endangered Musical Artefacts: Owner-bound Popular Sheet-music Albums in Jazz-age Australasia

The article considers owner-bound albums of popular songs as gendered cultural artefacts within the context of 1920s modernity and music technology, focusing on two women's albums from New Zealand. Such albums, which continued a tradition from the previous century, arguably represent a somewhat different engagement by women with popular music in this era than that represented by the archetypal jazz-age flapper. The individualized selection of songs in the albums demonstrates their importance as a site for identity construction that maintained a social place for popular music away from the jazz palais, the dance band and the gramophone. The albums also foreground the significance of an ‘Australasian’ connection in popular music and entertainment as part of a wider global Anglo-American sphere of popular culture.