The Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia

Explores the breadth of musical practice in Australia with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musics at its very heart.

Amanda Harris (Edited by), Clint Bracknell (Edited by)

9781108994002, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 November 2024

450 pages
24.4 x 16.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.77 kg

As a companion to 'music in Australia', rather than 'Australian music', this book acknowledges the complexity and contestation inherent in the term 'Australia', whilst placing the music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at its very heart. This companion emphasizes a diversity of musical experiences in the breadth of musical practice that flows though Australia, including Indigenous song, art music, children's music, jazz, country, popular music forms and music that blurs genre boundaries. Organised in four themed sections, the chapters present the latest research alongside perspectives of current creative artists to explore communities of practice and music's ongoing entanglements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural practices, the influence of places near and far, of continuity, tradition, adaptation, and change. In the final chapter, we pick up where these chapters have taken us, asking what is next for music in Australia for the future.

List of Contributors
List of figures, maps and musical examples
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction and historiography of music in Australia Amanda Harris and Clint Bracknell
Part I. Continuities: 2. How Yolŋu songs recount deep histories of international trade across the Arafura Sea Aaron Corn and Brian Djangirrawuy Gumbula-Garawirrtja
3. Torres Strait Islander musics: tradition, travel and change Karl Neuenfeldt
4. Singing country in the land now known as Australia Clint Bracknell and Lou Bennett
5. The spiritual in Australia: practices, discourse, and transformations 1879–1950 Michael Webb and Christopher Coady
Part II. Encounters: 6. Cultivating a European concert culture in colonial Sydney and Hobart: 1826–40 Laura Case and Amanda Harris
7. An early Australian musical modernism Kate Bowan
8. Country music: Australianizing an American tradition? Toby Martin
9. The development of the Australian pop charts and the changing meaning of the 'number one' single Jadey O'Regan and Tim Byron
10. Artist perspective – didjeridu on the art music stage William Barton
Part III. Diversities: 11. Exclusion and inclusion in Australian metal Laura Glitsos and Clint Bracknell
12. New directions in Australian art music: the curatorial, creative and conceptual Louise Devenish and Talisha Goh
13. Artists' perspectives – experimental and electronic music in Australia Aaron Wyatt and Cat Hope
14. Artist perspective – Australian EDM in the 1990s: finding the magic between the art and commerce of the dancefloor Paul (Mac) McDermott
15. Artists' perspectives – jazz in Australia-the state of play Jamie Oehlers
16. Diverse musics: shaping music through cultural difference Aline Scott-Maxwell and John Whiteoak
17. Chinese music performance in Australia Liu Lu and Catherine Ingram
18. African musics in Australia Bonnie B McConnell and Lamine Sonko
19. Artists' perspectives-Ngarra-Burria Indigenous composers and their interventions in art music practice Christopher Sainsbury and Nardi Simpson
Part IV. Institutions: 20. Iconic musical sites in Australia Amanda Harris
21. Festivals as a forum for Indigenous public ceremony from remote Australia Reuben Brown and Sally Treloyn
22. The Australian children's TV music phenomenon Elizabeth Mackinlay and Katelyn Barney
23. Youth broadcasting and music festivals in Australia Ben Green and Ian Rogers
24. Australian multicultural and folk festivals Michelle Duffy
25. Learning from music in Australia lint Bracknell and Amanda Harris.

Subject Areas: Theory of music & musicology [AVA]