The links between safeguarding language and safeguarding musical heritage

Like other forms of intangible heritage, traditional music cultures have been adversely affected by the major economic, social, and technological shifts of recent decades. The resultant changes in musical contexts, function, prestige, and modes of transmission have jeopardised the vitality and viability of many musical genres. Efforts to actively support the sustainability of endangered music heritage are developing, often in the context of the emerging field of ‘applied ethno-musicology’. The more established field of language maintenance has conceptual, theoretical, and pragmatic parallels with safeguarding music, and these synergies are arguably of great importance to the swift development of effective mechanisms for supporting viable and vibrant music cultures. This paper identifies areas where the maintenance of a language holds the potential to inform pathways towards sustaining endangered musical heritage, and explores one of them in depth – the tension between documenting endangered languages and attempting to revitalise them.