A conclusion wasn't a requirement of the project but as I worked through it I accumulated various thoughts and ideas that I want to put somewhere, even if only so I can revisit them as I continue this course and my work in and around LOD and LAM. Also an academic project without a conclusion feels weird?

Returning to the points I made in the domain study, the lack of diversity around items is I think one of the more important take-aways from this exercise. As it relates to Yancey it's not that there isn't a diversity of items, but rather what is publicly available isn't diverse. As mentioned in the introduction the legal side of his legacy is somewhat complicated - involving an estate and separate foundations. This has led to a lot of items and pieces of Yancey's history being sold for profit or monetized in some way, including eBay auctions of records and releases of post-humous albums. Maureen's donation to the Smithsonian is the one bright note for now, and as far as I can tell it's likely tied to the discovery of a locker in Detroit in the early 2010s that was used by Yancey and contained records, instruments (including the Minimoog), and other items. Partial documentation of what was found in this locker came out online at the time but it's hard to say what has already been sold, or even exactly what was in there. I spoke with Eothen Alapatt, creative director of the estate, during my early research and he told me that the estate itself has little in the way of artifacts or items. The bulk of their work focuses on monetising Yancey's creative IPs to bring the estate out of debt (and back to the family). In 2016, they issued a lost album which was put together from physical master tapes Yancey had left behind. These tapes have just as much historical value as the MPC and Minimoog, if not more. Lastly, in 2019 a close friend and collaborator of Yancey, Waajeed, exhibited a collection of photos he took between 1997 and 1999 that document Yancey's work within the music industry in NYC under the alias John Doe, a period of Yancey's career that remains poorly detailed. As with the album master tapes, these photos feel important and warranting of preservation and documentation.

Regarding the usefulness of LOD approaches to something like Yancey's legacy, and in turn to the wider idea of modern music archiving, doing the modelling got me thinking a lot about how these techniques can be used for visualisation, search, and other digital applications (like museum exhibits). Thinking about the discography, you could arguably attempt to build a full ontological map/model of Yancey's career output, relating to people he sampled, people he collaborated with, labels, etc... There has been some visualisation of Yancey's sampling work in the past but this is an area that feels full of potential considering the importance of sampling to modern music. An important note regarding sampling - any such efforts need to also take into account the dangers associated with revealing too much of what was sampled considering the current state of copyright laws as well as the desire by certain artists to not reveal their source material. With Yancey gone navigating this would require careful consideration and discussion with his family and close collaborators.

There is a lot more to be said and to be honest I'm still learning, reading, and digesting. I do however want to end by touching on some invigorating ideas I came across in Megan Ward and Adrian S. Wisnicki's "The Archive After Theory", from Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019. When I think of modern music history archives, I think of something that isn't like the archives of old, that isn't tied to the past, isn't driven by a white, euro-centric view of culture, heritage, and art. Modern music, in particular hip-hop and electronic music, have taught me to be dynamic, reflexive, and contributive. That is what should be reflected in any effort to capture the historical importance of modern music movements and people like Yancey who helped make them so vibrant and inspiring. As Ward and Wisnicki put it, reflecting on efforts at archival disruption, any such approach must "ask archives not only to react to the past but also to engage with a different sort of activity altogether: to build archives that imagine the future as well as preserve the past."

If you made it this far thank you for reading! If you want to talk more you can find me online (I'm the only person in the world with my name so you won't get anyone else).