ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the participatory do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to the production and preservation of alternative music histories, and also contributes to the archival turn in feminism. The history of women's archives dates back to the founding of the World Center for Women's Archives in New York and the International Archives for the Women's Movement in Amsterdam in the 1930s. It then examines how feminist music archives create alternative discourses to male-dominated popular music histories and heritage projects by analysing the feminist music archives' online collections. As Feminist music archives mediate counter-memories that draw attention to music cultures as they have been lived and experienced by women, feminists and queers, and make available multiple cultural identities that are embedded in specific localities but vary across space and time. At the same time, the archives communicate "counter-memories" that create alternative discourses to the officially recognised, male-dominated popular music histories and heritage projects.
