What is the importance of music for regional heritage?

We often think about heritage as being about interpreting and preserving objects and places from the
past for future generations, but music and sound are ephemeral and fleeting. Given that quality,
it may be difficult to know what our region’s music heritage is let alone to figure out ways to preserve
it. There are certainly places, photographs, documents, and recordings that can help, but perhaps the
best way to preserve musical heritage is through continued performance.

The 20^th Annual Calumet Heritage Conference seeks to explore the Calumet’s Musical heritage
through presentations by experts about past and present regional music scenes as well as through
performances by regional musicians. What is the Calumet’s musical heritage and what contributions
has it made to our national musical culture? How can we best interpret our musical heritage?
What are our contemporary music scenes and how do they constitute a living tradition helping to
preserve the Calumet’s Musical Heritage?

We invite you to attend this year’s conference to explore these questions
with us and to hear some great music from the region!