Sharing time in another present: temporal matters in uses of the High School Songbook

With the focus on how the past is used by and adjusted to the present, everything is about time in critical heritage studies. But time itself is only implicitly addressed in analyses within the field. This article examines how and with what effects time works at community singing events in Denmark in which the High School Songbook is used. The article suggests that critical heritage studies can benefit from concepts from critical time studies to study the framing and use of time in heritage practices where people relate to the abstract temporal categories of past, present and future. Based on ethnographic field work at 15 events, the analysis shows examples of how a particular ‘event-time’ emerged. In this time, an embodied cultural memory practice characterised by a temporal and affective synchronicity enabled a reproduction and acceptance of specific versions of a common past rooted in nineteenth century ideas of the Danish people as culturally and religiously homogenous.