Johnson – Jersey/Jèrriais Heritage _______________________________________________________ Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures Volume 2 Number 2 2008 - 73 - LOCALISING JERSEY THROUGH SONG Jèrriais, Heritage and Island Identity in a Festival Context 1 HENRY JOHNSON University of Otago, Dunedin <henry.johnson@otago.ac.nz> Abstract This study is about the use of a local language in music. It shows how music is used in Jersey as a tool to propagate the local language, Jèrriais, to maintain heritage and to create culture and community. In this context, some island activists, and especially local institutions within the heritage industry, are campaigning for the survival of Jèrriais through social, cultural and political means. As a study that is grounded in the field of ethnomusicology, this research looks at the sources, methods and findings of studies of songs using Jèrriais. Within this framework, the sources of tradition are investigated, giving particular attention to a recently instigated (invented) tradition of a Norman fête held annually at a Norman location. The paper shows the use of a minority yet highly significant language in the realm of music making that has the aim of helping sustain cultural heritage in the contemporary age. Music is engaged with the language of the locale, and in contexts that are enmeshed with meanings relating to local heritage, Jèrriais is foregrounded through song as a way of maintaining and developing identity. Keywords Jersey, Jèrriais, language, song, La Fête Nouormande, identity. Introduction The island of Jersey is located in the Bay of Mont Saint Michel about 22 km from the north of France and 135 km south of the Great Britain (Figure 1). Geographically and politically it is one of the British Isles. Jersey is a Crown possession, yet it has a somewhat anomalous relationship with the United Kingdom as a self-governing British Crown Dependency and independent Bailiwick. Along with the other Channel Islands (Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm) 2 , it is not part of the UK, nor is it a colony or part of the European Union. As part of the Duchy of Normandy in the 10th Century, Jersey was included in the Anglo-Norman kingdom when William the Conqueror (1028-87) became the English ruler in 1066. Around a century and a half later in 1204, Normandy was lost to the King of France, Philippe-Auguste (1180-1223), but Jersey and the other Channel Islands maintained allegiance to the English crown. It was from that time that the island had special status as a Crown Dependency, being subject to the monarch in council and not to the British Parliament. 3