Some Proposals for Reclaiming the Practice of Live Music
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Listening to History: Some Proposals for Reclaiming ABSTRACT The author explores the vibrant, but often hidden, the Practice of Live Music unorthodox musical culture of Australia, recounting little known movements, events, dates, personalities and Aboriginal traditions. He urges Jon Rose the listener to investigate and value this unique and fecund musical history, and in so doing, find models that are relevant to solving the dilemmas of a declining contemporary music practice. Live music encourages direct interconnectivity among ast year at a Sydney university, a musicologist To many living in our current people and with the physical L world upon which we rely for observed, “Everybody knows that music in Australia didn’t re- cut-and-paste paradise, this prob- ally get going until the mid-1960s.” Significantly, this gem was ably seems irrelevant, even an irrita- our existence; music can be life supporting, and in some situa- spoken at a seminar that featured a film about the Ntaria Ab- tion—why bother with the detailed tions, as important as life itself. original Ladies’ Choir from Hermannsburg, Central Australia sonic interconnectivity of the past While there is much to learn (Fig. 1). The denial of a vibrant and significant musical history when you can avoid both past and from the past, digital technology in white as well as indigenous culture has done this country a present by logging into, say, Sec- can be utilized as an interface great disservice. ond Life? I didn’t add ‘future’ to establishing a tactile praxis and enabling musical expression It may well be the prime reason why none of the 20th cen- the list of avoidances, because you that promotes original content, tury’s great musical forms ever originated in Australia. Bebop, can guarantee that the future will social connection and environ- western swing, Cajun, tango, and samba (to name but a few) be mostly a rehash of the past. It’s mental context. originated in lands also saddled with a colonial history. A tiny what we already have in Australia— country like Jamaica has given birth to no less than calypso, everything from faithful copies of ska, and reggae. European Baroque to yet more hip hop to concerts where almost any plink or plonk from the 20th Jon Rose (composer, musician, instrument-maker). E-mail: <[email protected]>. Web site: <www.jonroseweb.com>. century is attributed to John Cage. This article is based on extracts from The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address given Unless we investigate and value our own extraordinary musi- 3 December 2007 in Sydney by Jon Rose under the auspices of The New Music Network. cal culture, the dreaded cultural cringe will continue to define See <mitpressjournals.org/lmj> for supplemental materials related to this article. what constitutes the practice of music on this continent. Fig. 1. Members of the Ntaria Aboriginal Women’s Choir, Hermannsburg, Central Austra- lia. (Photo © Jon Rose 2004) ©2007 Jon Rose LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 18, pp. 9–16, 2008 9 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2008.18.9 by guest on 26 September 2021 I want to describe a story of music, comparatively few remaining traditional Great Depression. These pianos didn’t sometimes positive, often wayward, al- song dreamers. just stay in the capital cities. Dragged by ways interesting, which could point to a There is a unique recording made in bullock dray, lumped on the back of cam- productive future. 1899 of Tasmanian Aboriginal Fanny els, these instruments ended up all over So first, to History. It didn’t start off Cochrane singing into an Edison phono- the country (Fig. 2). so badly, as Inga Clendinnen recalls in graph machine. The photo is stunning Let’s look at how and what they played her book Dancing with Strangers. The too (both are held at the State Library on all these pianos. firsthand account of Lieutenant William of Tasmania). But that is all there is un- Mr. Wallace was presented with various Bradley states that “the people mixed til A.P. Elkin’s first recording in 1949, as pieces of music, which he played extem- with ours and all hands danced together” far as I can ascertain. Audio recordings poraneously [on the piano], introducing [1]. Other dance events followed. Musi- thereafter document almost exclusively occasionally some brilliant variations, which excited much general astonish- cal gestures of friendship also took place. the music practice in Arnhem Land. ment. He ended that performance with The British started to sing. The Aborigi- Along with hundreds of languages, we ‘Currency Lasses’ (as composed by our nal women in their bark canoes “either have rubbed out thousands, if not tens talented towns lady, Mrs. John Paul Se- sung one of their songs, or imitated [the of thousands, of ancient ceremonial and nior) adding to it some extemporane- sailors], in which they succeeded beyond everyday practical songs without a trace. ous variations. (Sydney Gazette, March 1, 1836, p. 3) [6] conception” [2]. Some tunes whistled That recording of Fanny Cochrane is or sung by the British became favourite arguably one of the most important 19th For my own part, as a keyboard player, I had to learn quickly how to fake intro- items with the expanding indigenous rep- century musical artefacts from anywhere ductions, endings, modulations; sponta- ertoire of borrowed songs. Right there at in the world—certainly more important neously interpolate or leave out a section the start, we have a cultural give and take than the recording of Brahms playing his of music; transpose on sight or by ear; from both sides. piano in the same year. With Johannes spontaneously “fill-out” or otherwise In the late 18th century dancing and we still have the notation; without Fan- modify a given arrangement . embel- lishing or otherwise varying each repeti- music, and you couldn’t really have one ny’s voice there would be nothing. And tion of my solo. (St. John Caws, Goldfield without the other, offered significant maybe that’s what we have wanted, “noth- pianist, 1860s, Victoria) [7] levels of communication between indig- ing” to connect us to the horrors of Tas- enous people and the invaders. Dancing manian history. This empirical methodology would was necessary before any exchange of “An impossible past superimposed on sound familiar to any professional musi- gifts or getting down to the business of an unlikely present suggesting an improb- cian who worked in the social and RSL the day—which was not always how do able future” [4]. Here Wayne Grady, in clubs of Australia one hundred years we steal your land without you getting his book The Bone Museum, is describing later. We’ll return to the practical side of violent. Aboriginal mimicry (and gen- the nature of the palaeontologic record, the piano later. eral piss-taking) of the soldiers parading, but he could be describing the culture A read through John Whiteoak’s bowing, and bellowing at each other was of the modern Australian state. I find it a groundbreaking book Playing Ad Lib a method of comprehension, a way of useful key. Let’s unlock some other musi- (from which those quotes were taken) accepting strange behaviour. Dance and cal history that has been documented. presents a strong tradition of orality, and music were the live commentary, the lit- We know that the first piano arrived on- through observations of colonial Vaude- eral embodiment of the story. Records board the ship Sirius with the first fleet. ville, the music hall, the silent cinema, recall that Aboriginal peoples were, up It was owned by the surgeon George Wo- circus, and theatrical events, he exposes to the destruction of their traditional gan. What happened to it is not known, a lexicon of unorthodox music making way of life, the masters of tactile learning but we do know that the import of pianos more akin to the 1960s avant-garde and and the oral transmission of all cultural by the beginning of the 20th century had beyond than repressed Victorian society. knowledge. grown from a nervous trickle to a barely If you like, the colonial 19th century was This early window of cultural opportu- controllable flood. The famous statement a period of fecund instrumental tech- nity vanished, of course, when Australia by Oscar Commetant that Australians nique, music making without the instruc- stopped being perceived as a jail and be- had already imported 700,000 pianos by tion manual. came instead a place of plunder. But this 1888 may be unsubstantiated [5], but the Here is a description of a concert in didn’t mean that music as a prime tool notion of one piano for every three or 1918; it’s Belle Sylvia and the first Austra- of communication became redundant. four Australians by the beginning of the lian jazz band complete with Stroh (that’s On the contrary, just about all aspects 20th century could well be close to the a violin with a horn attachment for me- of colonial life are embedded in the mu- mark. Here are some statistics just from chanical amplification). It’s already in the sical record if you care to look. It’s not the port of Melbourne for that year: im- Australian tradition of mimicry, send up, easy since, until very recently, few histo- ported: 3,173 upright pianos; 1,247 or- and pastiche. The performance included rians ever took the place seriously. From gans. But then by 1909, Australia-wide farmyard and jungle effects, the playing the indigenous point of view, there may it is 10,432 imported pianos; by 1910, of two cornets at the same time, thun- be images of whitefella’s boats in rock 13,912 pianos; by 1911, 19,508 pianos; der, pistol shots, frenetic drumming with art, but we’ll never know what songs and by 1912, 20,856 pianos.