Music of Place : the Performance of Identity in Contemporary Australian
Music of Place The performance of identity in contemporary Australian community music festivals
Michelle Elizabeth Duffy Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2001 School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental studies 11
Abstract
This thesis interrogates the ways in which spatialised identities are constituted within a musical event, the community music festival, in contemporary Australia, as exemplified in three specific case studies: the Brunswick Music Festival, the Top Half Folk Festival and the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance. An examination of the literature in such areas as musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology, cultural geography and philosophy established the argument that identity is constituted within dynamic, heterogeneous, and complex social relationships. The basis of this research is that within the framework of the community music festival, identity is constituted within and through the interactions between musician, listener and the various contexts in which these musics are performed, resulting in complex and multifarious sets of meanings that are constantly formulated and reinscribed.
The ways in which the relationships of music, place and identity was interrogated was
through a cross-disciplinary manner, using a number of methodological appróaches in order
to capture the elusive and ephemeral nature of the festival event. The focus of data collection
was on qualitative, interpretive methods and two major methods were used to collect data:
participant observation and interviews. Field notes, photographs, sound and video recordings
of festival events were compiled. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with festival
organisers and promoters, members of local council in festival locations, festival performers
and a sample of audience members. Moreover, the musical and performative aspects of these
events and the argument on which this thesis is based — that a spatialised identity is
constituted in and through the event — required a (re)performance of the researched event.
Two methods were chosen to do this. First, ethnographic field notes were incorporated into
the analysis as a means to present a sense of these festival events. Second, the inclusion of a
CDrom in the presentation of the research was a strategy to signal the significance of the
performative in the creation of spatialised identities. 111
In the case of the Brunswick Music Festival, the spatialised identities arising within the festival were a local constitution of identity based around notions of multiculturalism. The Top Half
Festival illustrated a spatialised identity based on regional and national imaginaries. The
Festival of Asian Music and Dance was self-consciously based on transnational identities, particularly with regards to Asia/Australia relations. The communal identities arising within these events suggest that the identity/place/music relationship is embedded along traditional lines of an ideal community, bounded geographically and in which social relations are characterised by small-scale, personal ties. Yet, within this tradition-based setting, numerous performances demonstrated identities that were created across boundaries and cultural vectors.
Central to understanding the constitution of identity in such a context was the concept of performativity. The identity/identities constituted within the framework of each festival were created out of performative acts that were themselves about the individual's articulations of the complexities of being and belonging. Festival participants understood such performances as operating within a network of identity in which a constantly changing assemblage of expressive and musical forms was nonetheless understood as a coherent whole. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates that the spatial scale of the event has significant influence on the sorts of identities that are constituted and the ways in which they are regulated.
iv
This is to certify that
(i) the thesis comprises only my original work except where indicated in the preface
(ii) due acknowledgment has been made in the text to all other material used
(iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices
signed: ittditt(c-I() 31 OcPk, Zoo/ date: Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the many people who have helped me through my candidature. They are in no way responsible for any errors in this work. My thanks to those people who took part in my research for their interest, patience and especially their generosity, as this made my work so enjoyable. I would like to thank my supervisor, Associate Professor Jane Jacobs, for her insight into and support of my work. During the period of my candidature, many people have read various versions of this thesis, and their comments and questions have been invaluable. First, thank you to Dr Kate Darian-Smith, Dr Ludmilla Kwitko, Dr Graeme
Smith, Professor Susan Smith, Dr Sara Cohen, Michael Cathcart and Dr Lily Kong. Second, I am very thankful for family and friends who not only assisted me in my work, but have provided such wonderful friendship and support: Sally Denning, Jackie Pallister, Jillian Bennet,
Mehmet Mehmet, Natalie Jamieson, Haydie Gooder, Rachel Hughes, Melissa Permezel, Elif
Kendirli, my mum, Denise, father, Patrick, and sisters Robyn and Cathie. Thank you to
Chandra Jayasuriya for preparing the map shown on page 106a. I would like to thank my colleagues at Melbourne Pathology who covered my shifts when I needed time for my research work, especially in the last few months. Thank you to the staff and postgraduate students of the Institute of Popular Music, Liverpool, for their hospitality and interest in my work during my stay there. Thank you, too, to Dr Susan Smith and Nichola Wood for an enjoyable, if hectic, week in Edinburgh. I would also like to thank Russell Evans, Media
Specialist, and especially Bernard Meade, Multimedia Project Officer, both of the Information
Division, University of Melbourne, who assisted me in the preparation of the CDrom that accompanies this work. Vi
Part 1: Thesis Contents
Preface Abstract ii Declaration iv Acknowledgements v List of figures x List of references to accompanying CDrom xi
Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Aim of research 3 1.3 Research approach 4 1.3.1 Music as social practice 5 1.4 Thesis outline 7
Chapter 2: Literature review 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Music and identity 11 2.3 Music and place 20 2.4 Festival 31
Chapter 3: Chasing shadows: methodology and research design 3.1 Introduction 38 3.2 Research methods 40 3.2.1 field sites 40 3.2.2 participant observation 44 3.2.3 interviews 48 3.3 Interpretation 54 3.4 Conclusion 56
Chapter 4: Acts: performing identity 4.1 Introduction 58 4.2 'Multicultural' Moreland 60 4.3 Performing identity: being here and there (1) 67 4.3.1 dialogues with a place called 'home' 67 4.3.2 'not you lot in here!' 72 4.4 Performing the local 80 4.4.1 taking it to the streets 80 4.4.2 mediations 87 4.4.3 marking out identity 92 4.5 Performing identity: being here and there (2) 94 4.5.1 musical acts 94 4.5.2 reconfiguring space 98 4.6 Conclusion: identity effects 102 vii
Chapter 5: Markings: connecting to place 5.1 Introduction 104 5.2 Towards mapping the festival space 108 5.3 Musical practices as community forming practices 111 5.3.1 gathering the folk 114 5.3.2 'no strangers here' 118 5.3.3 inclusivity 122 5.3.4 signs of belonging 124 5.3.5 troubled imaginings 127 5.4 I identity: people and place 129 5.4.1 landscape 132 5.4.2 giving voice to the land 134 5.5 Performing the landscape 137 5.5.1 sonic imaginings 142 5.5.2 reinscriptions 144 5.6 Conclusion: terrains of belonging 146
Chapter 6: Utterances: the becoming-expressive 6.1 Introduction 149 6.2 Performing 'Asia' in multicultural Australia 154 6.3 'We find ourselves again' 156 6.3.1 displacement 157 6.3.2 musical dialogue 164 6.3.3 utterance 168 6.4 Kathak incursion 171 6.4.1 hybrid encounters 176 6.4.2 transgressing borders 178 6.4.3 hearing awry 180 6.5 Conclusion: becoming expressive 185
Chapter 7: Conclusion 7.1 Findings 187 7.1.1 chapter summaries 187 7.1.2 thematic summaries 193 7.2 Future work 196 7.3 Postlude 199
Bibliography i. Primary sources ii. interviews 200 iii. correspondence 202 v. government documents and publications 202 vi. newspaper articles 204 vii. pamphlets and brochures 205 viii. performances and exhibitions 205 ix. performance programs 206 x. public addresses 207 xi. sound recordings 207 iv. web pages 207 v. Secondary sources 207 via
Part 2: Appendices
Appendix 1: Questionnaires 1.1 questionnaire to be completed by performer(s) 1 1.2 questionnaire to be completed by audience member 3 1.3 questionnaire to be completed by a member of the festival committee 4 1.4 questionnaire to be completed by a member for the local council 6
Appendix 2: Participant observations
2.1 diagram illustrating use of venue space 7 2.2 diagram of stage 8 2.3 participant observation: performers 9 2.3.1 schedule for participant observation 10 2.3.2 recording of observations about the music performed 13 2.4 participant observation: audience 14 2.4.1 schedule for participant observation 15
Appendix 3: Letter of introduction 17 Appendix 4: Written information to be given to the subject 18
Appendix 5: Release forms
5.1 release form: questionnaire 19 5.2 release form: photographs 20 5.3 release form: audio recordings 21 5.4 release form: video recordings 22 ix
Appendix 6: Brunswick Music Festival
6.1 interviews: Sydney Road street party 1998 23 6.2 interviews: Brunswick Music Festival concert series 1998 41 6.2.1 Frank Yamma and Shane Howard concert 41 6.2.2 Key Carmody and the House Band concert 45 6.2.3 Music Chittari concert 64 6.3 interviews: festival organisers 72 6.4 interviews: performers 92 6.5 interviews: other 99
Appendix 7: Top Half Folk Festival 7.1 interviews: performers 110 7.2 interviews: festival organisers 123 7.3 interviews: audience 153
Appendix 8: Festival of Asian Music and Dance
8.1 'interviews: performers 175 8.2 interviews: festival organisers 194 8.3 interviews: audience 200 8.4 transcripts from 1996 symposium, 'the effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity 201 z
List of figures
4.1.1 Sydney Road, everyday street scene: Sydney Road/Dawson Street intersection 81a 4.1.2 Sydney Road, everyday street scene: looking north 81a 4.2.1 Sydney Road street party 1998: looking north along Sydney Road 82a 4.2.2 Sydney Road street party 1998: Litter Sisters 82a 4.3.1 Sydney Road street party 1998: audience at La Paella restaurant 82b 4.3.2 Sydney Road street party 1998: Chinese doughnut stall 82b 4.4.1 Sydney Road street party 1999: Brunswick Brass Band 82c 4.4.2 Sydney Road street party 1999: the Magic Pirate storyteller 82c 4.5 Sydney Road street party 1998: Short Circuit 94a 4.6 Sydney Road street party 1998: Muslim women's food stall 100a 106a 5.1 Map of Northern Australia, the Top Half' 5.2 Alma Street, Mt Isa: sign pointing to the Top Half Folk Festival 108a 5.3 Corner of Isa and West Streets, Mt Isa Mines (MIM) in background 111a 5.4.1 Busking in Simpson Street, Mt Isa: Annette Gordon, Gwen Berry, Kerry Sipos 114a 5.4.2 Busking in Simpson Street, Mt Isa: audience 114a 5.5.1 Lunchtime concert, Civic Centre lawns, West Street: audience 116a 5.5.2 Lunchtime concert, Civic Centre lawns, West Street: whip cracking display 116a 5.6 Promotional material: "over fifty nationalities live and work in Mt Isa" 121a 124a 5.7 Logo for the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival 6.1 'Understanding a Hindustani music concert,' Morning ragas program 152a xi
List of references to accompanying CDrom
1. track 1, Brunswick Music Festival menu: Sydney Road street party 1998 88 2. track 2, Brunswick Music Festival menu: La Paella restaurant performers 82 3. track 3, Brunswick Music Festival menu: Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute 99 4. track 2, Top Half Folk Festival menu: LeichhardtSi/t performing 'Copperhead road' 126, 135 5. track 3, Top Half Folk Festival menu: Michael Fix & William Barton, duet of 'Sunrise over Alice' 145 6. track 4, Top Half Folk Festival menu: 'Sunrise over Alice' (1993) 142 7. track 5, Top Half Folk Festival menu: 'Sunrise over Alice' (1996) 142 8. track 2, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu: Sabahattin Akdagcik & Dang Lan, duet of 'Lullaby' 165 9. track 3, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu: 'Lullaby' from East(1999) performed by Dang Lan 165 10. track 4, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu: Sabahattin Akdagcik & Dang Lan, improvised duet 166 11. track 5, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu: Kate Holmes & Sukhbir Sing 173 12. track 6, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu: Satsuki Odamura & Yumi Umiumare 159 X11
The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is
happening a set of relationships, and it is In those relationships that
the meaning of the act lies
(Small 1998: 13)
music, like cartography, records the simultaneity of conflicting orders, from which a fluid structure arises, never resolved, never pure (Attali 1992: 45)
what music is remains open to question at all time and in all places (Boh/man 1999:17) Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
[Miusic plays a role in civil society that is neither natural nor substitutive. Music is
of course itself, even if its way of inhabiting the social landscape varies so much as to
affect compositional and formal styles with a force as yet largely uninventoried in
cultural studies now. In short, the transgressive element in music is its nomadic
ability to attach itself to, and become a part of, social formations, to vary its
articulations and rhetoric depending on the occasion as well as the audience (Said
1991: 70).
The construction and expression of both individual and collective identity has been examined extensively in a number of disciplines, including historical, sociological, economic and cultural studies. Research in areas such as art, film, literature as well as in the social sciences
has attempted to come to some understanding of how identity is created. Recent studies in
musicology, particularly major studies in popular music and ethnomusicology, have
approached the construction of identity through music and lifestyle, where arrangement of
sounds is constitutive of meaning for a particular group of people. However, as many
musicologists have pointed out (Lipsitz 1994; Mitchell 1996; Holman Jones 1998; de Nora
2000), there is no simple relationship between music and meaning. Rather, the interactions
between musician, listener and the cultural context in which these musics are performed result
in complex and multifarious sets of meanings that are constantly formulated and reinscribed.
Therefore, the relationship between music and identity is always ambiguous and
contextualised. Music is non-representational, and therefore the manner in which musical
sounds are put together does not result in a transparent and stable set of meanings. Music, as 2
Said suggests, is nomadic because meaning is assigned to it within the context in which it is performed and heard.
Identity, too, is context-based. Studies in cultural geography have examined the dialectical relationship between place and identity (for example, Keith and Pile 1997; Pile and Nast
1998; Jackson and Penrose 1993; Massey 1994a; Rose 1994). Doreen Massey (1994b) argues that the concept of place arises out of particular moments of intersecting social relations, "nets of which have over time been constructed, laid down, interacted with one another, decayed and renewed" (120). The identity of a place is the product of such interactions, linked to individual and collective memories and is constituted within the heterogeneous relations of the social world. Both cultural geographers and musicologists have turned to music as another means to more fully understand the social world. Geographers have examined the ways in which music constitutes space, conceptualising music as a means of giving order to spatial experience. Studies in music, particularly with regards to popular music, have explored the ways in which performers and audience perceive musical practices so that a formation of particular alliances and a sense of group identity are created. A common approach has been to study song lyrics or determine musical styles and genres (Meintjes 1990; Kong 1995b; Kong
1996a; Sharma et al 1996; Cohen 1997). Music is used as a means of constructing and positioning the individual self, and a broader social self, because it functions both expressively, as it connects the self to the emotional life of the individual, and symbolically, in that music is part of a set of cultural codes operating within the social world. The research that forms the basis of this thesis, then, draws these various streams of inquiry about identity, place and music together in order to examine the ways in which a spatialised identity is constituted through music performance and specifically, the performance of the music festival. 3
1.2 Aim of research
Festivals and events are a time of coming together, of celebrating our identity. A
thriving and committed community with close ties to neighbourhood and the wider
locality, will bring economic and social growth. Local Government has a real role in
fostering this process by facilitating the mechanisms which bring us together
(Moreland City Council, 1997b: 12).
I chose to focus this study on the community music festival as this type of festival brings together essential elements of my research: identity, place and music. Identity, as many researchers propose, is a performative act (for example, Butler 1990; Sedgwick 1995;
Hetherington 1998; Fornier 1999; Ahmed 1999). In the space/time of the festival, community identity is a performative act that is articulated and negotiated through music performance.
The community music festival of late 1990s Australia appears to be intimately related to
notions of a place because the festival is about music making within a given locality. As the phrase 'community music festival' suggests, it is an occasion characterised both by its location
and by the community involved. Festivals Australia, an Australian Federal Government
cultural grant program, defines the festival as "a regular celebration which is organised by
members of the community and has clear and strong community support" (1998: 3). My
interest in the community music festival lies in the possibilities that participation in music
practices offers to the creation of imagined identities and places. The cultural geographer
Susan Smith (1994) uses the term 'soundscape' as a means to rethink how we interrogate the
social world. 'Soundscape' is a concept that draws attention to the different ways of being in
the world. In the course of my research, this concept has helped suggest ways in which we 'be'
and 'become': through engaging with the sounds, and in relation to this thesis, through music.
This thesis examines the 'soundscape' of the community music festival, that is, the production
and consumption of non-mainstream music, within the framework of the music festival in
contemporary Australia. It brings into focus the ways in which connections between place and 4 identity are constituted by and expressed through music performance and raises some essential conceptual issues around the terms 'community,' 'identity' and 'place.'
Music and music festivals can be viewed as processes or performances that act out, create, and negotiate identity within our contemporary pluralistic society. In this work, I am not interested in searching for the origins of the various musical practices in the Australian community, although I am aware these are influential in shaping present performances and audience reactions at performance events. Rather, this study will explore what is constituted, affirmed or challenged in the musical soundscape of Australian contemporary society within the context of the festival.
1.3 Research approach
In examining the relationship between identity, place and music in a cross-disciplinary manner, three festivals were chosen as case studies; the Brunswick Music Festival (in inner suburban Melbourne), the Top Half Folk Festival (held in Mt Isa at the time of my field work) and the Festival of Asian Music and Dance (in inner suburban Sydney). Each festival has particular underlying notions about place, community and identity, notions that intersect to create a space where the who and what of such a nexus are enacted and performed. These festivals promote different kinds of musical practice associated with different cultural and ethnic groups and are inherently about different groups of people who imagine and express place imaginaries in different ways. In the context of the community music festival, the word
'community' is understood as being those people, usually of a specific locale, who share a set
of values and social relations characterised by personal connections. These festivals appear to
reiterate this ideal notion of community, and, even when the community is recognised as
culturally plural, these perceptions overlay the various festivals' frameworks. But, what
exactly is being reflected or affirmed in the musical landscape of contemporary Australian
society, one that recognises itself as having a culturally plural identity, but has difficulty in 5 reconciling its various ethnic, social and cultural components? And what of notions of place?
The cultural geographer Doreen Massey argues that:
[t]he identities of place are always unfixed, contested and multiple. And the
particularity of any place is, in these terms, constructed not by placing boundaries
around it and defining its identity through counterposition to the other which lies
beyond, but precisely (in part) through the specificity of the mix of links and
interconnections to that 'beyond'. Places viewed this way are open and porous (1994a:
5).
Following on from Massey's analysis, it might be speculated that the community music festival is a space of intensification of such imagined connections, a space where participants
negotiate on a number of levels their identification with and sense of belonging to, a place
and/or community. The creation of a place is not only in the music performed but how it is
framed within and by the structure of the festival. Further to this, the quote by Said that opens
this Introduction also points to the possibilities inherent in the music itself; it is transgressive
and able to become a part of various and varying social formations. The aim of this research,
then, is to examine how identity and place are constituted through music performance within
the framework of the community music festival, given the heterogeneous and complex nature
of each.
1.3.1 music as a social practice
The assumption on which this thesis is based is that music is assigned meaning through the
context in which it is performed. The research that I have undertaken explores how this is
achieved within the activities that constitute the community music festival. Although
formalist analyses of structure, such as structuralist music theory exemplified by Schenkerian
(1954) and semiotic analysis, provide much detail on the compositional techniques of a 6 certain body of musical works, this aesthetic concern does not reveal the ways in which meaning is ascribed to musical sounds. My research is therefore grounded in an interpretive sociology, that is, meaning as constructed through collaborative social interactions. My focus is on the performance of music because I believe that sound and music offers another, often neglected, means of understanding the processes involved in being and acting in the world.
An excerpt of dialogue between ethnomusicologists Charles Keil and Steven Feld (1994) expresses clearly how music is a different way of being:
Keil: Jung said that you build a unique self out of ego-stuff, that your stay on the
planet is really all about that emergent self. But music is an even better summarizer of
all that stuff...
Feld: Because music does this in directly feelingful ways. It's the physicality of being
in the groove together that brings out a lot of this emotional co-presence and co-
construction. James Brown's point is great, that we are hearing it before we are seeing
it, and that physically the sense of seeing is something apart, out there, whereas you
feel the resonance of your voice inside your head and chest. The sense of touch, the
sense of feel, the sense of sound are so deeply and thoroughly integrated in our
physical mechanism (167).
It is the ways in which festival participants engage with the musical processes of the community festival that can help elucidate the processes of communal identity construction.
Musical engagement, as Keil and Feld suggest, is an emotional engagement that may lead to a feeling of 'being in the groove together.' Individual and group identities are created through a series of social and musical processes that then come to be understood as constitutive of a community, although throughout this work there is always the question, representative by and
for whom. The community music festival is used as a way of promoting a community's spatialised identity — or at least the predominant image of that community as many of its 7 members would like others to see it — with certain musical styles or genres being associated with certain identities, lifestyles and ideologies.
1.4 Thesis outline
The thesis is presented in three broad areas. Chapter two locates the research question in several bodies of literature. The chapter was structured around three themes: music and identity, music and place, and festivals. Section 2.2, 'music and identity,' examines the ways in which researchers from various disciplines have conceptualised the associations between music and identity. Section 2.3, 'music and place,' traces through studies that focus on the dialectic relationship between music and the construction of place. Section 2.4, 'festivals,' presents studies that have explored notions of participation and process within an event, of which the music festival is one example. This literature reflects the cross-disciplinary interest in investigating the nature of identity formation, and the burgeoning interest in music and space as a means to interrogate the social world.
This is followed by chapter three, which describes the methodologies used in order to
generate the data of my research, as well as a discussion of the ways in which the data will be
interpreted. I want to examine how a music festival is used by a particular group of people to
promote what they believe is that community's identity — or at least how they would like
others to see it — and how this is incorporated into the creation of, and connections to, a
place. This led me to the key questions of my research (refer to Volume 2, Appendix 1): How
is each festival framed and who sets up this frame? What were the aspirations of those who
organised the festival and put the program together? Did participants engage with the festival
as the organisers hoped, or did audience members and performers have different agendas?
What did the music performed mean to those who attended the festival? Two main methods
were used: interviews and participant observation. In addition, I collected newspaper reviews
and articles, commercial recordings of performers, promotional material, photographs and 8 video recordings of and about festival events in order to obtain a richer understanding of who and what was involved in the event of the festival.
In chapter four, I examine how identity or identities are created through the use of musical codes and performances within the framework of the community music festival. The focus of this analysis is the Brunswick Music Festival because of its supposed intention to reflect a community defined as culturally plural. This cultural pluralism, conceptualised by the
Moreland City Council within the framework of multiculturalism, brings into focus the processes and negotiations around notions of identity that contribute to an identifiable, if contested, community identity. My argument is that the community music festival is a performance of identities that acts out notions of belonging. The festival offers a space in which participants can act out a belonging to a community through a series of processes that come to represent what that community is or, at least, believes itself to be. Yet throughout this construction of communal identity there is a tension: how does a community define itself given that its identity is fluid, multilayered and dynamic in nature?
In chapter five, I consider how fluid and contested identities of both people and places are positioned within and by the structure of the music festival. The focus in this chapter is on the
Top Half Folk Festival, a festival rotated annually through a number of towns in the northern region of Australia. The apparent dislocation of festival place and festival community unsettles any simple relationship between location and festival — the annual return of the festival always occurs elsewhere. Yet, paradoxically it is this seemingly `out of place' experience that is the impetus for attempts at some form of communal coherence. My argument here is that the positioning of identities alters space, so creating specific (for the festival participants) defined places. Yet these positionings of identity are themselves active and fluid processes, as festival participants negotiate their own understanding of place, interacting and reacting to the festival's structure and framing. In contrast to the Brunswick Music Festival, the Top Half Festival brings to the analysis a spatialised identity based on regional and national imaginaries. 9
Chapter six extends the analysis of a spatialised identity constituted through music performance, as it is a festival self-consciously based on transnational identities, particularly
with regards to Asia/Australia relations. This chapter works through the event of the Festival of Asian Music, as it presents musical practices and cultures in dialogue with the 'mainstream'
Anglo-Australian culture. The discussion of performances at this festival demonstrates that
hidden in the performance narratives of 'Asia' is potentially destabilising transgressions of cultural performatives.
Chapter seven summarises the thesis in two ways. First chapter summaries are presented and these are followed by a thematic summary of the thesis as a whole. Finally, further research is suggested, particularly with regards to questions that arose around the constitution of spatialised identities through music performance that remain unresolved. This thesis, then, sets out to demonstrate that what a musical performance signifies is dependent on the social and cultural context given to these sounds. Moreover, the musical and performative aspects of these events and the argument on which this thesis is based — that a spatialised identity is constituted in and through the event — required a (re)performance of the researched event.
Two methods were chosen to do this. First, ethnographic field notes were incorporated into the analysis as a means to present a sense of these festival events. These will be found in the body of the thesis text Second, the inclusion of a CDrom in the presentation of the research was a strategy to signal the significance of the performative in the creation of spatialised
identities. I would ask that you take the time to listen as well as watch the performances and sound/image files in conjunction with the thesis text, as the music and performances are, as geographer Nigel Thrift proposes, "a living demonstration of skills we have but cannot ever articulate fully in the linguistic domain" (2000: 235). The minimum system requirements for
viewing this CDrom are either for PCs, Windows 95/NT 4.0 and above, or for Macintosh,
Mac OS System 8.0 and above. You need to have Quicktime 4.0 (or greater) installed. An
accompanying volume of Appendices contains transcripts of interviews referred to in the
body of the text, as well as the sets of questions and schedules used in this work. Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
What music is remains open to question at all time and in all places. This being the
case, any metaphysics of music must perforce cordon off the rest of the world from a
privileged time and place, a time and place thought to be one's own. Thinking — or
even rethinking — music, it follows, is at base an attempt to claim and control music
as one's own (Bohlman, 1999:17).
As discussed in the previous chapter, my research focuses on the ways in which connections between place and identity are constituted by and expressed through music performance, specifically within the framework of the community music festival. As ethnomusicologist
Philip Bohlman (quoted above) suggests, the nature and meaning of music arises from the ways music is contextualised, and that this contextualisation marks out the music as belonging to someone or some group. Bohlman's proposal points to the central themes within the literature I have examined in preparing my own research. First, music is not an aesthetic experience alone but a medium through which the social world is made and remade through various social relations. Work within ethnomusicology, sociology, cultural geography and philosophy have begun to address music in this way. Second, the identity or identities of individuals and groups are actively constructed through the production and consumption of various musical practices and genres. Identity politics intersects with notions of place, and this relationship is illustrated in numerous analyses, particularly in the disciplines of cultural geography, popular music and cultural studies. Finally, there have been a number of studies on the nature of the spectacle — the ways in which space is organised and created as sites of contestation, of ritual and of communal identity formation — and it is within this research area that examinations of festivals have been undertaken. 11
This chapter is structured around three themes crucial to my own research: music and identity, music and place, and festivals. The section designated 'music and identity' examines the ways in which researchers from various disciplines have conceptualised the associations between music and identity. 'Music and place' traces through studies that focus on the dialectic relationship between music and the construction of place. The literature of the third section,
'festivals,' presents research that explores events, in particular the music festival, and investigates such events through notions of participation and process. Although presented within these defined subject areas, this literature demonstrates that issues of identity, place and music are difficult to isolate and are, instead, interwoven and overlapping. These studies make clear that identity and place are intimately connected through the ways in which people create and understand a sense of themselves. Music adds another complexity, another dimension, to an already intricate set of processes, because of its own set of qualities.
2.2 Music and identity
When listening to music, we often use characteristics of the sounds heard to label and identify that music (Negus 1996). Labels such as Irish music, klezmer dance bands, Afro-beat, gansta rap and Latin jazz mark out characteristic sounds within the music that then serve to identify the music with particular groups of people. How has this recognition and labelling of musical sound with identity, be it cultural, national, gendered and so on, been understood and examined?
Early studies in anthropology and ethnomusicology were based on somewhat essentialist assumptions of identity, as researchers attempted to categorise certain patterns of sounds with specific national, cultural or ethnic groups. Anthropologist Alan Lomax (1976) argued that the musical repertoire, especially the songs, of particular social groups corresponded to that group's organisation of its social structure. He proposed that the music of different groups presents a highly patterned and stable sound profile that identifies the social group from 12 which it originated. Music is understood to somehow reflect or represent a group of people, and the research method has been to trace the origins of particular sounds to particular peoples (Frith 1996). The underlying assumption in studies of this kind has been one of homology — in which structural relationships and material and cultural forms — have been challenged in a number of fields (for example, Massey 1994b; Laclau 1995; Mouffe 1995;
Frith 1996). Yet, as anthropologist Steven Feld (1984) acknowledges, there is some correlation between sound structures and social structures. As with language acquisition, we learn to recognise certain musical patterns or conventions as 'correct' (Sloboda 1985). Such conventions constitute a part of our social world and are the means by which we understand reality (Martin 1995).
Contemporary notions of identity formation propose that identity is not a singular set of essential characteristics unchanging over time, but is socially constituted and articulated within specific circumstances and places (Mouffe 1994; Negus 1996). Nor are these multiple identities bounded in an unchanging space. The construction of a place's identity is itself a dynamic process, created out of numerous social relations that connect that place to a much larger social fabric (Massey 1994a). The movement of various populations on a global scale has meant that identity is continually challenged and reconstituted as individuals and groups respond to changing social, territorial and cultural contexts (Appadurai 1991). This change in the conceptualisation of identity has repercussions in the understanding of music and its role in identity formation. Music cannot have an unequivocal relationship with a particular group of people, first, because identity is not a fixed quality and so will be constituted differently in different contexts, and second, music is not a language. As musicologist Susan McClary notes, "[i]t is obviously easier to demonstrate the content (both literal and ideological) of stories and pictures than of patterns of tones, for which most people have no verbal vocabulary and therefore no conscious cognition" (1987: 16). This paradigmatic shift with
regards to the concept of identity has in turn led to a radical rethinking of the dynamics 13 between identity, place and music. It is in the study of so-called 'world music" that these issues have been addressed in an invigorating way. Rather than searching for the origins, traditions and authentic practices of musical culture, much of the research in the world music phenomenon has investigated how various musical genres and styles are a means of responding to social change and consequent changes in the context of the individual and group.
Although not specifically a study of world music per se, Motti Regev's study on Israeli rock
(1992) does illustrate some aspects of the complex relationship between identity formation and the practice of music that has been elucidated in world music studies. Regev writes that
"the 'local authenticity' of local versions of pop/rock is not a natural quality of the music, which springs from it just because it incorporates rock into traditional music. It is rather a meaning produced for that music by interpreters who believe in the reality of that meaning"
(1). Regev's study is a response to what he perceives to be a lack of work on local forms of pop/rock music. He believes studies on popular music have stressed production of popular music as either an expression of political resistance or one of cultural change. As a consequence, such studies have tended to be descriptive with little attempt to theorise the emergence of local forms of pop/rock.2 Instead, Regev argues that the fusion of rock with more traditional music results in a style that is eventually recognised by that group or community as an expression of an 'authentic' musical voice. This is not because the so-called traditional music has some essential quality that denotes the ethnicity of a community, but rather the music has come to have some contextualised meaning for its producers and consumers. Quoting Pierre Bourdieu, Regev writes that the "sociology of art 'has to take as its object not only the material production, but also the symbolic production of the work' ... that
'The musicologist Jocelyne Guilbault (1997) suggests, as do many other cultural theorists (Garofalo 1993; Goodwin and Gore 1995; Barrett 1996; Erlmann 1996) that 'world music' is not a genre but a marketing term for music arising out of a cross- fertilisation between certain Western and non-Western musical forms. Although I agree that in itself world music is not a genre, the term is a useful one in defining this area of academic study.
2 Regev notes one exception, the work of Wallis and Malm (1984), Big sounds from small peoples: the music industry in small countries. 14
'it therefore has to consider as contributing to production not only the direct producers of the work in its materiality, but also the producers of the meaning and value of the work' "' (2).
The incorporation of Anglo-American popular music into local 'traditional' Israeli musical culture, is neither questioned by Regev with regards to the apparent ready acceptance of the
Anglo-American rock aesthetic nor does he discuss any possible subversion or forms of resistance to this made by Israeli musicians. Although subtitled 'a study in the politics of local authenticity,' Regev's paper lacks an analysis of the politics of identity involved in the creation of (popular) music. Instead he depicts the pop/rock aesthetic as unproblematic and inevitable — Israeli musicians create an Israeli rock genre simply through the adoption and legitimisation of the rock aesthetic by the local community. Regev's argument, that it is the adoption of particular musical forms eventually recognised by a group or community as an expression of an 'authentic' musical voice, is significant in understanding the relationship between music and identity. The construction of musical styles such as Israeli rock music are often not some naïve appropriations but rather reflect the making and remaking of alliances between communities or serve as sites in which to experiment with political and social identities. It is the context in which these musics are created and performed that produces identity and has meaning for its participants.
The musicologist Jocelyne Guilbault (1997) focuses on the constructed meanings that are given to what is known as world music, and it is through this approach that she believes quite different interpretations and models for analysing the 'new presences' in the West are made evident. She argues that by questioning the creation of meanings it allows "us to move beyond the quest for narratives of originary and initial subjectivities, and to address new questions that acknowledge the complexity and fluidity of meanings involved in the act of constructing and rearticulating identities through music" (32). There is no longer a search to plot out the diffusion of a particular folk music, but the focus is on the ways in which music is used to create the identity of a group. Guilbault's proposal moves away from the identification and 15 categorisation of the music of stabilised cultures, instead focusing on the processes by which musical cultures are "constituted and continually reformulating and realigning themselves ... on what have been called points of articulation and rearticulation" (34). This construction of a musical identity does not rely on a set of 'authentic' sounds from a fixed cultural group, linked through time to the past and in space to a point of origin. Instead, it is how a particular group or community identify with that sound and articulate a sense of belonging through its expression. Guilbault's proposed means of studying such musical practices, then, has implications in examining the constitution of not only identity but also place.
Veit Erlmann's account (1996) offers yet another way of thinking about identity and music.
His study points to the audiences of music as the site of the creation and negotiation of identity. Erlmann also examines world music, noting the significant position of the West in the consumption of varied musical practices, in particular the targeting of audiences by multinational companies. World music is, as Erlmann defines it, a "new aesthetic form of the global imagination ... the total reconfiguration of space and cultural identity characterising societies around the globe" (468). Music industry corporations mould national and cultural identities around the consumption of particular musical forms (468). Yet, while offering choice with regards to consumption (and so to notions of identity construction), the world music phenomenon concurrently unsettles the West's centrality. It is a site of both performance and consumption of difference. In developing this idea, Erlmann draws on
Frederic Jameson's notion of difference. Jameson (1991) argues that the production of difference is an intrinsic part of capitalism as its existence is maintained, not destroyed, by variations in cultural production. Within the framework of global production, music operates within 'highly changeable "border zone relations" (Erlmann, 1996: 474). In this framework, performers "constantly evaluate their position within the system,' rather than the music displaying some essential source of difference, and so identity, in itself' (474). However,
Erlmann notes that this is not the framework in which world music has been examined. World music becomes the "soundscape of a universe which, underneath all the rhetoric of roots, has 16 forgotten its own genesis" (474). Rather than creating a space for the study of the tension between a total system and various local cultural practices, non-Western musics are characterised and consumed within Western frameworks. In contrast, Guilbault's analysis maintains that, although part of a marketing strategy of the West, musical practices described as 'world music' can potentially be sites of resistance because they are engaged in the
"dialogic, performative 'community' of a [musical culture)" (1997: 40).
What is significant about this scholarship is that it points to the ways in which it is the dialogue — the 'points of articulation' to use Guilbault's term — along with the fluidity of meanings in musical practice, that create identities. The ways in which musical practices are perceived by performers and audience lead to the formation of particular alliances and the creation of a sense of group identity. Guilbault argues that to understand the relationship between identity and music, it is necessary to think about the reasons particular music practices are adopted and the associated meanings that are given to them. This focus, she believes, "allows us not only to examine the processes involved in the construction of identity but also to acknowledge the performative aspects of identity and thereby its relational character." Furthermore, she argues this will ensure "researchers ... avoid totalising experiences and 'fixing' cultures as well as subjects" (35).
The conceptualisation of the relationship between music and identity as proposed through the literature on world music provides a framework for understanding the creation of identity within the music festival. The music festivals I have chosen as case studies bring into the time-frame of the festival diverse musical styles and genres —juxtaposed within a single festival — and this was one of the reasons they were selected. Identity is, as Kevin
Hetherington argues, "articulated through the relationship between belonging, recognition or identification and difference" (1998: 15). In my research, identification is articulated through the music performed, yet, this identity is not singular, nor definite. As Erlmann suggests in relation to world music, the border zone relations in which different musics are performed are 17 zones of contestation and negotiation between different groups with different agendas. The official discourses of those groups controlling the festival operate to produce an official
'imagined' community, which the festival is then planned to address. Yet the transitory nature of the event — the brief encounters and exchanges occurring within the festival space — produces other ways of being, resulting in a performative set of identities that are constituted at the time of the festival and in that place. Such processes produce different and often conflicting configurations of identity, place and music.
Another aspect of the identity/music relationship that this literature raises is the issue of performativity, that is, the performative aspects of identity that symbolically place an individual within a particular group or community. The creation and performance of music is one means to enact that identity within the space of the festival performance. The work of geographers David Bell and Gill Valentine (1995) analyse the performative constructions of gender and the sexed self. Drawing on the work of feminists Judith Butler (1990) and Eve
Kofsky Sedgwick (1991), Bell and Valentine look at how performativity is a repetitive act that codifies identity and how that codification informs one's subjectivity. Performative choices, they argue, are part of claiming the sexed self as a site of resistance. In this way, identities performed within the music festival may be sites of resistance and subversion to the officially defined festival identity.
The work of sociologist George Lipsitz (1997) illustrates the subversive role of performers and artists. He argues that experimenting with identity "does violence to the historical and social constraints imposed on us by structures of exploitation and privilege" when we ignore its social and political repercussions (62). Lipsitz examines the political and social use of musical practices outside of one's own culture, drawing on Gayatri Spivak's notion of
'strategic essentialism' (1993). Spivak describes this as a practice that overlooks the heterogeneity of the group in order to build unity around common needs and desires. Lipsitz turns this idea around, suggesting that in cases where it is too threatening to express one's 18 identity too openly, a 'strategic anti-essentialism' takes place. This "gives the appearance of celebrating the fluidity of identities, but in reality seeks a particular disguise on the basis of its ability to highlight, underscore, and augment an aspect of one's identity" (62). Lipsitz illustrates this with the use made by young Maori and Pacific Islanders in New Zealand who adopted African-American styles and slang because they perceived African-Americans as having a very strong image with which they could identify (62-63). Lipsitz's work builds on
Regev's idea that musical forms can be adopted and ultimately recognised as an 'authentic' expression of identity, by illustrating the political underpinning of such actions.
Music performance can readily be used as a site of subversion because of the ambiguous nature of meaning in music. As Edward Said (1991) has argued, music is transgressive because its meaning is articulated within the context in which it is heard. The examination of
Paul Simon's Graceland album (1986) by musicologist Louise Meintjes (1990) elegantly illustrates the subversive, nomadic yet contextual relationship between music and identity outlined thus far. Arguing that the album operates as a sign principally interpreted through the notion of collaboration, Meintjes then examines how various groups both within and without
South Africa use this collaborative musical product to lay claims to a national identity and to legitimate their presence in South Africa. She argues that these claims can be made because there is an ambiguity in the political and social positioning of the music, helped in part from
Simon's lack of a public political stance, so the music of Graceland allows multiple interpretations. Meintjes also observes that Simon links and integrates various musical and
linguistic styles that serve as a sign system signalling Black South African traditions. Musical style is defined by Meintjes as "an intuitive, felt, social feature expressing, forming and
representing a social coherence system" (43). As sociologist Tia DeNora (2000) suggests,
music is a form of organising experience, and, in the case of the Graceland album, an
experience of belonging. Musical collaboration — the ways in which Simon intertwines
music traditions and styles of, for example, Black South African urban genres of the 1940s,
Zulu choral practices and his own lyrics — results in a layering of signs that point to specific 19 historical and social networks but also serve to create a new context. Meintjes argues that this musical collaboration is equated with social collaboration, so that the project of Graceland
"allows one domain to collapse into the other so that the two domains can be experienced as one and the same — even if only for the duration of the music, or the moments during the listening experience" (48). Applying ethnomuscologist Steven Feld's notion of interpretive moves (1984) to her analysis, Meintjes suggests that the listener is faced with a number of tasks upon hearing this music that then positions the listener's identity and sociopolitical position in terms of race, class, political orientation and language group.
It is through such interpretive moves that various competing claims are made on this music and the meanings assigned to it. Meintjes argues that White South Africans use the music of
Graceland as links to indigenous Black traditions. As she argues that:
[b]y expressing a claim on these traditions, they [white South Africans] are able to
legitimate their own identity as local and to construct a history for this local identity.
The cementing of a local identity is a politically important move for Whites. By
incorporating traditions and other signs of indigenous, subordinated groups into their
own identity, they not only establish a place for themselves in South Africa, but they
also diffuse the potency of those traditions and signs for the subordinated groups. As
these signs become emblems representing the nation as a whole, their value in marking
distinct identities within the nation weakens. In this way the dominant faction reduces
the potential of using these signs in the process of resistance (51).
White South Africans `hear' a shared history with Black South Africans that enables them to
then assume links for themselves through the black musicians' traditions and history. Music's
effects, as DeNora (2000) point out, is the result of how it is heard and by whom, the
memories and associations that are aroused in the listener, as well as the circumstances of
how it is heard, so that place is made and remade, through such interpretive strategies. 20
However, Meintjes bases her analysis on the interpretive strategies of 'professional' listeners.
Using the reviews of the Graceland album published in print media, such as the London
Times or the South African monthly magazine Pace, Meintjes links the stylistic and musical styles of Simon's songs to more general Black and White South African modes of listening.
Meaning is given to this music through this public discussion, rather than through the listening strategies of 'everyday' listeners. Even so, the significance of Meintjes' study to my research is that place becomes essential in understanding how identity is created. Meintjes explores the complexities in the configurations of music, place and identity that elucidates the numerous and politicised connections that arise out of the music experience.
The literature discussed so far indicates that place and how it is conceptualised has repercussions in the relationship between music and identity. Musicologist Jocelyne Guilbault asks, "[w]hat is the relation between musics, a populations group's identities, and the issues of ethnicities?" and suggests that "[c]onfronting these complex realities calls not only for a redefinition of culture but also for a redefinition of bonds, boundaries and borders" (1997:
34). In the following section, I examine how a number of researchers have addressed the relationships between music and place. Early studies often have had an underlying assumption of place that is derived from a set of essential characteristics distilled from some intrinsic nature, that then gets expressed through music. However, My interest is in the more recent studies of the relationship between place and music, which demonstrate place as unbounded, multifarious and unfixed in terms of an identity.
2.3 Music and place
The concept of place has been addressed extensively in geographical and sociological
literature (for example, Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Giddens 1990; Lefebvre 1991; Rose 1993;
Massey 1994a and 1994b; Keith and Pile 1997; Pile and Nast 1998; Jackson and Penrose
1993). With regards to my research, the work of the geographer Doreen Massey (1994a; 21
1994b) has influenced how I have approached conceptualising the relationships between music and place. Massey rejects the idea that places are bounded, singular and fixed in terms of an identity. Nor does she conceive that the identity of a place is derived from a set of essential characteristics distilled from some intrinsic nature. Instead, the identities of place are always in flux and changing. Massey argues that "the particularity of any place is constructed not by placing boundaries around it and defining its identity through counterposition to the other which lies beyond, but precisely through the specificity of the mix of links and interconnections to that beyond" (1994b: 5; italics in original). The meaning and identity of a place is continually negotiated, "a vast, intricate complexity of social processes and social interrelations" (1994b: 5) drawing on both contemporary and historical notions of that place.
It is through sets of social relations that a sense and an identity of 'place' are constructed.
In their introduction to an edited collection of essays, The Place of Music (1998), the geographers Andrew Leyshon, David Matless and George Revill argue that space and place are not the sites in which music occurs or through which music diffuses but that space and place are formed and created through music and sound. They write that:
[t]he dynamics of musical production are inherently social and political, coercive and
collaborative, concerned both with identity formation and the establishment and
maintenance of social groupings ... The mobility of music, its particular qualities that
enable it to inhabit different times and places thanks to reproduction in performance,
by recording, and through various forms of electronic transmission, raise issues of
spatial scale and the role of music in mediating between 'a power centre and its
subjects' (2).
Until recently, studies that examined the relationship between music and place fell into two
broad categories. Much research has tended to focus on either the diffusion of musical styles
and genres (Lomax 1976; Carney 1997), or the ways in which music, and particularly song 22 lyrics, evoke images of particular places (Lehr 1983; Kong 1995, 1996; Kong and Yeoh 1997;
Weintraub 1998). Musicological and cultural studies research have explored the ways in which musical styles and genres come to be recognised as representative of 'nation' or ethnic, cultural and subcultural groups (for example, Forsyth 1911; Levy 1983; De Gorog 1989;
Finkelstein 1989; Gerard 1998; Grace and Haag 1998). In an Australian context, in which my research is based, musicians and composers within both so-called classical music and popular genres have sought to express a distinctly 'Australian' sound. Composers have often consciously created this sound as a response to aspects of the Australian landscape (Tunley
1971; Hannan 1982; Carmody et al 1991; Pickering 1997; Cumming 1997).' For example, in her study of the history of Australian composers, musicologist Judith Pickering (1997) argues that this attempt to create an Australian music reflects the cultural processes of settlement and interaction with the environment. She notes that from the late nineteenth century Australian composers began to use the musical practices of indigenous Australians or Asian musics to express a sense of Australian-ness and regionality.4 Composers incorporated non-European techniques, instrumentation and music to express a sound that conjures up a sense of a particular imagined place called Australia. The Australian composer Moya Henderson
explains this influence of the land as part of her role as a composer, one where she believes
herself to be:
a dealer in myth ... each of us is creating his or her mythology. We have the privilege,
in this society, to present to our listeners and to the world our way of seeing things ...
The air that I breathe is Australian, oceans that are around me, the birds that I hear
3 For example, Peter Sculthorpe's 'Kakadu' (1988) and 'Mangrove' (1979); Ross Edward's 'Yarrageh' (1989); 'Kumari' (1980); and Clive Douglas's Terra Australis' (1959) and 'Kaditcha' (1940)).
` An 'Australian' sound has at numerous times been mediated through use of particular instrumentation and sound structures appropriated from indigenous Australian music. In the late 1930s and 40s the Aboriginal term jindyworobak, meaning to join or annex, was adopted by a group of writers who sought to create an Australian literary tradition that emphasised Australia's landscape, history and traditions. Indigenous Australian languages and cultures were a chief source of their inspiration. Composers who worked to these ideals included Clive Douglas (1903 - 1977), and John Antill (1904 - 1986) (Penbarthy 1991; Currie 1991). This use of non-European musics to create some an identifiably Australian sound continues in contemporary 23
singing, the rain forest I walk through, this is my territory. Or from an Aboriginal
perspective: this land owns me, and I see it as my privilege and my debt of gratitude
to write my music about these themes (quoted in Carmody et al, 1991: 4).
However, what is lacking in the studies and debates in the literature are the ways in which this construction of place — as a number of musicologists, cultural geographers and cultural theorists have pointed out — is the role of music in the construction and understanding of that imagined place, and subsequently the creation of identity (Stokes 1994; Smith 1994, 1997;
Kong 1995, 1996a, 1996b; Leyshon et al 1995).
Cultural geographer Lily Kong notes that studies in geography have focused on the spatial distribution of music as a cultural form, in particular with regards to notions of diffusion and containment. Further, the distinctions made about the elements of this soundworld — how sound is classified as noise, as music and as silence — are as cultural geographer Susan Smith notes, politically motivated: "the art of appropriating and controlling noise ..: is in short, an
expression of power" (1999: 3; refer also to Attali 1992). Kong argues that this focus on spatial distribution fails to recognise the social and cultural contexts in which music is
produced and consumed, nor does this model consider the intersections and interactions
occurring between local and global forms of music production. She criticises such a
framework because it does not allow for music's role in how space is experienced and place
constructed. In her work on popular music in Singapore, Kong (1996a; 1996b) examines how
the place of Singapore is conveyed through musical and textual references to the social life of
Singapore. In her analysis of the works by independent Singapore musicians such as Dick Lee
and groups such as Swirling Madness, Kong focuses on the lyrics, style and instrumentation
of their music to illustrate how images of Singapore are evoked. She demonstrates that the
place of 'Singapore' is signified through the use of the rhythms and instrumentation of the
practice, as Patricia Sherwood's (1997) discussion of the alternative lifestylers and their use of the didjeridu as a means of connecting to place demonstrates. 24 various different ethnic and cultural groups resident in Singapore, as well as through the juxtaposition of their languages (Malay, English, Chinese) and the distinct form of English used in Singapore, 'Singlish.' These aural sounds of place accompany a lyric content that tells of a distinctly Singaporean society; such as city's the cuisine and its multiracial character. As
Kong herself recognises, however, many of her studies of music and the place of Singapore do not explore how music is consumed — how listeners, rather than the producers of music, engage with the aural images and narratives that circulate within the national imagined space of 'Singapore.' Nor do these studies examine the ways in which music is performed. Kong focuses on the textual elements of music, in particular the lyrics and the ways in which they are displayed through the sounds of voice and timbre, with particular emphasis on the sorts of meanings that have been assigned to it in the context of nation and geographical place. In this, the production of music articulates the place of the local within the network of global consumption. Her study of music used in events that celebrate an officially defined Singapore reveals how the same music can function in often conflicting ways (1995, see also Kong and
Yeoh 1997). Kong and Yeoh interviewed participants attending a National Day parade in
Singapore and found that various alternative readings were ascribed to the event. Music was used to create an official, imagined Singapore nation, so engendering national pride and civic obedience, but this meaning was also subverted, so challenging these state forms of control.
The subversive potential of music is taken up by Gill Valentine (1995) in her study of the music of kd lang and its consumption by a lesbian audience.
Valentine writes that the consumption of music "demonstrates not only the power of music to articulate sexual identities and communities but also its ability to facilitate the production of sexualised space ... in so doing, it also highlights tensions between the intentions of an artist in producing a particular sound and the way that the music is read by audiences" (474). A marginalised community can create a space for itself through the active consumption of particular musical styles and genres, yet, it is not the acoustic qualities of the music itself that creates this space, but the meaning given to these sounds. Valentine writes that it is the "fluid 25 dynamism of music [that] appears to be one of [music's] most important space-producing qualities" (483). In the case of kd lang, her music is understood as 'lesbian' because it is consumed within a lesbian framework.
The consumption of music, that is, how listeners imagine place, has been examined by studies in popular music research. This area of inquiry has been more influenced by linguistic, semiotic and musicological traditions rather than the social sciences (Cohen 1993). This influence has meant sources and analyses have primarily been text based, and do not capture the nature of music as a social process. One way of capturing the performance of music is through ethnographic studies. Cohen has published a number of ethnographic studies that examine music production and consumption of music in Liverpool, UK (1993, 1994, 1995).
Cohen argues that an ethnography of music "should emphasise, among other things, the dynamic complexities of situations within which abstract concepts and models are embedded"
(1993: 123). Drawing on the work of Ruth Finnegan (1989), Cohen proposes conceptualising the processes of music as musical pathways, "a series of known and regular routes that people choose to keep open, maintain, and extend through their activity, hard work and commitment
... they overlap and intersect, and people leave and return to them" (1993: 128).5 Cohen's detailed studies demonstrate the reciprocal relationships between place and music, and, as with the work of Kong, demonstrates how the identity of a place — how it is imagined — operates within the structures and processes of music. In her study of the Beatles and the city of Liverpool (1997), Cohen argues that "music reflects aspects of the city in which it is created, hence "different cities make different noises" (93). However, music also "produces
the city, influencing social relations and activities in the city, people's concepts and
experiences of the city, and the city's economic and material development" (93). She suggests
5 However, Cohen points out that ethnographic studies also have their limitations. Such projects are usually small-scale and involve face-to-face interaction between researcher and subjects, requiring a period of time in which the researcher and subject establish good relations, as well as the investment of time and emotion. 26 that in this music/place relationship there is a dialetical process that influences and also creates a concept of 'place.'
As with Kong's examination of Singaporean pop lyrics, Cohen works through the ways in which the music and lyrics of the Beatles have constructed an image of Liverpool, which in turn have influenced how Liverpool is perceived by both its inhabitants and its visitors.
Further to this, Cohen argues that the ways in which people move around and experience the city of Liverpool, visiting specific sites associated with the band, is a means for these people to connect with the performers. In this way, people define themselves — and others — around the relationship they have to the Beatles that is enacted through this physical movement, a mapping out of the Beatles onto that of city of Liverpool. This identifying process is one
"involving the interaction between people and relations of kinship, friendship, and fandom that bind them to places physically, conceptually, emotionally" (100).
The significance of encountering place both physically and through the experience of music suggests that there is more to the ways in which place and identity are constituted through music than merely through sound associations. In a study of Jewish immigrants in Liverpool
(1995), Cohen's analysis demonstrates that maintaining musical practices, particularly in immigrant communities, is a means to create security and stability. The experience of migration exaggerates attachment to a romanticised homeland, and, for the Jewish community, social relations are framed by music practice. Music (re)establishes and defines the migrant community through its association with events such as weddings and religious festivals. What this study points to is the need for active engagement in music practices that reinscribe identity and place. But, as migrant groups are, almost by definition, 'other,' they introduce tensions and challenges to the place/identity configuration. The construction of identity is itself a response to difference, a recognition of an 'us' and 'them' (Mouffe 1995). As
Cohen argues, "the music and the place are thus contested symbols, and both can be described as cultural maps of meaning, a principal means by which identities are constructed, sustained, 27 and transformed, and powerful sources of belongingness and division" (1995: 102). Music can evoke or represent a physical production of space because music is embodied — performing music is a physical activity requiring listeners. Music practice creates its own time and space, taking people out of 'ordinary time' and "we often experience a greater intensity of living when our normal time values are upset ... music may help to generate such experiences" (quoting musicologist John Blacking 1995: 444). Cohen's studies bring into this research of music and place the role of the listener (or, in terms used by Kong, the consumer).
Music is a conceptual and symbolic practice and music can be interpreted in idiosyncratic ways by individual listeners, but collective meaning is also attributed to musical sounds. In this way, music can be associated with places and particular images, emotions and meanings, as well as a way of shaping social action. Yet, music can also be used to erect boundaries, to maintain distinctions between groups of people.
A study of the northern soul scene in Britain, that does draw on an ethnographic approach as proposed by Cohen, also demonstrates the ways in which Massey's conception of place (as well as Guilbault's idea of articulations as a means to understand the relationship between music and identity) can be deployed in analysis of a music scene (Hollows and Milestone
1998). Cultural theorists Joanne Hollows and Katie Milestone examined the soul scene in northern England and its appropriation and redeployment of identity formation of the soul music produced by Black American musicians in the 1960s. Hollows and Milestone suggest that this scene creates an identity for its practitioners that privileges a regional identity but is one based on interregional affiliations at a global level. They argue that "[t]he sense of regionality in northern soul is produced out of material circumstances — the clubs, the fans, and so on — but also depends on other regional 'reference groups,' and 'on ideas and fantasies
that are themselves mediated globally' through international flows of images" (quoting Simon
Frith, 91). The northern soul scene's identity is created out of its geographical locality
(northern England) as well as from its links to cultural practices arising in another
geographical location, Detroit and other Rust Belt cities in America. Yet it is not simply place 28 imaginaries that create the soul scene. Hollows and Milestone understand the scene as one that occurs within the social relations that arise from the engagement with cultural and musical participation. Although the notion of 'community' is one way to conceptualise this engagement, the authors argue that 'scene' better explains the set of social relations that produce "a code of practices and symbols that serve as the basis for identification" (85).6
Place is important in the creation of northern soul identity, not only through the soul scene's geographical location and affinities, but because the soul community is produced through travel and attachment to particular places within northern England. Key sites in the soul scene are Blackpool, Morcambe and Cleethorpes, all places that require members of the scene to travel extensively to attend particular events. Hollows and Milestone argue that this sense of a dispersed community and the soul scene as a migrant scene connects with the sense of displacement and migration in the lyrics of the soul music repertoire; the music and lyrics have meaning for those who take part. The authors write that "it is the very act of travel that is crucial to the scene, building on the ritualistic pleasure of 'going out' ... [A]n act of pilgrimage allows both for identity renewal and a symbolic escape from everyday life" (95).
These relationships and connections are mechanisms through which the soul scene "both produces and reproduces a collective history in which place-images are central"(95). What is significant in this study is the relationship between the engagement with music as produced
and consumed in place(s), and what Hollows and Milestone define as the constructed 'place-
myth' from which musical practices are drawn.
The process of creating identity and space is not, then, a passive activity. These studies make
clear that music is a medium through which space and identity are constituted. Attending a
concert is a visual as well as aural experience, a place "where the music is mediated through
the body of the performer, through sound, images and movement" (Valentine, 1995: 478). Yet
6 Drawing on Schmalenbach's çoncept of the Bund, the authors reject the term 'community' because of its restrictive sense of meaning. They argue that 'community' has associated notions of ascriptive social relations, geographical proximity and tradition. Brawl allows a much more open and fluid framing of these types of musical activities (85). 29 this means that engaging with music is an embodied act that is transient, it occurs in a place and time. Drawing on Benedict Anderson's notion of the 'imagined community' (1983),
Valentine argues that members of the audience only "temporarily mentally perceive a bond of comradeship ... their sense of community is therefore built on a fleeting symbolic fiction of contrived intimacy and unity" (479). These sorts of ethnographic studies suggest that in comprehending the music/place/identity configuration it is necessary to determine how those involved understand and describe the experience of music. Music seems to be a means of giving order to that experience, and a number of researchers (Middleton 1990; Guilbault
1997; DeNora 2000; Smith 2000) have proposed that music is a medium in which social agency can be enacted. Sociologist Tia DeNora (2000) argues that musical forms can be conceptualised as devices that organise experience, as referents for action and as a medium in which feeling and knowledge are formulated. Music then is a practice that can inform, create and shape perceptions of place because it is a means of organising the experiences of place as well as providing the conditions of that experience. This way of thinking about the musical experience parallels the concept of place as a point of numerous social intersections and interactions (Massey 1994a) that get articulated through music (Guilbault 1997). It also moves towards an understanding of the engagement in musical events as the 'doing' of music that cultural geographer Susan Smith argues is central to comprehending the music process.
Susan Smith (1994) argues that while art forms such as painting and literature have been part of the geographical study into the imaginings of place, music has not. Smith questions this silence on an art form that is "inseparable from the social landscape" when "music is integral
to the geographical imagination" (238). Music is significant to the project of geography
because sound is more allied to the emotional and intuitive qualities of social life, aspects that
are missing from the visual and rational modes of study. What can be known from the sound
world may not be accessible from the visible world (Smith 2000). Smith also critiques the
work of ethnomusicology because of what she sees as its pre-occupation with the exotic
soundscapes of non-Western worlds. Smith agrees with the argument put forward by the 30 musicologist John Shepherd (1991), that music can illuminate the nature of relationships between individuals and the environment. As suggested by post-structuralist conceptualisation of the construction of place and identity, there is no stable, fundamental linking between music and place, it is the ways in which people — be they performers, listeners, composers — constitute place through music. Understanding how people organise experience through music is a means to interrogate identity and place in the face of the contemporary world, and the processes that define those places, such as globalisation and the transnational flows of people and goods. Because of these processes, the 'exotic' is no longer something to visit but part of the daily ethnoscape, the "landscape of persons who make up the shifting world in which we live" (Appadurai, 1991: 192). Smith suggests that one means of studying the processes of the soundworld is through the notion of performance, as musical performance "is a whole web of relationships, and these are anchored as much on those who listen as on those who make the sound" (Smith 2000: 633). Smith's focus on performance, as she herself acknowledges, requires a shift in thinking, as such a study is about experience, what she calls 'the doing,' rather than the study of a fixed, bounded and visualised subject.
This approach suggests a means of conceptualising the relationship between music, place and identity in ways that meaning occurs within the time-space of the event, emphasising what geographer Nigel Thrift (2000) conceptualises as immediacy and presence. That is, place and identity are constituted through music in the very acts of people engaging with the event of the musical performance. Meaning arises "in the direct significances of practices ... and the generation of signs grasped in practice" (217). Thrift argues that:
[t]he distribution of space-times is complex and the response to this complexity is not
theoretical but practical: different things need to be tried out, opened up, which can
leave their trace even when they fail. Space-times very often provide the 'stutter' in
social relations, the jolt which arises from new encounters, new connections, new
ways of proceeding (222). 31
Using performance as a conceptual framework — even with the associated problems of trying to grasp the ephemeral and unstable, to say the unsayable and write the unwriteable — is a means to comprehend what is occurring in the music/place/identity set of relations. In the case of my research, these sets of relations are constituted within the framework of the community music festival, and the next section explores the ways in which the festival has been examined.
2.4 Festival and spectacle
As stated in the introduction to this thesis, the specific music event on which I have focused is the music festival. My interest lies in Australian music festivals, however, a number of studies point to ways in which the festival event (although not necessarily music festivals) may be understood with regards to issues of space, identity and performativity. The underlying assumption that lies behind the festival event is that it functions as a community building activity, be that a community with a long established connection to a particular place, or one that has had a more recent migration and settlement (Auerbach 1991a; Lavenda 1992; Purdue et al 1997). The festival is, as anthropologist Robert Lavenda describes it, "people celebrating themselves and their community in an 'authentic' and traditional way, or at least emerging spontaneously from their homes for a community wide expression of fellowship" (1992: 76).
This focus on a celebration of 'community' within a festival framework is particularly evident in places of cultural and ethnic diversity, where participants view social cohesion as the necessary goal of the event (Auerbach 1991a, 1991b). As one participant of a Los Angeles multicultural festival explained .t, a festival such as the Los Angeles Cityroots festival, is
"one of the few things that make LA feel like one place instead of a whole lot of different places joined together" (quoted in Auerbach, 1991b: 12). Ironically, this sense of community
is sought through the display of difference that is recognised as representative of identity and
mediated through distinctive cultural artefacts and activities, such as music and folk dancing. 32
In this framework, the multicultural festival is understood as a 'time out' from the everyday world, a site in which potentially divisive differences are reduced (Auerbach, 1991a: 225).
This conceptualisation of the festival, as an event apart from the everyday, is a common grounding for many studies on festivals. The festival is conceived as a liminal and temporary spatialised process (Turner 1984; Melucci 1989; Bey 1991; Lavenda 1992; Purdue et al 1997;
St John 1997). For example, Graham St John (1997) in his examination of a non-mainstream
Australian festival, the ConFest held annually at Tocumwal, uses anthropologist Victor
Turner's idea of liminality as a basis for examining the open-ended and experimental activities of participants at festivals and similar events. Participation, St John argues, can lead to an "enacting [of] lifestyles" (170) experiments with identities, that, in his study, are created through playing with notions of the authentic and the tribal/primitive other. The (alternative) festival becomes a site for a "pilgrimage to a location outside the parameters of the everyday where inspired travellers seek affirmation and wholeness, orchestrat[ing] the (re)production, the becoming, of self, identity, attitude, lifestyle" (173). In this framework, a sense of community comes into being within the festival event and then disperses, to be reformed and reactivated at the next festival. Such studies assume a certain stasis with regards to identity creation, that identity or identities are in a sense pre-constructed — in St John's study, these identities are tribal or primitive — and are then brought into the festival space. Yet, as Thrift
(2000) has suggested, it is in the event itself that meaning is created. Rather than being something separate from the everyday, a performative event such as the festival is a heightening of everyday behaviour with all its contradictions, in which identity and place are negotiated and (re)constituted in the course of the event. The festival then is not an extra- ordinary event, but an intensification of the everyday. Although this other means of reading the festival event is suggested in the literature, researchers have continued to frame the event as a suspension of the everyday. Analysis of festival case studies recognise the tensions between the ideals of 'community' as promoted in the festival and the everyday, heterogenous living experiences of those the festival is meant to represent and engage (Lavenda 1992). But 33 rather than being a suspension of the everyday, these tensions and contradictions correspond to the social relations constituted within the everyday, that are subsequently translated into the festival framework.
Interrogating the festival for these relations and formations has been undertaken by examining the festival as a text or process. One productive way to uncover these meanings is by exploring the context of the festival. In his analysis of the Carnival event held in London's
Notting Hill, the geographer Peter Jackson (1988) proposes that the symbolic and ritual aspects of Carnival are linked and intertwined in its political and economic context. This, he argues, leads to ambiguities in the meaning of these events because, although commonly framed in cultural terms, the interpretation of the materiality and activities of the event remain open. Lavenda (1992) extends this idea, suggesting that once the text and processes of the festival become public property and so public culture, those who have organised the event lose control over what then happens, opening up a "loophole that lies at the centre of this public culture" (1992: 82). The paradox is that these events function as both a form of social integration and cohesion as well as sites of subversion and protest — and these conflicting ways of framing the event often occur concurrently (Jackson 1988; refer also to Kong and
Yeoh 1997; Purdue et al 1997).' As Jackson notes, it is this that is the source of an event's political significance. The different presentations that circulate within the festival site have political potential because they are "symbolic expressions of competitive social relations
physically inscribed in space" (1988: 224). Further to this, Jackson, states that "[a]s an
exercise in social control from the point of view of the police, and as a form of symbolic
protest from the viewpoint of the participants, Carnival is an intensely spatial event" (225).
Drawing on the work of literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1968), Jackson argues that these types
of events are literally and symbolically set apart from the everyday world and it is this extra-
'A sociological study of alternative festivals observes that this openness is a characteristic acknowledged and built into this type of festival's structure, and the authors suggest that "[flestival organisers weave a loose social fabric which the individual may embroider in different ways" (Purdue et al, 1997: 30). 34 ordinariness that creates these contested spatialities. From his study of the Notting Hill
Carnival, he notes that the ideals and identities of the differing groups are enacted within defined, yet overlapping, spaces.
Bruce Willems-Braun's (1994) study of a Canadian fringe festival space also explores the spatiality of the festival event, focusing on the effects this has on identity construction.
Willems-Braun argues that the festival transforms rationalised urban space into a site in which participants have a certain freedom to experiment with and debate the form and content of performance, and suggests that "cultural practices are important sites where social identities and relations are constituted" (75). Following on from the work of political scientists Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Willems-Braun argues that the arenas in which festivals occur
"have no 'natural' topography, but are constructed within, at the same time as they engage, the social and spatial organization of the city" (76). In other words, there is a pre-existing social and physical context that influences any potential reconstruction or renegotiation of identity.
However, as Jackson had noted in the policing of Carnival, Willems-Braun argues that the festival's performances, and the potential for renegotiating identity, are kept contained by the very framework of the festival and its spatial context.
Studies within the anthropological literature, with a greater emphasis on an ethnographic mode of analysis, have addressed the festival as the site of identity construction by interrogating cultural performance as a series of social relations. From this extensive body of work, I have focused on the examination of identity/identities as constructed within the
Australian music festival. This area of research brings to the analysis of the festival event subjects and issues that arose in my own work, such as the ongoing development of
Australian music traditions, the longed for yet tortuous reconciliation process between
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, national identity, and an identification with an
imagined Australian landscape. 35
In their study of the Maleny 'fire event' (the climax of the folk festival held at Maleny8 in
Queensland), anthropologists Lowell Lewis and Paul Dowsey-Magog (1993) address issues of 'identity construction' and the 'festival' as a process of identification. In this work they draw on John MacAloon's study of the spectacle and what that MacAloon sees as the re-emergence of neo-liminality that is a response to the secularisation of the postmodern world (199). Lewis and Magog-Dowsey argue that the fire event is a ritual framework created out of significant performative acts that maintain the cultural system from which it arises. By taking part in the ritual event, the participant has the potential to be transformed 'from one state, and/or from one identity, to another' — so affirming one's membership with a particular group (209). The music genre or style brings to the festival its own, additional set of agendas and politics. As
Lewis and Dowsey-Magog demonstrate with regards to the Maleny festival, the history of the folk movement with its social and political associations has had a significant input into the meanings that are activated during the event. The authors write that:
[a]lthough we don't want to minimise the multivocality in festivals like Maleny, we
want to argue that attendees pre-select, to some extent, on the basis of a loose
adherence to some version of a folk ethos which these days often finds expression
'green' politics and/or 'new age' interests, and that this pre-selection is intensified by
the isolated conditions and lack of amenities (203).
What this suggests (as does common sense) is that participants choose to attend these events because there is a knowledge of and desire to engage with particular musical styles as well as their associated lifestyles and ideological frameworks. In the study by Lewis and Dowsey-
Magog, those who identify with folk music position themselves as outside the mainstream both through their political affiliations (left-wing, 'green' politics and 'new age' interests) and through performance practices such as the use of traditional, usually acoustic, instruments and by embracing a multiplicity of ethnic and regional styles in performances. Identity as a folk
' Now relocated and known as the Maleny-Woodford or Woodford festival. 36 person is performed through lifestyle and its associated musical styles. This emphasis on the performative as a means of identification is reiterated through the requirement that all attending are to be actively engaged in the event. This focus on active engagement is structured into the festival. For example, the boundary between performer and audience is blurred not only because of the genre's aesthetic practices, but also because many people attend folk festivals in order to make music communally. Workshops held at the festival also contribute the "underlying ethos that anyone and everyone can become a performer to the best of their ability" (204). Using Peirce's theory of meaning and effect, Lewis and Dowsey-
Magog argue that the meaning of the event is given to it by its participants, and includes
"everything from body movements, through feelings and emotions and linguistic understandings and expressions" (208). Of significance to my conceptualisation of the festival, Lewis and Magog-Dowsey suggest that, rather than the festival being something separate from the everyday, the tensions evident at the Maleny festival between different cultures' may reflect Australian society at large (which in their case study was the difficulty of social reconciliation). And it is the festival participants who construct the significance of the festival events through their actions and interpretations, recalling to Erlmann's argument
(1996) that it is the audience who creates identity through consumption. This meaning is not text based alone, as the performative aspects of the festival incorporate what Thrift proposes is "a living demonstration of skills we have but cannot ever articulate fully in the linguistic domain" (2000: 235). The constitution of identity and place through music can never fully be addressed and discussed through text alone, it is the 'doing,' as Smith • suggests, that is the substance of what occurs.
In The Sound in Between (1992), the cultural theorist Paul Carter attempts to recreate the first contact between indigenous Australians and Europeans as a performative. Inherent in this reconstruction is Carter's understanding of sound as a means of fixing ourselves to place while in a state of moving through spaces. Carter conceives the initial contact between two
9 Which in their study was what they defined as the Muni Aboriginal and white Australian cultures. 37 cultures as an attempt to position the self both geographically and socially, and the resulting sounds emitted from such a contact — the attempts to mimic the words of another when first met — is a state of being in-between. In this imagined first contact, Carter proposes that it is the space in which (audible) interaction between cultures occurs that enables a connection to that place. This performance of meeting creates an 'authentic' experience that then gets
(re)translated into discourse as we contextualise our place and our identity. He writes that "it is not simply enough to start to listen, to learn to differentiate sea-sound from wind-sound ... what matters is to embrace the ambiguity, the sound in-between before sounds have settled into names and lost their haunting power to generate voices in the midst of noise" (124).
Carter's poetic conceptualisation illustrates what my research is attempting; the performative as rendered in music performance as it constitutes identity and place. This means that I am trying to capture and explore the performative as it is occurring in its ambiguities, in those states of being in-between, and the, at times, unsayable/unwriteable. The research question that is the basis of this thesis — how a spatialised communal identity is constituted within the framework of the community music festival — is located in the various studies and their approaches to the relationship of identity/place/music, discussed above. I have determined from this literature that my focus is on the ways in which communal identity is constituted within and through the interactions between musician, listener and the various contexts in which music is performed. And, as suggested by many of these studies, these interactions result in complex and multifarious sets of meanings that are constantly formulated and reinscribed. In the following chapter, I discuss the means by which I approach examining the festival as a performative event, given the heterogeneous sets of social relations involved in the festival event. Chapter 3: Chasing Shadows
Methodology and research design
3.1 Introduction
Ethnomusicologists often feel as if they are chasing shadows in the field when striving to
perceive and understand musical meaning. Musical meaning is often ambiguous or
liminal, inviting ethnomusicologists into a dialogue of multiple realities — a dialogue
now shared by social scientists endeavouring to understand other aspects of culture
(Cooley, 1997: 3).
The phrase 'shadows in the field,' used here by the ethnomusicologist, Timothy Cooley, captures both the ephemeral nature of music performance and the difficulties we have in determining musical meaning. As Cooley points out, in order to come to some understanding of musical signification, the researcher needs to engage in such a study at a number of levels. Cooley's invitation into a 'dialogue of multiple realities' opens up the possibility of becoming cognisant of the ways music and its performance is given meaning, and suggests a potential for understanding 4 this outside purely musicological terms. I find this invitation exciting, as I want to look at ways to link geographical and musicological constructions of place and identity.
In this thesis, I examine the relationships of music, place and identity in a cross-disciplinary manner, using a number of methodological approaches in order to try and capture a "presence that conveys immediately experienced meaning, but whose meaning resists description" (Cooley,
1997: 14). Participation in a community music festival is an interactive process that produces a 39 sense of a social reality for a 'located' group identity, and, although a temporary event, the festival has implications for the group's identity/identities that extend beyond this time period and specific geographical location. I initially understood these processes in terms of production and consumption. I decided that the core of my research was based on the relationship between the cultural product, its production and its consumption. In this model, the cultural product is defined as the community music festival, production refers to those involved in organising and promoting the festival, and consumption focuses on how festival participants (performers, organisers, audience) interact within the framework of the festival. This conceptualisation enabled me to focus on key elements of the research. So I prepared and went to my first field site armed with questionnaires and schedules that reflected this view.10 Data collection, I thought, was going to be a neat, measurable and discrete process.
What I found was that the nature of this project had an added degree of complexity. In ways that echo Cooley's attempts to capture the elusive and the ephemeral nature of music, I found that my engagement with music performances in the field was itself elusive and ephemeral. To observe and participate in each site, I entered into the physical, temporal and imagined space of that music festival. Although a space that existed for a relatively short specified time, the boundaries of the festival extended beyond that of the event itself. For the festival organisers and performers, planning and preparation of the festival began at least a year ahead. My own connections to this
'festival time' were prolonged because of the research process. I often corresponded and met up with those who had been involved in the festival, to ask more specific questions or to discuss their responses, or I tracked down reports, newspaper articles, recordings and posters that could yield some information about how the festival had been conjured in participants' minds. The fleeting nature of the festival and its apparent transitory relationship to people and place influenced the sorts of observations and data I could collect — it was simply impossible to be everywhere and
'° The 1998 Brunswick Music Festival held in the City of Moreland, Victoria. 40 observe everything that occurred. The numerous and varied activities and interactions occurring at any one time meant that gathering data to illustrate the intensities of the festival event can only ever be approximate at best.
After gaining this understanding, the ways in which I collected data and observations evolved; intuitively I followed particular activities, I tried to question further those who introduced anomalous or intriguing comments that arose during interviews, as well as exploring other sorts of textual and discursive interactions arising from the festival event. From an initial conceptualisation of the music festival in terms of production/consumption/cultural product, I came to conceive of the festival more as a circuit of performatives (musical, linguistic, performance), in which the festival events and participants (whatever their roles may be) operated within and across various discourses. Thought of in this way, the music festival can be understood as an attempt at creating a unifying event that gives coherence to the many ways of being in and engaging with the music festival and its concerns. This chapter then outlines the development of research methods that were used to collect a variety of data that would encapsulate the processes of the music festival.
3.2 Research methods
3.2.1 Field sites
The field sites that I have chosen as the basis of my research encompass a range of elements that illuminate an understanding of how identity and place are created through social processes and symbolic constructions. My interest lies in how these constructions are expressed through and around music performance, specifically within the framework of a community music festival.
Paraphrasing the ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon (1997), I am trying to understand people making music as a way of their being in the world (94). Yet, as discussed in the introduction, my 41 research is synchronic — I am trying to catch a process in action as it occurs in a particular time period. A case study approach, choosing a number of festivals that would represent a diverse range of different groups of people, was the most appropriate means of carrying out this work, and it helped give some sense of boundary to my topic.
Initially I had plans of covering a large number of festivals around Australia. I wanted to look at as many different communities as possible in order to focus on the diversity of groups and their cultural/musical manifestation in an Australian setting. From this unwieldy collection I eventually chose three community music festivals: the Brunswick Music Festival, the Top Half Folk Festival and the Festival of Asian Music and Dance. This combination of field sites encompasses a range of parameters that explore identity and place that then influenced the direction of my research.
Although there are similarities between all three sites, each festival has provided me with a different focus and insight into the connections between identity, place and music.
An inner urban festival in Melbourne, the Brunswick Music Festival is defined by its organisers as a representation of the city of Moreland's cultural pluralism (Andrew Manning, Moreland
Council Arts Officer, interview 199811). For my research, I was interested in how constructions of a cultural pluralism, and the community's perceptions of this, were expressed through music performance, as well as the reactions of festival participants — whether these notions were accepted or challenged — to this definition of their collective identity. This festival presents a case study of the tensions around notions of a communal identity when challenged and re- activated by the presence of difference. The Top Half Folk Festival has the potential to disturb any easy sense of connections between place and community as it rotates each year between a number of places around northern Australia — Darwin, Katherine, Mt Isa, Alice Springs. The
" The full reference will be given for interviews when first cited, then all other citations will be abbreviated to the format 'name interview year.' 42 festival focuses on a folk music tradition that has its origins in the folk music of the British Isles but has since developed its own repertoire with distinctive Australian themes. Both this geographic region and the Australian folk music tradition evoke images of the Australian outback, providing a contrast to Moreland's inner urban location. In this case study, I expect notions of identity and place to coalesce around concerns with regional and rural lifestyles. The music of the festival would contextualise these concerns in a broader national context because of its associations with late nineteenth century radical nationalist ideals (Smith and Brett 1998).
Finally, the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, as its name suggests, presents Asian musical practices. This festival is held in Sydney and is associated with the Australian Institute of Eastern
Music. A relatively new festival, its focus is on Asian musical cultures and their interactions with
Anglo-Australian culture. This festival, then, illustrates the transplanted, alien musical culture, its maintenance and its renegotiation within a new place, and the possible creation of new spatial imaginaries.
Although the Top Half Folk Festival is the only festival in this study not consistently linked to one location over time, it nonetheless points to the paradox in talking about the 'field site' as something distinct from its social context. The festival is not an entity geographically and temporally separate but one that is interconnected, located within networks of other places and groups of people. Nor are these festivals temporally bounded. Although I am attempting to capture what Cooley poetically calls shadows in the field, I also need to have some understanding of the historical and cultural milieus in which each festival developed — their networks and connections that help shape and give meaning to these series of performances in the framework of the music festival. So while in the field, I collected a variety of visual and textual data that could be used to trace through these numerous connections. It is the performative uses of music that this thesis focuses on, how music is used as a sign for identity/identities and what this construction may say about that (music) community. Cooley's invitation into a 'dialogue of multiple realities' 43 then can also be taken up by examining the sorts of images and texts circulating about these festivals, as this will inform who participates and to some extent how such participation will occur.
The multidisciplinary nature of this study lends itself to a multiple methodological strategy.
Although the work could be undertaken in a quantitative manner, enumerating, for example, the sorts of people involved, the sorts of behaviours that occurred during the festival and the genres and styles of music performed, in my research I wanted to focus on qualitative, interpretive methods. That is, I wanted to inquire into what people understood themselves to be doing rather than quantifying observable behaviours. For this interpretive work I chose to collect different sets of data, each requiring different methodologies that were appropriate to observing how festival participants engaged with and created the music performances and how participants understood their role in these activities.
My fieldwork involved two major methods to collect data: as a participant observer and through interviewing participants — performers, festival organisers and audience members — at the three festivals chosen as field sites. As a participant observer, I collected field notes that recorded my observations about performance and audience responses, as well as reflections on my presence at these festivals. I also compiled photographs, sound and video recordings of festival events for later examination. Interviews were conducted with festival organisers and promoters, members of local council in festival locations, festival performers and a sample of audience members. This multiple research strategy also served another purpose. As the geographer John Eyles (1988) argues, a multiple research strategy becomes a means of validating the interpretation of this data
(11-14). 44
3.2.2 Participant observation
The anthropologist Norman Denzin defines participant observation as "a field strategy that simultaneously combines document analysis, interviewing respondents and informants, direct participation and observation, and introspection" (1989: 17-18). For my research project, participant observation was chosen as a means to observe, record and reflect on the ways participants were involved in and interacted with each other and with music performances within
the context of a music festival. Recording observations, then, meant not only taking notes but also
thinking about what I observed while out in the field. These reflections were recorded in my field
notes and became the basis of a number of reflective essays in which I tried to work through the
data, trying to link what I saw happening around me with my reading of secondary sources. The
intensity of the performance of the festival — the music played, the ways in which people
interacted with the music, each other and their surroundings — necessarily meant that I had to
choose what to record from this vast collection of activities. Sometimes, it was only on later
reflection that I could think about why certain events seemed to have significance in the context
of the festival. For example, in Mt Isa, my impressions of the first concert held outside the city's
civic centre had me recording who was present and the sorts of activities they undertook. I noted:
Friday afternoon, starting around lunchtime, various performers from the festival program, and
especially local musicians, performed in a free concert. As with the busking the previous night,
the folk club members wanted to promote the Top Half Folk Festival and interest the general Mt
Isa population in the event. I had noticed during my stay in Isa that the lawns at Civic Centre
seemed to be a place for Murris to meet around mid morning. Although there were a number at
the beginning of this concert, many left. However one (?drunk) Murri sat & listened to Stevie
Paige, and moved to the music. He left when Rafferty came on stage.
(Field notes Top Half Folk Festival, Mt Isa, June 5 1998). 45
From observations such as this, I tried to note how space was used, constituted and negotiated by various groups. Music was a way in which the space was coded for the period of time of the festival, attracting or repelling those who came into its range. The active reflexivity and on going dialogue between myself, the festival event and the data collected helped give direction to future observations and analytical work. As I became more familiar with both the participants and how they interacted within the festival framework, I was able to sharpen the focus of my data collection. The processes of data collection developed along with that of my research.
Observations were recorded in a number of ways. My field notes included not only brief observations of what was occurring around me but also my impressions, critiques of my methods, possible contacts and places I should visit suggested by those I interviewed. I also prepared a series of schedules, outlining the sorts of behaviour I could expect to occur within particular events, so that I could later interrogate the sorts of participatory activities of the festival. For example, with regards to the audience of a music performance, I decided to record basic demographic details. These details included such things as audience number, the age groups present, and possible subgroups that I could identify — which I assessed through readily observable characteristics such as clothing, gender or ethnicity. This does present problems because of biases or poorly made observations made on my part, and to lessen this bias, I asked those I interviewed to also characterise the audiences present. Another type of schedule required recording the sorts of interactions possible between the music and/or performers (refer to
Appendix 2 for schedules).
As this research has a focus on music performance, an ethnomusicological methodology provided an initial way of framing musical data. This methodology requires recording of performance elements, particular sounds, gestures and movements that could then be analysed away from the field. A set of schedules was devised for my fieldwork (refer to Appendices 2.3.2, 2.3.3 and 46
2.4.1) based on the work of such traditional ethnomusicologists as Marcia Herndon and Norma
McLeod (1983) and Bruno Nettl (1964). However, these methodologies are problematic as this style of observation and recording meant determining prior to entering the field the sorts of data that could be expected. As well, this type of ethnomethodology has an implicit positioning of the ethnomusicologist as that of an objective observer outside the musical culture being studied. Both these positions were challenged once I entered the field.
First, although the festivals contained music outside my own immediate Anglo-Australian experience, the framing of these performances within a festival, even within the context of a concert performance, was not unfamiliar. So rather than being outside of the festival culture, I was entering an already known space. As Timothy Cooley argues, the researcher is woven into the community that is being studied, "we become cultural actors in the very dramas of society we endeavour to understand" (1997: 18). Not only was I already part of the culture being studied, my presence at these festivals was conspicuous; I needed to approach participants, record their actions in notes and film, and ask questions about their activities. In this I became part of the festival event, and more so at some events than others. This had an impact on my research. While collecting data, I was conscious of my position as 'professional stranger' (Flick 1998: 59; also
Katz 1994) and how this status influenced what, how and with whom I could carry out my research activities. (Often my role was misinterpreted, with a number of participants believing I was a journalist). I was also conscious that who I was influenced how I was able to interact.
Being a single woman had both its advantages and disadvantages; many people I met were courteous and interested in taking part, while occasionally I felt a target for unwanted attention.
My relationship to the music of, or principles behind, the festivals was important to a number of
those I approached, as they hoped my work would contribute in some way to the event and
associated activities. Was I interested in helping establish similar interest groups in my home
state? Did I feel that music and the arts were important with regards to social development? What 47 were the practical implications of my research? By talking through these issues I not only
participated more closely with those involved in the festival, I was better able to clarify my own position and research.
My entering into the space of the festival and being seen to observe, asking questions, and
recording what was happening, at times meant that my thesis question — how does music express
a relationship between identity and place — became a springboard for discussion amongst groups
of festival participants outside of my research framework. Participants entered into their own
reflexive discourse on what a community music festival is about, and this in turn influenced later
observations and interviews that were carried out with me. I was made aware of this on a number
of occasions when those I had interviewed later told me that the questions I had asked them as
individuals were brought up in later conversation amongst themselves (Gordon interview 1998).
This was particularly evident at the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival, held in Mt Isa, a town
celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary at that time, although the folk aesthetic — of trying to be
friendly, open and inclusive — also played a part in this richer dialogue between myself and the
festival participants.
My 'professional stranger' status was not a fixed one. Although more noticeable at the Top Half,
my role as a participant observer changed during the time I spent at each field site. As participants
became comfortable with my presence, my questions and my recording of the festival events, so
they became more open in their responses, often moving beyond the questions I had posed. Not
only did this provide me with richer data, it also helped me with regards to my own initial
perceptions. As I became more informed by the participants' knowledge I was able to get a better
understanding of the festival and its context. A further challenge to my role as a researcher was
that of physically collecting data. I had in my schedules tried to outline the sorts of behaviour I 48
12 expected to occur at festival events, but it is impossible to be everywhere recording everything.
I was also aware that activities outside the strict boundaries of the festival event may also be important to an understanding of the event itself. So these brief intense periods of data collection were physically exhausting. Finally, while in the field, it quickly became apparent that the ethnomusicological method itself was not entirely adequate. Although using the music schedule was an appropriate starting point for recording musical data, I am not interested as such in the actual music and its elements. What I hoped to determine from working in the field was the symbolic use of music — the engagement with music is a performative act that constitutes communal identity and notions of place.
3.2.3 Interviews
In many ways the interview process is not separate from participant observation, but an accessory, as responses can confirm, negate and/or open up new research directions. Interviews were conducted with a number of different sorts of music festival participants — festival organisers and promoters, members of local council in festival locations, festival performers and a sample of audience members — in order to gather as many layers of the participation process as possible. I began my research with a set of interview questions designed in the hope of being open enough so that people could talk about their experiences and involvement in the music festival at some length. I wanted to hear (and record13) the stories and narratives that people
12 I was able to have help collecting data at the 1998 Brunswick Music Festival; Cathie Duffy helped with photography at the Sydney Road Street Party, and Haydie Gooder and Rachel Hughes helped conduct interviews at the concert series.
13 Interviews were taped with permission. Transcripts of these interviews were sent to those who had participated to check through their responses and alter or clarify any details. In most cases, respondents did not ask for anonymity, particularly as many that I spoke to were public figures such as performers and members of local government, while audience members on the whole were anonymous. Participants were also free to withdraw their interview material. (Refer to Appendix 4). 49 created about the music festival experience and hear them speak about what it was that attracted them to particular sorts of musical performance. In this way, I hoped to gain an understanding of the meanings attributed to music performance within its social and cultural context. Initially, interview questions (refer to Appendices 1.1 to 1.4) were formulated within a slightly more formal structure. More survey than interview, this format was influenced by the need to gain ethics approval, a prerequisite in research involving human subjects by the University of
Melbourne." I had aimed to interview a large sample size, thinking that the most appropriate responses for my research would be quantifiable. Such a sample size also meant that responses needed to be reasonably straightforward and unambiguous so that they could be more readily processed. However, after starting this work, I realised that the number of interviews I proposed to undertake was unreasonable given that I wanted to examine three music festivals, nor did this type of interview allow for working through unexpected or more detailed discussions with the respondents. My approach changed and I focused on qualitative data collection, using in-depth interviews with key informants as well as other festival participants. I based these later questions on those presented in Appendices 1.1 to 1.4, particularly with regards to how the respondent defined their own ethnicity, what the music and festival meant to them, how the respondent defined or described the music performed, what attracted the respondent to listen to or perform this music, what the respondent thought the festival meant to them/other festival attendants as well as the local community in which the festival was held.15 In this later approach, I tried to encourage a more conversational style so that respondents would be more open and expansive in their thoughts.
I hoped that responses obtained would cover three broad areas: some basic biographical material on who was involved, why the respondent was involved and how the festival was perceived in
14 The medical/scientific orientation of the ethics approval process led me to incorporate certain scientific paradigms, such as sample size, schedules and surveys. 50 relation to a particular group of people. The set of questions asked about the festival itself —for example, what the respondent thought the festival meant for the audience — was asked of all respondents, but I directed specific interview questions towards respondents involved in particular key capacities. For example, a member of the festival committee would be asked about the relationship between the festival and the locality in which it is placed. I decided to use the
1998 Brunswick Music Festival as a pilot study because it was an event I could revisit over the period of my candidature, allowing me to refine the techniques I used for my research. I used random sampling in the pilot study, and to ensure this occurred, I proposed using the 'next-to- pass' method in the pilot study. Those approached were free to participate or not. This system of random sampling did not occur with regards to interviews with performers and organisers who were specifically targeted. However, after this pilot study, and again with the help of self- reflection recorded in my field notes, I realised that the interview questions needed to be more flexible and that I might need slightly different strategies for each of the different festivals. I also encountered some difficulties in collecting responses. First, was the interviewing process itself.
People were often reluctant to take part, with around fifty percent of those I approached refusing to be interviewed, as I recorded in my field notes:
• difficult to get people to answer questions - most not interested - but those who did seemed to
think about responses - maybe I need to learn some interview skills
• tried asking in 'next to pass' way, but soon discovered certain types of people were not happy
participating eg harried mothers/grandmothers, couples with a number of children
• those with children that I approached would often ask their children to take part & not them
(Field notes Brunswick Music Festival 1998).
And this entry, scribbled in frustration:
15 Refer to Appendices 6 to 8 for actual interview transcripts. 51
'Argh! I hate asking the audience questions! 'He' [approx in 60s] didn't know how I'd make a thesis out of his responses! (Field notes Festival of Asian Music and Dance 1999).
Yet, I did find that many respondents were keen to talk about their participation, and that they also wanted to enter into a dialogue — they wanted to discuss how both they and I understood and contextualised participation in the music festival. I found that my initial means of classifying potential respondents — as organiser/performer/audience member and so on — did not allow for the fact that individuals could occupy several categories simultaneously, as performer and audience member, as organiser and performer, and so on. These multiple positions and roles within the festival structure were particularly evident at both the Top Half Folk Festival and the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance because of the smaller scale of these festivals. The size of the festivals, the overlapping of roles of those attending, the desire on my part to have respondents converse with me about their engagement with the festival, meant that instead of attempting to survey a large number of participants, I undertook in-depth and less structured interviews with festival participants. In this way, I hoped to obtain some understanding of what these festivals were about, who they were for, why people attended.
Second, the set of interview questions established for my pilot study and the responses they elicited troubled me. The questions posed were survey-like in character, as I felt people would be more willing to take part if the process was short. I had also hoped to collect a large number of responses and so needed to make the process manageable. However, after looking over the responses collected from the Sydney Road street party, I noticed that they fitted the official local government structure too neatly. Those who attended associated the area with diverse cultures because of the ways in which the Moreland Council and the local newspapers talked about the area as multicultural, they come to the street party and saw such diversity and so took away with them an 52 image of multiculturalism. In a reflective essay written after research at my pilot study, I tried to determine why I was not obtaining a richer, more contradictory and so more life-like representation of the event. I decided that:
I think the problem lies in my definition or my assumptions about 'community.' The focus of my research is on how participation in a music festival creates and promotes a sense of identity and this has led me to focus on various sorts and levels of participation. Examining interview responses and observing how people participate in the festival (whether that is through organising, attending, performing, talking about it, etc) may illustrate the reflection/construction of a sense of community — not necessarily place-based but built up of interactions between people and the festival
(reflective essay, 20 May 1998).
Working through these interviews I realised that there was an underlying assumption in both my questions and in the responses given that equated 'place' with 'community.' I needed to approach my research differently in order to examine how ideas of place and community were being constructed by festival participants. This meant a change in the way I visualised what was occurring. Rather than imagining a thing called 'place' and a thing called 'community' and looking for the ways in which the two intersected, I started to focus on connections and networks.
Although I do not want to specifically use the actor network theory of theoretician Bruno Latour
(1993), this theory does point to the ways in which heterogenous relations of people, processes and materials help constitute meaning. The festival is something that activates and is activated by ideas and issues about 'community' identity and 'place' that are already in circulation. The festival can be seen as an intensification of ideas and practices within a network of social and material linkages. 53
My later interview approach, then, was to ask what I considered to be core questions about participating in the festival — for example what attracted them to the festival, what did the festival mean for the local area, what did they think were key characteristics about the festival — so as to open up discussion following lines of interest as they arose. I tried to elicit information about the festival as part of different networks — music, lifestyle, place — by allowing respondents to reminisce, talk about similar events or activities, mull over the questions, and question me. When I allowed for this more informal style of interview, where I pursued interests and responses given, I received much richer responses, more of what anthropologist Clifford
Geertz calls "thick description" (1973: 10).
By giving the person space to think through his or her responses, the various processes involved in the festival — creative, financial, political and so on — were opened up, and enabled me to pursue ideas or themes that a more formalised interview did not encourage. In the interview extract quoted above, the performers introduced issues of nostalgia, longing, and the problems of identity that can be expressed and worked over through music performance. Such rich material was invaluable in later analysis. This data was later sorted according to particular topics raised, such as memories, oral transmission of knowledge, celebration, connection to other people, multiculturalism, folk networks, local-ness, authenticity, collaboration.
3.3 Interpretation
The philosopher Hakim Bey (1990) conceptualises the connections between place and the social relations that occur in that place as a grid pulsating with life. He recommends that, to glimpse these relations, you should: 54
[l]ay down a map of the land; over that, set a map of political change; over that, a map of
the Net, especially the counter-Net with its emphasis on clandestine information-flow and
logistics — and finally, over all, the 1:1 map of the creative imagination, aesthetics,
values. The resultant grid comes to life, animated by unexpected eddies and surges of
energy, coagulations of light, secret tunnels, surprises (available at
www.t0.or.at/hakimbey/taz/taz.htm).
The combinations and overlaying of different mappings of a place infuses that sense of place with something extra — interconnections that lead to a vitality operating within the representation. My understanding of the festival is that it is a site in which many and various relations are performed through the codes of music (and dance). In determining what these relations may be, I have drawn on the work of theoretical historian Jerzy Topolski (1981), who suggests that in any historical narrative there are three layers. First, there is what we are told directly, then the ideology or narrative not spoken but accepted as evident, and finally the deeper, hidden meaning of which we may be unaware (57). This structural understanding of narrative can be a means of interrogating the musical performances within the music festival. It is in the materiality of the music performance — the sound and its effects on the body, the physicality of the performers — as well as the performance's musical symbols and processes, that various ideologies and subsequent challenges are embedded. Although these ideologies are understood or assumed by the festival participants, they may not be stated explicitly but concealed within these more obvious performative structures and processes.
The festival is a performative act that explores notions of identity and place, but these performances operate within other, broader contexts, such as the economic and social. The context of each festival brings to these performative acts anxieties that may be circulating within 55 a larger Australian setting. I have drawn on the ways in which psychoanalytic discourse has examined the nonverbal and non-linguistic manner of being in the world as a means to explore
Topolski's notion of hidden 'knowledges' and ideologies as they circulate within a mainstream
(Anglo) Australian society. These deeper meanings may then be revealed and unsettled by the introduction of musical practices of another as the identity/place relationship itself is challenged.
In order to reveal such meanings, I have used a coding system based on the approaches proposed in grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990) to determine the themes and issues arising from each festival. Furthermore, I have presented close readings of specific performances, in order to uncover the identity/place/music relationships that are constituted within the festival events.
These close readings incorporate a field note, signified through the use of an italicised body of text, that are a compilation of observations and interviews. I acknowledge problems in this approach. Musicologist Adam Krims notes that, "the close reading of music brings with it the spectre of the closed reading, a reading that isolates and essentialises the social/historical practice of music" (1998: 4). I am not suggesting that these close readings represent the definitive meaning of the festival performances. Rather, this approach is a means to prepare an analysis of the festival performances to gain some understanding of how music operates within social, historical and cross-cultural contexts. 56
3.4 Conclusion
When writing about field experiences we want to get as close to a truth as possible, but
evocation means selecting among experiences and choosing among a variety of ways to
convey them (Kisliuk 1997: 38).
In thinking through how I would present my research, I thought that a case study approach, where each festival is discussed and analysed in turn, would be one appropriate way of presenting the results and analysis of my fieldwork. The different festivals bring a particular understanding of the relationship between place, community and identity, and each was in fact chosen because of this. However, the interdisciplinary and intertextual nature of this research lends itself to a different presentation. The field sites that I have chosen as the basis of my research encompass a range of elements that illuminate an understanding of how identity and place are created through social processes and symbolic constructions. My interest lies in how these constructions are expressed through music performance, specifically within the framework of a community music festival. The choice of field sites influenced the direction of my research, and this in turn has influenced how I will present my findings.
The material arising from the individual festivals has been explored in a thematic way, with the data collected suggesting a dialogic relationship between the community music festival and the meanings circulating about place, community and identity. Presenting my findings in this way has meant that my own understanding of the processes involved in creating a sense of communal identity through music performance has been augmented by reading across the field sites.
Although there are similarities between all three sites, each festival has provided me with a different focus and insight into the connections between identity, place and music. Yet, as I moved from festival to festival, another thematic narrative suggested itself to me, one that 57 perhaps has parallels with my developing awareness and understanding of the processes involved in each field site. These analytical chapters are then reflective of the broader thematic material arising from the data I have collected. The performative identities that are constituted within and through the festival event, (re)enact local spatial configurations, regional and national, then finally transnational spatialised identities.
At the Festival of Asian Music and Dance symposium of 1996,16 John Napier suggested that 'the extent to which any engagement with another music is either a flight from or a flight to, or both, is a difficult question, to me a troubling challenge. As artists have we used aspects of Asian arts simply as a way of escaping from Europe? [As] a neo-Orientalist fantasy?' (paper 1996). His,
Although here Napier deals specifically with the appropriation of Asian music, his concern with music in its various forms as a means to express the self and its context, corresponds to the fundamental question of my research. In the following chapters I will examine thematically the interactions between music performance, place and identity as observed in the three festivals discussed above. An underlying concern will be the tension of recognising cultural pluralism on the one hand and, on the other, the idea that a community has some sort of coherence, a harmonic language — in trying to understand how music performance is a means to express the relationship between identity and a sense of connection to place.
16 This symposium was called the effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity.' Appendix 8.4 contains a transcript of his presentation. Chapter 4: acts
performing identity
4.1 Introduction
Identity is the effect of performance (Bell 1999: 3).
The focus of this chapter is on the Brunswick Music Festival, held in the city of Moreland, a northern inner suburban area of Melbourne, in the southeast Australian State of Victoria. The city of Moreland was created in 1994 and is an amalgamation of the older inner cities of
Brunswick, Coburg and Broadmeadows." The demographic data illustrates this Council's constituency as an ethnically and culturally diverse population. The 1999 Annual Report recorded that more than thirty-six percent of Moreland's residents were born overseas, while forty-five percent of Moreland's residents (aged five years or more) speak a language other than English at home, compared to twenty-six percent of all Melbourne Statistical Division
(MSD) residents (1999a). Other socio-economic features also characterise Moreland residents — lower housing costs, a strong political involvement influenced by socialist ideals, and a high proportion of elderly residents. Yet, it is ethnic and cultural diversity under the term
'multiculturalism' that has come to be promoted in local government discourse as defining
Moreland's character. And it is this ethnic and cultural plurality that also structures the current shape of the Brunswick Music Festival. An initiative of the former Brunswick City Council,
the festival was first held in 1989. It grew out of a perceived need in the Brunswick
community for economic and material support, particularly by local government, of music
activities within this council's electorate (Smith 1987: 1-3). Numerous other festivals are held
17 This amalgamation process was two fold: the first occurred on 22 June 1994, with the joining of Brunswick and Coburg, while the second took place on 15 December 1994, with the inclusion of the southern Broadmeadows area (Moreland City Council 1996: 9). 59 annually throughout this municipality, festivals that focus on specific resident cultural and ethnic groups," but it is this festival, with its emphasis on multicultural performance as displayed through music, that has become the flagship for Moreland City Council.
In this chapter, I examine the sorts of particular and spatialised identities that are created and performed within the Brunswick Music Festival, identities that are responses and challenges to notions of a place-based and bounded community. I study two key elements of the Brunswick
Music Festival:19 the concert series, which showcases local, national and international performers; and the street party,20 an event promoted and understood by the festival organisers and Moreland residents as the festival's local component. The festival functions as a means to promote social cohesion and a sense of belonging (Manning interview 199821; refer also to
Moreland City Council 1997b). The Brunswick Music Festival appears to be about a particular and bounded community — Moreland — and it is promoted by festival organisers, participants and the media in terms of the 'local community.' However, even in the ways in which the festival is promoted and discussed, this idea of the 'local,' one that is situated in a place is unsettled by the festival's other defining feature, as it is framed as a multicultural festival. The chapter begins with an examination of Moreland's policies on multiculturalism and how these have influenced the structure and musical programming of the Brunswick Music Festival. This
is followed by a study of some of the performances that were part of the festival's concert series of 1998, particularly the ways in which the music program responds to Council's policies and
v These festivals include the Australian Arabic Festival held in February/March, the Chilean Festival held in October, the Pallaconian (Sparta), the Lebanese and the Greek Festivals, all held in November, and the African Music Festival held in December (Moreland City Council 1997a: appendix 1) l" This festival has been expanded in the range of activities and events that are part of its program. For example the 1998 and 1999 festivals included art exhibitions, a lecture series, a bush dance and a theatrical production from a local theatre company. However, the primary focus is on music performance. 2° The positioning of this event in the festival program has altered. Originally it was at the last event, held after a long weekend of concerts but since 1993 it has opened the festival. 21 Full citations for interviews are located in the primary sources of the bibliography while full interview transcripts are located in the Appendices, Part 2 of this thesis. 60
Moreland's migrant communities. The final section examines the festival's street party as a constitution of the 'local' as it is framed by Council and the sorts of meanings that participants attribute to the event.
4.2 'Multicultural' Moreland
What is promoted as the main feature of the festival? What we're trying to present is
an inclusive range of celebration. That's about the main feature. Describe the
audience you're targeting. Everyone! It's a Council event, it's a community event. It's
the residents. I'm not saying that flippantly but I do recognise that the festival
program and its concept has wider attractions. The festival plays an important role in
terms of other artistic activities on tour, supports other festival activities that happen
around that time. So we're not totally insular and isolated (Manning interview 1998).
Moreland City Council defines multiculturalism as a "broad concept that encompasses linguistic, ethnic, faith and cultural diversity" (1997d: 3). The Council's policies of multiculturalism are "designed to emphasise the inclusive nature and economic benefits of diversity" (Moreland City Council 1999a: 6). In this framework, Moreland Council asserts its belief that cultural and music festivals are valuable not only in economic terms but important with regards to community development. Council promotes the value of this approach to multiculturalism in the report on a strategic planning analysis of festivals, Festivals Moreland
(1997) where it is noted:
[e]ducation and exposure are the two paths guaranteed to lessen hostility between
groups of people. It is hard to hate someone who makes you laugh or moves you to
tears with the beauty of the music they play. Understanding the meaning of culturally
specific behaviour is a step along the road to acceptance and sharing. Nothing is more
exhilarating than watching a child taste its first bush food with our indigenous people, 61
joining the dance of our Greek Australians and singing the National Anthem in a choir
of faces of a hundred different origins. The Arts are our most useful tool in developing
understanding and a sense of community (12).
Having residents recognise and actively engage with the concept of multiculturalism through the Brunswick Music Festival is seen by the Moreland Council as a means to incorporate into one community an otherwise quite diverse ethnic and cultural plurality. The political position of this Council is a vital part of this structuring of the Festival. As Manning explained:
we've spoken about social benefits, cultural benefits, it brings personal benefits,
personal satisfaction that you're able to do something. It brings, as we said, economic
benefits. I just want to clarify with you — the festivals and events come under the
section of council that's called the Department of Social Development. Now that's a
very key aspect of what we want to do with this festival. With other councils,
festivals and events fall under their economic development strategy. Now that's a
decision those councils make. In terms of economics festivals and events are
important, but the over-riding factor for us is its ability to raise social justice issues
(interview 1998).
The music festival then is not only about creating a sense of identity for the Moreland community, but is also understood by council as a site for raising issues of social justice. In
her understanding of social justice, feminist Iris Marion Young (1990) includes the public
evaluation and decision making around cultural meanings, as, she argues, "when people say a
rule or practice or cultural meaning is wrong and should be changed, they are usually making
a claim about social justice" (9). Examining Moreland council's policy documents,
particularly those that have a specific focus on cultural pluralism, there is a recognition of
ethnic, cultural and religious differences. However, the central aim of these policies is to
improve access and equity of community resources and services to people from non-English 62 speaking backgrounds (Multicultural Development Policy 1, 1997) and those from indigenous
Australian communities (Moreland Multicultural Development Policy 2, 1998). With regards to music festivals, the Festivals Moreland document states council's belief that the "arts can bring universal messages of the similarities we all share" (1997b: 12). Young argues that within participatory democratic and liberal theories, the civic public is understood as universal and unified, an understanding that suppresses difference. Although Moreland council recognises difference, there is an emphasis on establishing a commonality in the face of this difference. This underlying basis has repercussions in terms of how and what social justice issues are raised in a forum such as the Brunswick Music Festival. This in turn will effect the performative aspect of communal identity and belonging. Council's policies on multiculturalism frame the festival explicitly through the festival's tender package. In the tender it is stated that Council's cultural objectives are "directed towards promoting an active community that is reflected in the cultural life of its people" (1997c: 13). In facilitating this objective, Moreland council defines the sorts of activities it wishes to be included. These are activities which:
■ capture the flavour and are reflective of, the multicultural diversity of the
municipality
■ promote a positive image of Moreland as a place to live, work and visit
■ promote broad based community participation in the Arts
■ promote harmonious relations within the community by supporting activity that is
culturally sensitive
■ deliver economic and tourism benefits to the municipality
■ celebrate the eclectic expression of Moreland's growing Arts community (1997c:
13)
There are some constraints on this promotion of the local community in terms of cultural
display, for as John McAuslan, festival director since 1991, points out the festival must also 63 be economically viable (interview 1997). Therefor the festival program has to guarantee an income (refer also to Manning interview 1998). Local performers cannot always do this, particularly those in the early stages of their careers, so local content, especially in the concert series, has decreased. Manning acknowledged the difficulties inherent in the Council's objectives with regards to the festival's concert program, saying that:
[t]he festival director is responsible for the program. We provide a clear framework
of what we want to see included in the program. So we want to see is local
representation, local relevance, local involvement, local employment. But we also
recognise that for our local community to benefit it is more than just local, local,
local! The difficulty is that to actually benefit [from participating in the festival] is
that one, yes, [local people] need to be given the opportunity to be up on stage and
show what they can do, but they also need to learn from other people, to see what
people from different countries and cultures are doing, from which they can learn. It's
a two-way thing (interview 1998).
McAuslan's means of dealing with this dilemma has been to pair less well-known with better
known and often international performers in the concert series, while ensuring that the street
party does have as its focus local performers and local music making (interview 1997).
Policies prepared by and for the Moreland Council strongly argue that it is the residents' active
participation that is important in creating the identity of 'Moreland.' Manning states that from
Moreland Council's point of view, the street party is about promoting a local community
identity that is diverse, as well as providing an opportunity for Moreland residents to be
exposed to other, different cultures present in the area. Manning points out that Council
understands this communal identity to be more complex than simply that derived from of a set
of characteristics that have then come to represent Moreland, saying that: 64
[w]hen you look at the review22 that was done on the festivals and events there's all
that stuff about, do we reinvent events to try and make a new identity for this council
and stuff like that. Do we Morelandise?! What do we recognise as the communities of
interest and then actually taking them on board beyond their traditional audiences. If
you look at Maribynong they scrapped the recognition of different people, the
Yarraville people, and so forth and said 'we're going to Maribynongise everything.' I
mean that's a decision they made and I'm not here to debate whether that's right or
wrong. The decision that came through on the research and consultations on the City
of Moreland was that the people living here appreciated what it is that's different
about our communities of interest, so we know that Coburg's different to Brunswick,
we know Brunswick's different to Glenroy. The message was don't deconstruct the
good things that are there, but make us a part of it, let us know what is happening. We
still have a strong group of representation from Brunswick but more and more people
outside of Brunswick want to be involved (interview 1998).
What Manning indicates here is that Council has attempted to retain the heterogeneous nature of the area, not only in terms of culture and ethnicity, but also in terms of 'neighbourhood.'
Therefore the objectives that frame the festival are about recognising difference within this locality and providing public spaces — and the festival site is a specifically designated performance of this diversity — in which these differences can be made visible as well as audible. The Brunswick Music Festival is recognised, by both festival participants and
Moreland Council, as an event brings other benefits to the area. For example, Manning explained that:
22 Here Manning refers to the document Festivals Moreland (1997). 65
by having other venues that put music on — like Bridie's or the Rainbow, Ritmo now
has opened up, Latin American, even good old Colin at the Retreat23 is thinking about
— it's actually getting a different section of people involved in music from different
sectors. So it is conceivable when the festival is over, there might be another band
playing at the Rainbow or somewhere like that and an audience becomes established.
It's all about that evolution, how you get involved, the stimulus and all that sort of
thing. It doesn't happen overnight. How do these groups help the festival? They
provide other programming for the festival. It brings people into the area from outside
the municipality and also within it, it gives support to art programs and provides
employment (interview 1998).
The policies of Moreland Council and the responses made by Manning, suggest that, as
Frederic Jameson argues (1991), culture has become a product in its own right. Not only are such events about cultural display and social cohesion, they are understood to provide local economic benefits to residents. But there remains, for me, the unsettling question of the relationship between Moreland residents and community identity. In the Tender package for the Brunswick Music Festival, one of the key responsibility areas for the festival's administration and management is to ensure "local participation and a sense of ownership, by the community, in the Brunswick Music Festival and Sydney Road street party" (1997c: 16).
This statement suggests that there is a clear and simple relationship between the Moreland community and its representation in the music festival, both in terms of participation and in the defining characteristics of the delimited community. That is, Moreland is ethnically and culturally diverse, so performing within the festival marks the participant as other to that of
Anglo-Australian community. What is striking about this is the emphasis on the visual, the
display of cultures, as it is after all a music festival, a soundscape. The cultural geographer Jane
M. Jacobs argues that the presentation or staging of ethnic and racial diversity within
u Manning is referring to the festival's hotel venues that are located along Sydney Road, generally not far from the Sydney Road/
Dawson Street intersection. 66 postmodern capitalism is a site of the political, disruptive potential of difference. Difference is understood as a key element in "the aestheticization of city life" that "only ever marks the familiar, albeit now more instrumentally semiotic, appropriative force of postmodern capitalism" (1998: 253). Ethnic and cultural diversity is a means of accessing capital because these sources of difference are a means to competitively mark out the distinctiveness of a place.
Yet, as Jacobs points out, this diversity is often just a play of difference rather than a politics of difference, a set of surface markers that remain subordinate to the workings of consumption. But this visual display appears to ignore the possibilities inherent in the soundscape. Anthropologist
Ghassan Hage asserts that:
[f]ar from putting 'migrant cultures,' even in their 'soft' sense (ie through food, dance,
etc), on an equal footing with the dominant culture, the theme conjures the images of
a multicultural fair where the various stalls of neatly positioned migrant cultures are
exhibited and where the real Australians, bearers of the White nation and positioned
in the central role of the touring subjects, walk around and enrich themselves (1998:
118).
Hage argues that Australian multiculturalism positions non Anglo-Celtic cultures in contained
modes of operation that do not exclude these other cultures, but regulates them (133). The
Brunswick Music Festival may be criticised for such tendencies. By focussing on cultural
display, Moreland council (and others involved in music festival organisation) may mishear
what members of this so-called community are attempting to vocalise. A possibility of what
sonic knowledge may divulge with regards to Australian community music festivals and
cultural pluralism will be elaborated in chapter seven, however in this chapter I want to signal
the potential musical processes have in addressing issues around the formation of communal
and individual identities given that these identities operate within a framework of cultural
pluralism. 67
The Brunswick Music Festival, and in particular the street party, are marked out as a reflection of Moreland's character, one that has been empirically mapped out as culturally and ethnically diverse. But are we as participants at this festival only observing difference, and is this enough to create a sense of a Moreland community? Musicologist Graeme Smith and sociologist
Judith Brett have observed that, in regards to such multicultural festivals, it is state and local government policies on multiculturalism that give meaning and cohesion to this type of festival model (1998: 6). That is, the Brunswick Music Festival is defined in such ways that events performed within it are framed within this Council's imaginary of multiculturalism.
The next section examines some of the performances of the 1998 festival concert series for the sorts of application of Council's policies as well as participants' responses to the festival as a site for the expression and creation of some form of communal identity.
4.3 Performing identity: being here and there (1)
4.3.1 dialogues with a place called 'home'
The concert series component of the Brunswick Music Festival occurs after the street party, which opens the festival. Concerts are held in venues close to the Sydney Road/Dawson
Street intersection — the civic hub of Moreland — and these include the Town Hall and
Mechanics Institute. Evening performances are generally given the Fridays, Saturdays and
Sundays of this two-week period. Whereas the street party focuses on a local, more general identity around concepts of multiculturalism, the concert series emphasises the connections of the various communities that constitute this 'local' to the world of the outside. Establishing and maintaining these connections is a response to a desire on the part of these communities
to create a sense of belonging, because migrant communities and groups are faced with is a
sense of belonging neither here nor there but in both imagined and remembered homelands
simultaneously. The cultural theorist Anne-Marie Fortier proposes that in the construction of
identity, there is a relationship between place and what she calls terrains of belonging. She
argues that the "practices of group identity are about manufacturing cultural and historical 68
belongings which mark out terrains of commonality that delineate the politics and social
dynamics of 'fitting in"' (1999: 42). The musical performances of the Brunswick Music
Festival enact and re-establish the links between Moreland and the originating cultures and
places of its residents. Concert participants, through musical, cultural and geographical
connections, create a sense of themselves by positioning themselves in relation to places
beyond the borders of Moreland. The 1998 performance given by the choir Capella Ars
Musicalis demonstrates the ways in which these connections are articulated and activated
through music performance.
In December 1997, Moreland Council made a formal recognition of the importance of the
"cultural traditions of Abruzzo [Italy] in Australia that has emerged from the large and
significant Abruzzese presence in Moreland.124 A 'Memorandum of understanding' between
the city of Moreland and the city of L'Aquila, Abruzzo's capital, was proposed as a means to
provide opportunities to "further establish Council objectives and priorities in the areas of
cultural diversity, economic development and education' between the two cities" (1997e).
Members of Moreland Council understand this particular cultural exchange program as part of
a larger process, one that furthers "Moreland's links and relationships with overseas
communities represented in the municipality" (1998a). Financial support of $15 000 was
• given for the cultural exchange by the Moreland City Council from its Cultural Development
budget, and the City of L'Aquila provided travel arrangements within Italy, accommodation,
meals and the organisation of concert venues (Moreland Council Report 1998a: 117). This
exchange agreement enabled a small range of performers from the Greek, Italian and Anglo-
Australian communities to travel to L'Aquila for the period of one week (117).25 Interestingly,
the performers sent on this exchange were not drawn from the identifiably migrant Abruzzese
culture resident in Moreland, nor even other local Italian communities. According to a local
newspaper report, Moreland included in this exchange Greek musicians "who combine very
24 A large proportion of Moreland's post-war Italian community originated in the Abruzzo region of Italy (Moreland 1997e).
25 The performers included the Greek group, the Xylouris Ensemble, Kavisha Mazzella and Dave Steel. 69 successfully Greek music with a definite Australian flavour" (Francis 1998b: 9). As specified in the Memorandum, the focus of the exchange was the many communities represented in
Moreland. Thus, these performers are about the larger 'place' of Moreland. This is a Moreland that, as Doreen Massey (1994a) suggests, is constituted by links and interconnections between the local and places that outside of its cartographical boundaries. The music performed, the mixes and varieties maintained and experimented with, are understood as aural indicators of the diverse and hybrid music practices of multicultural Moreland.
Aldo Basile, the then president of the Abruzzo Club of Moreland, believes that this dialogue with one's parent culture is important because it strengthens the identities of those distanced from their cultural origins. He explained that "[w]e're bringing these bright, young Italians here and (second generation Italian Australians) say 'they're like us. They like the same music, the same food.' By appreciating their roots they are better citizens and the cultural links don't die with the next generation" (quoted in Francis 1998b: 9). Basile suggests that concerts such as those performed by the Capella Ars Musicalis maintain certain cultural traditions, not only for the original migrant population but also for their descendants who may not otherwise have access to such experiences. This musical connection becomes, for this group, a way of identifying themselves, of imagining who they are. The 1998 performance by Capella Ars
Musicalis, an all-female choir directed by Jose Maria Sciutto, was part of the cultural exchange program between Moreland and L'Aquila, alongside a photographic exhibition depicting images of L'Aquila. What sorts of identity or identities would be constituted at an event such as this?
Brunswick Town Hall, Cappella Ars Musicalis concert, approximately 7.30pm
In the space to the left of the Town Hall area, many of the audience members attending
tonight's opening concert for the Brunswick Music Festival quietly chatted to one another.
Others were looking at and discussing the photos of L'Aquila on display: the bell towers in
the heart of the old town, the Basilica of Saint Mary of Collemaggio, the courtyard of the 70
Franchi Palace in Via Sassi, the market in Cathedral Square, the National Laboratories of
Gran Sasso. L'Aquila is the home of the choir, "a city famed for its importance as an artistic and dynamic cultural centre" (catalogue 1998: 2).
The majority of those attending seemed to be middle-aged and I could hear both
English and Italian spoken around me. Recorded music — a male folk singer accompanied by guitar — played softly in the background. Walking into the hall, I noticed that most people seemed to know each other, calling out greetings, hugging, and then seating themselves in small groups.
The audience quietened when a man climbed onto the stage. He introduced the performers, Capella Ars Musicalis, and told us that their inclusion in the festival program was part of a cultural exchange established between Moreland and Abruzzo, a cultural exchange that he hoped would continue. The all female choir walked onto the stage, followed by the conductor, Jose Maria Sciutto. No words were spoken, then or at any time through the concert, except when Sciutto asked, in Italian, that the air conditioning be turned off because of the noise it made. The audience, too, was on the whole quiet but attentive, although they clapped and cheered loudly for a traditional Abruzzese song, All'orte,' and a song composed by Guido Albanese, 'Vola vola vola.'
Yet one non-Italian song was particularly well received: Sciutto's own arrangement of the celebrated Australian song, 'Waltzing Matilda.' The first verse was sung as written, but the following verses and repeats of the chorus were coloured musically, for example the final verses performed in a strict march-like rhythm. The choir finished with a rousing chorus. The audience joined in, then clapped and cheered loudly at the end. After the concert finished,
while a formal exchange of gifts was made between Sciutto and John McAuslan, the festival director, Sciutto explained (and through a translator for those of us who could not understand
Italian) that he had asked John McAuslan for an Australian song so that it could be included
in the concert program. So McAuslan had sent him 'Waltzing Matilda.'
(field notes March 11 1998). 71
Although the traditional folk songs of the Abruzzese region and 'Waltzing Matilda' may be interpreted as aural stereotypes of the Abruzzo region and Australia, the choir's presentation of these songs is a recognition of the audience's spatial and temporal connections. The audience has connections to a cultural tradition, and memories — and perhaps nostalgia — for this cultural home are activated by this repertoire, as could be seen and heard in the audience's warm applause to these songs. 'Waltzing Matilda' acknowledges the altered context in which the audience hears; their sense of place, that is, their sense of the Abruzzo, is filtered through the sounds and images of rupture, of being 'not there' but 'here' in Australia. More specifically, these activities and cultural exchange agreements are a response to the relationships between the place of Moreland, with its Italian people and their origins in the
Abruzzo region, and the contemporary city of L'Aquila. As with the street party performances that will be discussed shortly, this concert and the cultural exchange agreement (re)activate notions of belonging that resonate to being and identifying as both 'here' and 'there'. The performance recalls and reconnects participants to another place and, in such moments, a site of diasporic belonging is created (Fortier 1999: 49). Identity is socially constituted, and, as the participants' responses to this concert demonstrates, the various social contexts in which the self operates results in a multiplicity of identities. Sociologist Kevin Hetherington (1998) argues that identity is constituted within the relationships arising from multiple subject positions and the performative acts of identity that occur within place. The complexities and uncertainty of these relationships leads people to identify themselves as belonging (or not) to particular sets of representations. It is through identification with others (which can be multiple, fractured, and so on) that a sense of self-recognition and belonging with others is achieved (24). Within the
performance space, where it is impossible to totally define and constraint the subject position,
belonging, identity and community come into being. It is these multiple selves that are
significant because, as the political theorist Chantal Mouffe (1994) suggests, the construction
of identity is itself a response to difference, or more simply, the recognition of an 'us' and
'them.' 72
The Capella Ars Musicalis and photographic exhibition from L'Aquila were sent to Moreland as an embodiment of that city's culture. The performers sent as part of Moreland's cultural exchange point to a recontextualisation of identities, that in turn has led to a reconstitution of identity. The mix of performers from Moreland of different cultural heritages is understood by
Moreland Council and the local media as corresponding to the complex cultural identities of
Moreland. The performers chosen for the exchange are representative of particular ethnic or cultural groups resident in Moreland, and are also acknowledged as having an identifiable hybrid kind of music. In this sense, music is used to represent originating cultures that, in turn, is assumed to represent particular ethnicities. Further to this, this musical display of
'ethnicity' is understood to be representative of Moreland because these performances are ones that express heterogeneity and hybridity. In the case of Moreland, the community's identity has arisen from the reconstitution of its residents' identities and their 'homeland' connections.
In the following section, I want to examine how festival participants use a sense of
boundedness to activate notions of belonging to a community as it arises within the festival
performance.
4.3.2 'not you lot in here!'
Thus far in this chapter I have argued that the community music festival is a performance of
identities that acts out notions of belonging to a 'community' and a 'place.' Yet, it is also clear
from the discussion above that aspects of the relationship between identity and community are
not always stable nor readily understood for those involved. There is a messiness in the
process of community formation and expression, not least because of the heterogeneous sets
of social relations that construct these shared senses of identification and belonging. But
within the confines of the unique musical performance, a sense of belonging to a community
is evoked even as it is transitory. It occurs in a fixed time and place and participants in that
performance — performers and audience alike — may not extend that collective sense to the
space and time of the everyday. Nonetheless, as suggested above, this belonging draws on 73 notions of boundedness and to place and with others and to allusions of stability of these relationships. In this section, I present a close reading of one particular performance in the festival's 1998 concert series, that of indigenous Australian singer-songwriter, Key Carmody, as a means to explore how creating (imagined) boundaries around the performance helps constitute identity and belonging for the participants.
Brunswick Town Hall 8pm
The festival director, John McAuslan comes onto the stage and says, "We at the Brunswick
Music festival have always been proud of promoting the indigenous music and art of this country and one of the best artists is Key Carmody." Carmody walks onto the stage carrying his guitar. The stage is bare apart from a seat, a microphone and a didjeridu laying on the floor of the stage to the audience's right. I could just see a harmonica and fret on the seat. He moves both harmonica and fret and sits down. While he strums and checks the tuning of his guitar, he speaks to and jokes with the audience.
"Welcome! It's a pleasure to be at the Brunswick Music Festival. Mmm. I played at
Wik26 this afternoon — burnt my finger!" He picks out a few notes on the guitar. "Been to
England, Ireland, Scotland and Germany last year ... I was sitting between two guys from the
Central Desert [and learnt] this travelling song — a one-finger guitar job!"
x Wik refers to the High Court case of the Wik People and the Thayorre People vs State of Queensland & Ors. The Wik case primarily concerned areas held under pastoral and mining leases in western Cape York. One major issue not dealt with by the Native title Act is whether native title is extinguished by the grant of a pastoral lease. Pastoralists did not own the pastoral land; they paid rent to the Crown. Pastoral leaseholders today remain tenants with rights to use the land for pastoral purposes (ie grazing, building fences, bores and houses) but do not have a right of exclusive possession of what is, essentially, publicly owned land. It has been estimated that around 42% of land in Australia is subject to pastoral leases. If grants of pastoral leases were to extinguish native title, the 1992 High Court decision of Mabo — in which the 1992 decision of the High Court overturned the foundational doctrine of terra nullius ('empty land) as the basis of the British obtaining sovereignty over Australia, and recognised that a pre-existing and in some cases continuing proprietary interest in land was held by Indigenous people — would be of little practical significance for Aboriginal people. Those parts of Australia where Aboriginal laws and traditions are most likely to have survived (and, hence, over which a native title claim would be most likely to succeed) are predominantly those where pastoral leases have been granted. The issue was deliberately left to the High Court system to determine. In December 1996, the High Court decided in the Wik case that the granting of a pastoral lease will not necessarily extinguish native title. Significantly, the Court did not clarify whether inconsistent rights of native title holders would be extinguished or merely suspended for the duration of the lease. The Australian Commonwealth Government responded to the Wik decision by releasing
a '10 Point Plan,' which set out plans for cutting back native title, especially on pastoral leases. The 10 Point Plan has now been fully incorporated into the new Bill to amend the Native Title Act (www.antar.org.au cited 20 December 2000). 74
The music ends and the audience applauds enthusiastically.
'Ah! Always a good audience!" Carmody looks down at the stage floor, searching for something, then, "Oh! I forgot my water. Did a concert and introduced this next song,
'Walking in Memphis.' You know, at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, I saw an albatross, an amazing thing. He's like the flight of the human imagination — hey! Not like Johnny
Howard!'"
The audience laughs.
"I thought, that albatross was like a messenger. He travelled so far with a message, telling us of the technological barbarians — not you lot, not you lot in here! You're safe!"
The audience laughs again. Carmody looks down at his didjeridu.
"I know that you know that the didj is part of the oldest culture on the earth. Johnny
Howard doesn't know it. It's not tied to a Western pitch. I can get quarter tones on it. It's enough to knock Johnny arse over head. Gamin — now gamin is Aboriginal, means put off, put delay on it so you can play with it."
Carmody sits cross-legged on stage floor, and blows into the didjeridu.
"If you hear it around a campfire at night — "
While listening and watching, the words that best describe how it feels in amongst the audience are affection and goodwill. All throughout Carmody's performance, he talks to us, telling us about who he has worked with, where he has been, as well as the origins of his songs and his music, and how these are entangled in the politics, not just of indigenous
Australians, but of Australians in general. Towards the end of his performance, Carmody turns to the audience and asks.
"So you've all heard of Wik, haven't you?"
No one replies, although many do nod, something Carmody obviously can't see, as he looks at us a while and then says,
27 John Howard is the current Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the Liberal- National Party Coalition. 75
"You fellows aren't political, are you? You know, I saw in a home in Fitzroy, a tax for k electricity, gas and water — we don't have a tax for water in Queensland yet, but we'll get it
soon. Soon they'll be taxing the air!"
Someone from the audience calls out, "They're working on it!" Everyone laughs. Carmody
continues,
"Played at the wharfies thing2d around three weeks ago — anyway, everyone's in
trouble, single mums, pensioners — if we link arms regardless of race, sex or gender, we can
knock them over!"
The audience claps and cheers.
"OK, Here's 'From little things big things grow.' Thanks to Darren and Rosie for
helping me. Thanks Brunswick Festival and thank you people for supporting this. 'Cos if you
don't then you'll be force-fed Michael Jackson. Anyway, you can join in and you don't need a
University degree. It's just, 'from little things big things grow; four times. From the Gurrundji
struggle29 — it signifies that you can get things done." The audience joins Carmody in the chorus. He calls out that some of us sing harmonies if we
want.
"Come on, join in! I can always hear the women, the men always take longer!"
At the end, the audience clapped and cheered, calling out for an encore and Carmody
obliged. (field notes March 22 1998).
ritime Union (MUA). On 7 April 2' Carmody is referring to the dispute between the stevedoring company Patrick and the Ma 1998, security guards removed workers from the dock sites and the next day waterside workers found they had been secretly transferred into labour hire firms — empty companies, stripped of all their assets and without a contract to supply labour. Non- union workers, including industrial mercenaries (such as ex-police officers, martial arts experts and former army personnel) were dropped in by helicopter, boat and bus to take the waterside workers' jobs. Two thousand and one hundred workers were sacked and the MUA claimed these sackings breached employment agreements, company and industrial laws, and were part of a conspiracy involving the Federal Government. On May 4, 1998, the High Court upheld a ruling that the sackings could be in breach of Australia's industrial relations laws and part of an unlawful conspiracy to replace MUA members with non-union labour (www.theage.com.au cited 4 January 2001). n In the late 1960s, the Gurrundji people walked off Wave Hill cattle station in protest over appalling work conditions. 76
In this field note excerpt I have focussed on the stage talk used by Carmody in between some of the songs and music he performed. Stage talk positions the performance as it draws the listener's attention to the musicological, historical, political and cultural worlds in which the music and performance are embedded. It also points to other factors that can influence the ways in which the music is received by the listener, such as reference to the immediate environment in which the piece is heard, how the performers feels about the music and so on.
Musicologist John Bealle argues that performers "exploit these utilitarian features of conversational speech to make sincere claims regarding the framing or aesthetic performances" (1993: 64). Further to this Bealle notes that stage talk gives the performer what he calls 'situational authority' over which interpretation is intended. What the performer decides to say influences how the performance is heard. Even so, much stage talk is what
Bealle terms 'ritualistic speech,' speech that has come to be part of the performance of a particular genre that also indicates an ongoing relationship between performer and audience.
In Carmody's performance, as the opening account illustrates, the pieces performed are framed by Carmody's active engagement in a number of political issues and Carmody draws the audience into these issues through the music performance and his stage banter. In the short introduction to 'Walking in Memphis,' for example, Carmody uses the image of the albatross and its sacredness in myth as a means to warn this audience of the coming "technological
barbarians." The mention of John Howard, Australia's current Prime Minister, along with
Carmody's earlier mention of Wik, alludes to the John Howard-led Coalition government's
lack of support for many indigenous issues. But Carmody uses humour to get this across.
'John' becomes 'Johnny,' so diminishing the Prime Minister's stature in the audience's eyes. He
suggests that Howard is not able to understand someone else's position and that the
complexities of another's culture are something Howard cannot comprehend. Carmody
positions the audience as co-conspirators in his criticisms of Howard. Those attending the
concert are not the technological barbarians but are included in Carmody's view of and
concern for the social justice. There is a sense of a camaraderie built between performer and 77 audience, by way of these words and the lyrics of the songs, an inclusive feeling of 'us against them.' Carmody often returned to this theme throughout the evening, stating it most clearly in the introduction to his song, 'From little things big things grow,' "if we link arms regardless of race, sex or gender we can knock them over!" The subversive spoken and lyric texts of
Carmody's performance were a site for expressing a political voice. Audience members recognised this and those I spoke with were attracted to his concert because of Carmody's political beliefs. Moreover, they understood this political position to be part of the larger imagined community in which the festival takes place. One woman explained that:
I think a particular proportion of the local community is supportive of the Brunswick
Music Festival. It's sort of symbolic of what Brunswick's about in a way. It's kind of
like a festival that goes along with the same sort of politics, almost as you'd expect
the Brunswick City Council. It's kind of left-wing — a little bit kind of old 3t fashioned left-wing — a little bit hippy, you know, that sort of stuff (Irish-Celtic
woman interview 1998).
Another audience member, in response to asking her what attending the performance meant for her, said:
[w]e were actually talking about this outside just now, and we felt that we were really
privileged to be able to come and listen to people like [Carmody] that have really got
something to say. I hope that it brings people to a greater understanding of all different
cultural backgrounds. I just hope it would bring people together and make people talk
and then make other people come along (English woman interview 1998).
3° Again that confusion between Brunswick and Moreland City Councils.
31 As discussed in the methodology chapter, chapter 3, those interviewed were asked to define their ethnicity (refer to page 50 chapter three and Appendices 6 to 8 for interview transcripts). 78
There is a performative dialogue between audience and performer. Those who attended the
Carmody concert understand themselves as engaging with ideas about their political identity through the concert framework, so participants `perform' aspects of their political identity through identification with issues that they understand as embodied in performers such as
Carmody. Participation within musical processes, the framework of the performance, the banter between songs, the sounds themselves, are part of a process that forms a sense of community for participants of the music festival. As one person explained, Carmody's performance of political ideals:
[i]s a social thing, it brings people together. I've noticed that — I was at the 'stick with
Wik' concert this morning and there's a similar sort of good people here [tonight] as
well. I suppose it's a community feel. Yeah, there's a bit of, I suppose, good feeling in
the community, so I suppose it creates a situation for people to meet and socialise
(Australian-Irish man interview 1998).
But it is a community that, as the cultural geographer Gillian Rose (1997) suggests, is a complex spatiality of both presence and absence, a relationship existing between the immediate with that of the referred people, objects, situations. Rose, contemplating the 'inoperative community', first proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy, suggest that communication has a central role in the formation of community. 'Community' occurs within the space of the performance, but "only as it is said or done ... this is a space not only multiple, composite, heterogeneous, indeterminate and plural....
It is a space the dimensions of which cannot completely be described, defined, discoursed"
(1997: 188). Even so, as Carmody's stage banter illustrates, participants are not always
cognisant of how others feel themselves to be embedded within this network of identification.
Carmody himself did not think those at the audience held strongly political views ("You
fellows aren't political, are you?") because they did not overtly respond to his comments; they 79 nodded in agreement rather than vocalising their support 32 Yet, what does occur within the performance space is a form of social relations that arise from the 'being together of strangers'
(Young 1990). Concert participants interact within the performance space and experience themselves as belonging— in the case of the Capella Ars Musicalis, to an Italian or more specifically Abbruzzese heritage, while in the Carmody concert participants expressed a sense of solidarity to the socio-political views spoken by the performer — but without these interactions dissolving into unity. Rather, the festival program is structured in such a way that the various clusters of people that compose the City of Moreland may express their particular affinities within the performance space.
Each of the examples from the Brunswick Music Festival discussed thus far illustrates such a complexity, this presence and absence, a being here and somewhere else. These performed identities inhabit and are understood as re-enacting the officially defined Moreland multicultural space, yet these are also responses to individual searches for identity and belonging. These performances point to the significance of the spatiality of the event as constituting identity, where, as Rose proposes, a sense of community arises "only as it is said or done" (1997: 188).
In the next section, I examine the ways in which identity is constituted through the spatiality of the event and the performative act, that is, how festival participants engage with the signifying practices of the performance that then contribute to a sense of identity. The Sydney Road street party, the opening event of the Brunswick Music Festival, is the focus of this analysis.
32 However, in talking to members of the audience, many were active in these political demonstrations, they had attended the Wik rally and were actively involved in the wharf dispute then occurring. 80
4.4 Performing the local
4.4.1 taking it to the street
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a
proper. The moving about that the city multiplies and concentrates makes the city itself
an immense social experience of lacking a place ... compensated for by the
relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban
fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately, the place but is only a
name, the City. The identity fitrnished by this place is all the more symbolic because, in
spite of the inequality of its citizens' positions and profits, there is only a pullulation of
passer-by, ... a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of
places (de Certeau 1984: 103).
Michel de Certeau's understanding of the city and the social relations that constitute it describe a situation filled with angst. The Sydney Road street party appears superficially to demonstrate de Certeau's rootlessness in that it is about the display of transplanted cultures signified through musical practice, the "pullulation of passer-by." Yet, as indicated in the previous sections, identity, as it is constituted within the festival performance, is a complex relationship that vacillates between the heterogeneous sets of social relations that construct shared senses of identification and belonging, and the attempts of festival participants to ground this identity
in some essential notion of ethnicity and culture. This section traces the development of the
event and its relationship to Council policies. Following this, I examine the audience's
responses to the event and a close reading of two performances from the 1998 and 1999 street
parties.
The Sydney Road street party opens the Brunswick Music Festival, and it grew out of an
event originally known as a people's picnic which was itself a replacement for the more
traditional Mayoral Ball (Brunswick Sentinel 1991). The Brunswick Council as it was believed 81 such a picnic rather than a ball would encourage a larger number of residents to attend this community celebration (Hill 1989a; Brunswick Sentinel, 1991). This change illustrates the former Brunswick Council's shift in policy thinking, from an elitist position, inherent in an event that could only cater for a limited number of people, to one that attempts to be inclusive, suggesting a democratisation of council events. The overall activities program of these earlier events suggests the main focus of the day was more on general family entertainment, rather than what is now a display of the area's cultural plurality by way of music performance. Although initially popular, the numbers attending the people's picnic declined significantly over the next few years and a new format for community celebration was sought (Hill 1989a). In late 1991, the Sydney Road Development Committee published a report that identified the Sydney Road-
Dawson Street intersection as an arts precinct and proposed that arts activities should be encouraged in this area (McAuslan interview 1997). With this in mind, the Brunswick Arts
Officer at that time, Peter Leman, decided the area would be a suitable site for a community celebration, and the Brunswick Council promoted this event as a community day.
The first street party was held at the Dawson Street-Sydney Road intersection in 1992 in the area fronting the Dawson Street baths, and this portion of road was closed to traffic while
concerts were held on one stage throughout the afternoon. Sydney Road is one of the main
thoroughfares north of the Central Business District, a road that, as the name suggests, has been
the main route to Sydney, New South Wales. The daily streetscape of Sydney Road is one
dominated by heavy traffic with numerous pedestrians moving along the shopping strip running
both sides of the street. (Refer to figures 4.1.1 to 4.2.2). The Sydney Road of everyday has its
own social space created out of the various relationships occurring within it — economic,
social, civic and so on. A street closure and a street party are not festival formats unique to
Brunswick or Moreland, but what is noteworthy is the self-conscious movement of activity from
a less centrally located and safely bounded place to a more porous and ambiguously bounded
streetscape. This streetscape is made recreational through its transformation into a performance
space. The following is a compilation of field notes and interviews taken at both the 1998 and 81a
4.1.1 Sydney Road, everyday street scene: Sydney Road/ Dawson Street intersection
4.1.2 Sydney Road, everyday street scene: looking north 82
1999 Sydney Road street parties. I want to suggest that within the street party, the relationship of identity and place becomes embedded within and expressed through a somewhat different framework, through a set of relations that highlight issues of cultural and ethnic identities and their display that nonetheless reaffirm for participants that some sense of a 'local community' exists.
Sydney Road, Brunswick, 11.30 am
I arrived early at the southern end of Sydney Road, close to the Union Square shopping centre. I wanted to get some sense of the changes that may occur over the time of the street party — who came, how many and when, as well as what they did. It was already hot, and the few people who had also decided to come early were slowly wandering along in the shade of the shop front verandahs. The street itself was fairly empty. Standing in the middle of the road, I could see some distance down past Dawson Street. Street stalls were busily being set up, with books, second-hand goods and crafts arranged on card tables. Stall owners smiled and greeted neighbours, commenting on the heat, the blustery warm wind gusting down the street, then adjusting their hats.
Food stall owners were hastily turning on ovens and grills. Local cafés and restaurants also were to offer meals and snacks. The tables and chairs of La Paella, a
Spanish restaurant as the name suggests, spilled out onto the footpath. A small stage was set
up where the restaurant's performers later played songs made popular by the group, the
Gypsy Kings. Their rendition of 'Bamboleo' included a flamenco dancer, her style perhaps
more earthy than polished. The audience enjoyed these songs and dances, clapping along,
some even dancing themselves. (Refer to track 2, Brunswick Music Festival menu, CDrom)
Diverse foods were on offer: a stall where Chinese doughnuts were prepared and
sold, the numerous pubs of Sydney Road offered thirsty street party goers cold beers, a
sample of foods from the Ritmo Café laid out on long tables covered with crisp white cloth
and Muslim women's stall where corn and flat white bread were sold. (Refer to figures 4.3.1
to 4.4.2). But it was the abundance of sausage sizzles, set up by stereotypical community 82a
Figure 4.2.1 Sydney Road street party 1998: looking north
Figure 4.2.2 Sydney Road street party 1998: Litter Sisters 82b
Figure 4.3.1 Sydney Road street party 1998: audience at La Paella restaurant
Figure 4.3.2 Sydney Road street party 1999: Chinese doughnut stall 82c
Figure 4.4.1: Sydney Road street party 1999: Brunswick Brass Band
Figure 4.4.2 Sydney Road street party 1999: the Magic Pirate storyteller 83 groups such as the girl scouts and church fiend-raising groups that struck me. It also meant that, for me at least, the street party will be nearly always associated with a strong aroma of sausages and onions wafting around us while listening and watching the party's various performers.
13.00 pm
Well, I had to start my interviews, but I felt quite hesitant approaching those who milled around me. I stood at the corner of Sydney Road and Dawson Street as this seemed to be the focal point of the street party. Looking at the program, I noticed that this space was marked out as the Iramoo zone, a concept that comes from:
the traditional Aboriginal neutral zone, the Iramoo Plain, which is the open flat area
between the western suburbs of Melbourne and Werribee. It was forbidden in
Aboriginal lore for fighting to occur on these grounds as this was an agreed meeting
place for interaction through negotiation and discussion. This year [1998] the ethnic
communities of Moreland have been invited to participate in the Iramoo Zone.
Interaction and exchange are the basis for awareness and understanding and the
Sydney Road street party presents an ideal setting for this (Festival program 1998:
unpaginated).
Along with the neighbouring Iramoo Stage, the Iramoo Zone is a space with a specific
focus on indigenous Australian performances and crafts. Both were sited close to the civic
buildings of Moreland — on the grassed area outside the Mechanics's Institute and diagonally
opposite the Town Hall — perhaps with the intention of demonstrating, physically and
symbolically, that indigenous issues are one of the key concern in Moreland council's issues of
social justice. Seemed like a perfect place for me to interact with those at the street party!
Question sheet ready, I moved towards a young couple and began to ask them would
they like to — but before I could even finish, the two declined and hurriedly moved on, eyes 84 decidedly avoiding mine. "This is not going to be so easy," I thought. As it turned out, about half of those I approached did not want to take part, while women more often than men agreed to be interviewed.
A man in his early forties was happy to respond. I asked him how he came to be at the street party, and he told me he lived locally, and had in fact come along every year.
"How would he describe the music here at the street party?" I asked.
"I think its a real mix of things. I mean there's most types here, at different times. You don't want me to do a boring list, do you?" and laughed.
"OK, so what does attending the street party mean to you?"
"It's a local celebration" he replied. "I think it brings out and shows off all the different things going on in the local area. It sort of establishes an identity for Brunswick itself. It's been very underrated as a central location, its access to the main centres of
Melbourne. Once Brunswick's name gets around, whether it's a folk festival or music festival or whatever — some identity — people will come to recognise its convenience" (interview
1998. Throughout the afternoon, I received similar responses from a variety of people.
"I think it's a day off, you know, they talk to each other, they have a chance to
advertise what they're doing" (Argentinian woman interview 1998).
"Well, I've learnt a lot about what's on here, you know, what's available in
Brunswick. So I think it's good for advertising all the different activities" (Australian
woman interview 1998).
"It highlights Brunswick's unique features, such as its varied cultural background"
(Australian man interview 1998).
"It allows people to identify as a community while still recognising the ethnicity of the
people. The fact that it's local and that it is representative of the community — it's
representative of what Sydney Road represents to the people that live here" (English
woman interview 1998). 85
"I think it helps everybody to socialise with everybody else" (Australian33 girl
interview 1998)
I also asked people to describe the music that they heard. These responses fell into two broad categories. Most defined the music as 'cultural' or 'multicultural performances'.
This was specifically related to the music of the street party itself and it was what attracted them to the event. For example, one woman explained to me:
"Different people, different music, different food you know, different things that people sell — from all different countries. Which is excellent and I'm proud, yeah. I think it's great, bringing all these cultures in one place. Letting each other know what they're all about
—not exactly what they're all about, but I mean, showing what they have in their cultures and sharing the food and music. It is colour! It's excellent!" (Turkish woman interview 1998).
Some heard the music as folk music — one respondent even saying that it was too folky for her liking (Australian woman interview 1998) — and in these cases the person spoke of the music of the Brunswick festival as a whole. (Field notes taken March 1 1998).
Although maintaining a family-oriented focus, the street party is a performance space that has
evolved into an enactment of a multicultural landscape. This is reflected in the shift away from
the village fair-like atmosphere of the earlier people's picnic to the current event that is a display
of various cultures. While discussing how the Council originally decided on a location for a
community day, the Council Arts Officer, Andrew Manning, noted that there were a number of
issues that influenced the format of the street party. He explained that "there was an interest
about what was happening in Sydney Road, [about] reclaiming the space, the national
highway and, let's reclaim our environment. And we said that we'll take the resources of the
73 This girl identified herself as Australian, yet she appeared to be of Asian parents. Her response led me to rethink how I asked this question so that in later interviews I asked for the birth place of the respondent's parents as well as their own identity as they
defined it. 86 mayor's day, the concept of the mayor's day, as an inclusive community event and have the street party" (interview 1998). The street party, then, was understood as a way for Council to address residents' concerns about their feelings of exclusion from public space and events.
Aligned to this officially sanctioned reclamation of public space was a possible means for council to address another of its objectives: a display of ethnic and cultural diversity that may assist in creating a peaceful, cohesive and economically viable community. Manning told me in an interview that:
[i]t seems like a real cliché, but none the less we've got one of the most culturally
diverse populations. A hundred and thirty communities are represented here. So
Moreland has this incredibly rich cultural representation from throughout the world and
it is growing daily. With that many different cultural groups there are bound to be
demands for expression at some point. That's what makes Moreland different, that's
why it makes it a place where organisations have their celebrations (interview 1998).
Manning here suggests that the cultural diversity of Moreland, an image strongly promoted by
this Council, leads to these various cultural groups wanting to make known to others their
cultural differences in some format. The street party in particular is understood as offering a
format for festival participants to engage with Council's policies on multiculturalism. The
street party is understood by Moreland Council as a place where participants can 'reclaim' and
reconfigure the street, with the potential to remake the everyday scene into a place of
community celebration and a site in which to raise social justice issues (Manning interview
1998). Moreland Council promotes the Sydney Road street party as a practical example of
inclusivist ideals of multiculturalism that can help create a sense of community. At the 1998
Sydney Road street party, Moreland's then mayor, Rod Higgins welcomed people to the
event, saying that "at a time when some are threatening to shatter Australia's spirit of
multiculturalism, when the need for reconciliation and acknowledgment is more crucial than
ever, the [Sydney Road] Street Party will demonstrate the beauty and value of our diverse 87 cultures and faiths" (1998 unpaginated). Examining Higgins' statement more closely, the street party becomes a tool, a way of promoting Council's packaging of Moreland. The street party's display of 'diverse cultures and faiths' through music performance is the celebration of an imagined community — peaceful, 'multicultural Moreland.' Yet this is but one, official construction of Moreland and what is implied in Manning's statement, and in Council policies, is that this display of cultural and ethnicity is enthusiastically and unequivocally embraced by festival participants.
The street party then has two functions: it is a site for the expression of cultural difference and it is a site for enacting inclusivity. Although, as Ghassan Hage, quoted earlier, states, such forms of multiculturalism are not about inclusivity but containment and the subsequent enrichment of Anglo-Australia (1998: 120-123). People take to the streets in a carnival-like atmosphere that is intended by the organisers of the event to create a particular image, one that maps out the area's identity that is understood as culturally diverse. In this section, I have outlined the basic assumptions behind the street party format and how they are presented in the street party event. In the following section, I will explore and analyse the responses of
participants to the translation of Council's policies on multiculturalism into the program of the
street party.
4.4.2 mediations
The street party format has proved incredibly popular, as the increased numbers of those who
attend illustrate. The first people's picnic in 1989, approximately 1 000 attended while the
attendance at the 1999 street party was estimated to be up to 48 000; Brunswick Sentinel
1989; Stanley and Milford 1999). At the 1998 and 1999 Sydney Road Street Parties (the time
in which I undertook my fieldwork) there were ten stages where numerous performers had
between twenty to forty-five minutes of performance time, with starting times staggered over
the afternoon. For the occasion, Sydney Road was closed to vehicle traffic along a length of 88 approximately eight hundred metres, from Union to Victoria Streets. (Refer to track 1,
Brunswick Music Festival menu, CDrom). Those who attended the street party that I spoke to
(and some of these responses have been outlined in the field notes above, as well as Appendix
6.1), focussed on two features that they understood as key elements of the event: it was local, and it represented the numerous different cultural and ethnic groups residing in the area.34 In these responses, it appears that Council's objectives with regards to the festival and street party seem to have been met. Interestingly, although a Moreland Council event, respondents talked about the festival in terms of the neighbourhood of Brunswick specifically. They talked about the display of cultural diversity that can be seen in everyday Brunswick, that it is in
Brunswick that one can buy different foods, hear and purchase so-called world music recordings and different types of clothing. The majority of respondents I spoke to lived in Brunswick, with many living within walking distance of Sydney Road, a finding also made by an independent market research company examining the street party attendance in 1999 (Stanley and Milford
1999). This appeared to reinforce the perceived local-ness of the music festival. It was something that the locals came across when out walking in their neighbourhood on a warm
Sunday afternoon, when they could see and listen to the multitude of cultures that make up their own back yard. The sorts of responses to my question about the street party's meaning for the local community (refer to field notes above and also Appendices 6.1 to 6.3) reveals that the perceived local-ness was important to these respondents.
Complicating the sense of a spatialised, local identity has been the restructuring of local
government through amalgamations of smaller councils into much larger administrative areas.
This has meant the former Brunswick Council, which was described earlier as left-wing, and a
little bit hippy', is now integrated into an administrative area that includes former councils with
their own (former) identities. Residents have not always acknowledged Moreland City Council,
rather than the former councils, as their 'official' community identity. One audience member,
A youth stage was also present, with a wide range of music genres and styles performed. This music was not discussed except 34 for disparaging remarks about 'noise', particularly when bands performing thrash metal were programmed. 89 when asked what performances like Kevin Carmody meant to the local community responded,
"I come from Broadmeadows and up there you don't have festivals like this. And it's, I don't know if they'll work but they help build the community up" (young male interview 1998).
This confusion about who constitutes the local is not clarified by the use of public space for the festival events, as both the street party and concert venues are situated in and around the civic buildings of Brunswick, such as the Town Hall and Mechanics Institute. The responses of those
I spoke to point to a tension between the recognition of an administrative location called
Moreland that runs the event and the origins of the festival in the older city of Brunswick.
Further to this, there is a discrepancy between the aims of the street party and its relationship to a portrayal of who makes up the City of Moreland. Moreland resident MC35 explained to me that:
in a sense you have a far larger Arabic, Turkish, aging Greek and Italian community
and they weren't really being represented in what was being put forward [in the
Brunswick Music Festival]. It was a bit more like a variant of the Port Fairy folk
festival. Now nobody from that community or even the older ethnic communities is
going to attend it, so are you staging something that is reflecting the suburb or
reflecting the values that you want to impose on the suburb? In terms of the street
party —I didn't go this year but I've been to the last two or three — I sort of seem to
find more and more, not non-residents necessarily, but again it seems to be a different
mix — and this is just a gut feeling — to the everyday Sydney Road people who
congregate there. Because it's a fairly aging population and I didn't see as much of
that. And in a sense it's a little bit sad because there is a wealth of music making and
musicians in those communities that don't cross those bounds. And some of them are
traditional folk, some of them are terrible pop fusions — you know you just have to
go down Sydney Road to see outside the Turkish video shops, the Turkish pop stars
that come out here, or the Greek pop stars etcetera (interview 1999).
35 This respondent will in future references be referred to as 'MC' as anonymity was requested. 90
There is an expectation held by street party participants of the Brunswick Music Festival that
this area of Melbourne has numerous and quite diverse cultures living within it. The
performances at the street party and festival appear to reinforce this through the varied music
program of ethnic and cultural performances. The street party is created by Moreland Council as
a site in which a specific kind of multicultural identity for Moreland is acted out, made visible
and, more specifically, audible. This multicultural identity is constructed out of a set of musical
genres that correspond to a category generally defined as 'folk,' in that such music is understood
to signify an authenticity in its practice and in the music's relationship to its audience (Smith and
Brett 1998). In the wording of Council's tender package, the local is understood as analogous
to the ethnic, cultural and indigenous communities residing in the municipality. The package
states, "[t]he Sydney Road street party shall address the cultural objectives [of Moreland City
Council] by focusing upon an event with outcomes that seek to celebrate the diversity of
identified cultures within multicultural Moreland, to present the very best of Ethnic and Youth
music in a one day celebration [and] to present the very best of Indigenous culture, arts and
heritage" (1997b: 14). Not only does this objective imply by omission that white Anglo-
Australian culture and ethnicity is normative, and therefore it is not required to be represented
within the framework and policies of multiculturalism, there is a folding of 'local' into
'multicultural.' That is, if a performer is local, he/she must also be representative of one of the
municipality's (identified) ethnic groups, and this musical performance will be representative
of an ethnic group because ethnicity is characterised by cultural practice. Cultural studies
theoretician Jon Stratton argues that in the discourse of multiculturalism:
the rhetoric of race, which has always suggested some fundamental and possibly
insurmountable difference between people, was replaced by the rhetoric of ethnicity
which has been used to emphasise culture rather than biology and which suggests a
degree of compatibility and complementarity, which in political rhetoric has come to
be called 'diversity' (1998: 43). 91
Stratton suggests that in conceptualising difference in terms of 'culture' and 'ethnicity' it appears that convergence is a greater possibility, as opposed to instances in which difference is racialised, and those so defined may be construed as insurmountably different. In the case of this music festival, participants, for all the desired display of diversity, are encouraged to
acknowledge a larger, shared community of diversity with which they can identify.
However, as indicated by respondent MC, there appears to be a significant difference between
the communal identity that is constituted in the 'everyday' cultural diversity of Sydney Road,
Moreland and the constructed multicultural display of the Brunswick Music festival street
party and associated concert program. While in everyday life one may catch glimpses of other
cultural and ethnic groups, the street party heightens and intensifies this experience because they
are laid out and performed before you. Those attending the street party are encouraged to
continuously circulate through this recreated, multicultural streetscape and it is this movement
through the performance space that gives shape to that space. The pathways and connections
made while walking result is a spatial acting-out of that place (de Certeau 1984). In a similar
way, anthropologist Sara Cohen (1997) argues that music not only reflects the place in which it
is created but that it helps shape the city. Music influences the social relations and activities of
that place, people's concepts and experiences of the city, as well as the city's economic and
material development. The display of 'multicultural' music encourages participants to
comprehend difference as something to be possessed, to be consumed and to embrace. It is
impossible to see all the street party has to offer nor does it seem that this is the aim of this
event. Rather the organisers have tried to provide a bit of something for everyone within an
overall framework of diversity. This is a conscious celebration of Moreland's cultural pluralism
but, in an ironic way, this celebration of community identity is activated through the lens of a
bricolage. Participants interpret the juxtaposition of musical practices of the street party as
signifying the cultural pluralism of Moreland. However, this process of bricolage can be a
subversive practice, challenging the overall official representation (multicultural Moreland) and
reinterpreting the performance space in other ways. In the following section, I examine the 92 ways in which music has been used to officially assign an identity to the street party, and how these musical references frame the space of the performance.
4.4.3 marking out identities
Council and festival organisers have used music as a key means of signifying first Brunswick,
then Moreland, communal identity. The subtle changes to this identity that have occurred since
the festival's inception can be traced in print media reports. These media reports indicate a shift
in the perceptions of this event, which parallel Council's changed perception of what constitutes
a community day. Drawing on the history of Brunswick, the articles from 1989 celebrate the
street party in terms of the working class origins of the city, as well as the area's diverse
migrant population since World War II (Hill 1989b; Brunswick Sentinel 1991; Jenkins 1993;
Sentinel 1994; Thompson 1997). This framing of the event has continued to the present, yet
there is a subtle change in how the music performances are represented in the media. When
discussing the first community day (which later evolved into the street party), the term
'multiculturalism' was a favoured descriptive term. For example, the mayor at this time,
Councillor Mike Hill, proudly stated that the community day would be "a real multicultural
community event like only Brunswick knows how to turn on" (1989a: 10). In reports on the
1990 and 1991 festivals, the term 'migrant' was used to depict the performers involved in the
community day, including a 'music of migrationt3ó concert that was to bring "together musicians,
singers and dancers from Melbourne's Greek, Irish, Italian, Latin American and Arabic
communities" (Brunswick Sentinel 1990: 5). From 1991, newspaper accounts began to describe
the performances in terms of 'world music' alongside the descriptive terms 'multicultural,'
'ethnic,' 'migrant' or 'cultural diversity.' The festival director, John McAuslan first used the
term 'world music' in the local media in 1992, where he was cheekily reported as saying that
"fortunately for him somebody had recently invented the catch-phrase World Music, which he
uses to describe the type of music the festival is based around" (Jenkins 1992: 8). This catch
in 1986 as part of the city council's " Brunswick City Council had commissioned a recording also called Music of migration community arts program. Included were recordings of Turkish, Greek, Irish, Lebanese, Italian and Portuguese performers. 93 phrase may reveal local shifts in describing the festival's music performances, but it also
reflects a more general change within the music industry itself. The musicologist, Jocelyn
Guilbault (1997) points out that the term 'world music' is not a musical genre, but useful for
marketing outside mainstream Anglo-American popular music. It refers to music of a non-
European origin, with a hybrid character, that emphasises musical, social or political change
occurring elsewhere. The change in the descriptive term for the music of the Brunswick Music
Festival as a whole suggests a change in how the local Council wants the Moreland event to be
perceived. No longer a 'music of migration' with the associations of difference and arrival to a
new place, 'world music' implies that Moreland is part of a global network of music. The
focus seems to be less on the ruptures to a perception of here and there and more one of
intersection and perhaps exchange.
The shift in the name and venue for the event reflect a shift in the Brunswick Council's
objectives and understanding of what this event is about. Changing from a people's picnic to an
event promoted as a community day suggests Brunswick Council was drawing on the terms
'community' and 'community arts' as a means to reiterate its position of inclusivity and
democratisation. However, the use of this term raises some difficulties. First, there is the
implication when using 'community day' that the community itself is an unproblematic, even
homogenous, entity. The 'community' is often understood as those people, usually of a specific
locale, who have a shared set of values, yet, as the geographer Gillian Rose (1997) and social
theorist Iris Marion Young (1990) both argue, the term 'community' operates as a means of
defining insiders and outsiders, as a means of isolating a particular group or groups from that of
the dominant group. Second, the terms, 'community arts' and 'community music' as used by
Moreland Council, retain this sense of boundedness. Community music is often linked to folk
music, particularly the music practices of highly definable groups such as ethnic migrant
communities, although journalist and writer Marcus Breen (1994) points out that this more
orthodox understanding has recently been challenged. What constitutes community music has
been influenced by a greater availability of diverse musics, particularly through audio 94 recordings, resulting in a recognition that music can extend beyond this sense of boundaries, "to be appropriated where and when circumstances converge" (315). Breen argues that community events are often a time in which marginalised and otherwise silent individuals and groups have the opportunity to be seen and heard. He believes that within the concept of community music there is an assumption of a "democratic access to all styles and standards of music making, and that these should be available to all those members of society who seek such avenues of expression" (323). These ideals and assumptions, as well as the belief held by the festival organisers that this council's residents have a willingness to explore various cultural musical practices, underlies the Brunswick, and the later Moreland, Councils' shaping of the Brunswick
Music Festival, especially in the structure of the street party. In the next section, I undertake a close reading of two dance performances from the street party to demonstrate the complexities inherent in using music as a performative strategy for identity creation.
4.5 Performing identity: being here and there (2)
4.5.1 musical acts
In the previous section in which the festival concert series was discussed, I noted the complex
spatiality that constitutes an identity or identities resonating with both a 'here' and a 'somewhere
else.' Short Circuit, a group who performed at the 1998 street party, illustrates the ways in
which performative strategies are used to create a sense of identity and belonging that
consciously arises from this paradox of being in and out of place. This all-female group
performs Middle Eastern and West African music and dance. All are Australian born, most live
within the Moreland area, and define themselves as Anglo-Celtic (Anne Harkin interview
1998). Although Short Circuit was originally intended as a performance linking traditional
styles of drumming with that of a techno-electronic style, the group currently uses traditional
West African and Middle Eastern rhythms but incorporates the group's own interpretations of
the traditional dances of these regions (refer to figure 4.5). The performers dress in costumes
made of fluorescent fabrics for an "end of the twentieth century look," and Anne Harkin, the 94a
Figure 4.5 Short Circuit on left: dancer performing West African dance on right: dancer performing Arabic dance 95 group's originator, describes their performance as "contemporary Australian, in that it combines different cultures in a new way" (interview 1998). Short Circuit's cultural appropriations are then a conscious transformation of traditional music and dance that, framed by the multicultural format of the Sydney Road street party, locate these performances and the group members in a specific space, the contemporary urban setting of (multicultural) Moreland.
I asked Harkin what it meant to her to perform at the street party, and she replied:
I particularly enjoy playing at a street party in my suburb because it changes the nature
of the place where I conduct my daily life. Where I walk to pay bills or do the shopping
becomes a place infused with memories of people dancing, playing music, sitting in the
sunshine chatting, meeting friends. It adds to the quality of life by adding a new and
pleasant dimension to what Sydney Road means to me (interview 1998, emphasis
added).
Performing at the street party, as Harkin suggests, changes the nature of the everyday space in
which she lives. The performance gives rise to the possibility of face-to-face encounters, and not
simply within the performance space itself. Harkin explained that:
It is great [to perform in the Sydney Road street party] because I live in Brunswick, so it
is nice to put something back into your community and to form some sort of link with
people, because [it is] from [performing] that people see you when you go shopping
down the street and stuff. And it makes more links within the community so that you're
not just living in an anonymous twentieth-century suburb, but you actually know who
people are to some extent (interview 1998).
In these replies, the emphasis is on the local, the community that is met on the street, the people
you get to know in the world of the everyday; you are not anonymous. Identity and belonging in 96 this sense are localised and place-based. Harkin responds to the street party framework on two levels. First, participation within the music festival framework means entering into a performative structure that re-enacts a relationship to place. Short Circuit performed within a street party contextualised and actively created as 'multicultural Moreland.' Second, a space is also opened up for acting out individual notions of identity and belonging so that 'multicultural
Moreland' is remade in aural and visual codes that have significance for its participants. For the members of Short Circuit, these codes of identity and belonging are embedded within West
African and Middle Eastern music, costume and dance, but, through their performance, the individual members of the group re-embed themselves within the place of Moreland. The members of Short Circuit achieve this through their music and dance as it enables these performers to negotiate what the geographer Doreen Massey describes as "a vast, intricate complexity of social processes and social interrelations" (1994a: 111). The space of the street party is, in the eyes and ears of these performers, an illustration of a hybrid culture that they define as first, Moreland, and second, the much larger culture that Harkin conceptualises as contemporary Australian because of its hybrid nature. Harkin understands this musical hybridity as not merely a Western appropriation of another's culture. She reflected in an interview,
circulated in Moreland's local newspaper, that she felt little connection with Western musical
genres but was inspired by the music of the Middle East and the spontaneous dancing of African
women (Francis 1998b). For her and the other member of Short Circuit, these rhythms and
movement are a means to express their situatedness, not just in relation to Sydney Road and
Moreland, but as to how they identify themselves.
The performance practice of Short Circuit, together with Harkin's reflections on what
performing at the street party means for her, point to an intriguing contradiction within the
constitution of identity and place through performance. The ways in which the relationship
between place and identity is described suggests this relationship is embedded along traditional
lines of community. That is, Council objectives and people's perceptions draw on notions of an
ideal community, one that is bounded geographically and in which social relations are 97 characterised by small-scale, personal ties. Yet, the performers of Short Circuit demonstrate a more complexly formulated identity, an identity that is created across boundaries and cultural vectors, that nonetheless is understood by the performers as constituting their identity within a
particular place. This transgression of the ideal community suggests a way of understanding
how the performers transform and create a situated identity. Central to understanding the
formation of identity in such a context is the concept of performativity, and it is this concept that
has helped me examine identity as it is constituted and performed within the music festival.
Performance as a metaphor and performativity as a concept has been used in contemporary
cultural, feminist and gender studies, and moves towards a non-representational approach to
identity formation. The work of Judith Butler, although problematic in that she does not take
into account that the signification given a performative act is hot controlled by the performer
but shifts with changing contexts, her conceptualisation of identity as a performance has
provided a basis for my analysis. In Gender Trouble (1990), Butler examines gender as a
performative practice, that is, the subject articulates a gendered identity through a set of
expressive characteristics that come to stand for that identity. Butler argues that "there is no
gender identity behind expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the
very 'expressions' that are said to be its results" (25). Identification is an enacted fantasy in
which the subject attempts to create a coherent, whole self where its internal core is expressed
through the external body. The assertion of this coherent self is produced through words, acts,
and gestures. As Butler's examination of gendered identity points out, identity is not based on
a set of essentialised or pre-given characteristics. The body does not confer identity onto the
subject, rather identity is attributed to the subject through signifying practices that create
identity. The body is a "variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically
regulated" (139). Drawing on Butler's work, we might then think of the sonic, moving self
within the festival framework as an expression of identity created out of musical sounds and —
gestures. In keeping with Butler, these are not the sounds of one essential identity, rather it is
a response to other selves. Within the context of a culturally plural Moreland, and more 98 specifically within an event that is understood as representative of this plurality, performances
like Short Circuit are enactments of a cultural hybridity. They are the response to a plethora of other selves residing within the individuals of the performance group and within the
Moreland community, so raising issues around the spatiality of identity. The processes of the
street party and its performers correspond to what Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987)
propose is the rhizome, a process that "ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic
chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social
struggles" (7). The Brunswick Music festival is understood to articulate Moreland's
multicultural identity, and the street party is promoted as a microcosm of this cultural
pluralism. Within this overall framework, 'Moreland' is re-enacted each year but the
communal identity is not exactly reiterated in the performative manner proposed by Butler.
Rather, the performances of the street party are altered through changing music programs,
audience and organisational concerns and these fluctuations reconstitute the spatialised
identity of Moreland. Multicultural Moreland is an assemblage, the "and ... and ... and"
offered by Deleuze and Guattari "proceeding from the middle, through the middle, coming
and going, rather than starting and finishing" (25). Short Circuit takes part in the network of
identity in which a constantly changing assemblage of expressive and musical forms is
nonetheless understood as a coherent whole. In the next section, I present a close reading of
another group of dancers, members of the Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute who performed at
the 1999 street party, in order to explore how musical forms articulate and reconstitute
particular spatialised identities.
4.5.2 reconfiguring space
Around 4.15pm dance stage, 1998 Sydney Road street party
Three members of the Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute perform. Prior to their dances, the
group was introduced by name only with no other details given, nor were the different dances
discussed either by the compare or by any of the women. The dances were performed in a 99 continuous manner, either as a solo or in combinations of dancers, with taped music backing the movements.
A large number of people were present, many seater; with many more standing behind.
Small children took up the space between stage and audience, some holding brightly coloured balloons. One of the dancers takes to the stage for what is known as a drum solo (refer to track
3 Brunswick Music Festival menu, CDrom). In this, the dancer moves percussively to the beat of the tabla. She wears a long sheath-like purple dress and matching elbow-length gloves. Around her hips is a tasselled cloth that emphasises any body movement. Smiling to the audience, she shimmies across the stage, stops and, with her arm movements framing and emphasising her dance steps, shakes her hips. Moving in a circle around the stage, she maintains the shaking movement and ends facing the audience. Using her hip, she marks out the rhythm of the percussion that accompanies her.
Edging to the front of the stage, the dancer encourages the children gathered at its edge and then the adults seated behind, to join in marking out the rhythm by clapping at the end of each phrase. Corresponding to the rhythmic changes the dancer adjusts her movements, allowing them to become more sinuous and snake-like. As the percussive rhythm increases, the dancer too increases the shaking of her hips allowing her stomach to vibrate in turn. She ends with a very rapid stomach movement, hands held up and out towards the audience. The next dancer moves onto the stage immediately. (field notes, February 28 1999).
Belly dance, or more correctly Middle Eastern or rags sharqi, is associated with the sensual dance movements of women, a dance form originating in female cultures of Northern Africa and Western Asia. The performance by members of the Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute at the
1999 Sydney Road street party demonstrates the contradictory and unruly hybrid elements arising out of the street party. Council's objectives, as discussed earlier, require the festival and
particularly the street party events to display designated cultural groups (Manning interview
1998). The ways in which these cultural groups are defined by Council's objectives, as outlined 100 in the festival's tender package, display an underlying assumption and an imagining of an essential identity or characteristic. The essential character of these various groups are understood to be signified through traditional music practices. The Arabic Folkloric Dance
Institute performers, by name and through their dance practices, exemplify this sort of official categorisation. However, in performance, other sorts of meanings become activated so that the
'official' spatialised identity of Moreland is reconstituted in other ways, in this case, through the performance of gender.
Michelle Forner (1996), an ethnographer and herself a professional Middle Eastern dancer, argues that this style of dance has an ambivalent position in Western societies. She believes that public perception is "coloured by negative stereotypes and misconceptions from the presumed association with sexual titillation and strip tease" (8). Yet in the performance by the Arabic
Folkloric Dance Institute described above, the sensual movements of the dancers are framed so as to reclaim the original focus of this women's culture. Although the dancers are separated physically from the audience, as they are on a stage, rather than being subject to the tourist's gaze, the dance is part of a day-long dance program in which various ethnic and cultural groups perform, so reinforcing the demonstrative aspects of the dance program. Moreover, the dancer in this excerpt encourages the audience, particularly the children who are close to the stage, to join in the performance by clapping the rhythm of the music. Within the context of the family audience, the dancers' movements become performative of female sensuality rather than the
sexual stereotypes that have come to be associated with this dance form. The Arabic Folkloric
Dance Institute reconfigure the everyday of Sydney Road into a gendered and sensuous space.
However, this performance, and that of Short Circuit in the previous year, did not slip
seamlessly into the local scenes of the Sydney Road street party. Juxtaposed against both
performance groups were women of Muslim Arabic identity, who, while not performing music
or dance, complicate these performative acts by their presence. As the image in figure 4.6
shows, these Muslim women were engaged in preparing and selling grilled corn and flat bread
outside the shop for women's Islamic wear, Milli Giyim. The performative acts that constitute 1 00
Figure 4.6 Muslim women's stall 101 their identity as Muslim women operate through their choice of clothing, which covers the head and body allowing only the facial features and hands to be visible. In comparison, the female body constructed as 'Arabic' in the musical performance space is made more available to the gaze of the audience than that of the stall-holders. Middle Eastern dance is used within the context of the street party to signify the presence of Muslim groups within Moreland, but there is a tension inherent in such expressions of embòdying spatialised identity. From one perspective, it could be seen as appropriative. It can be an essentialising of a particular set of cultural characteristics that may (unintentionally) be offensive." On the other hand, these ethnic and cultural characteristics may be a means of consolidating who a person or group believes constitutes their identity. As cultural theorist Cynthia Willet (1989), writes, the misrecognitions that occur in these instances may be an unavoidable aspect of subjectivity — we are unsure how to read such acts or performances of identity (9).
Collective identity, as Kevin Hetherington argues, is established through an interplay between identity and identification which are worked out through issues of belonging or exclusion within some form of communal structure. Hetherington writes that, "identity is about bricolage, identification is about homology. The identity politics and the alternative ways of living we see all around us are connotative of the interplay between bricolage and homology, or between the playful tactics of identity and the ordering strategies of identification and recognition" (1998:
29). Participation in the Sydney Road street party illustrates this process, this positioning of self.
The street party is a negotiation of the porous and heterogeneous relationships that exist between place and identity, one where the official definition is multicultural but where, within this framework, individuals and groups renegotiate their subject positions in various and often contradictory ways. Official space is recoded through such musical performances such as those of Short Circuit and the Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute, in the process remaking and
" Harkin explained that the members of Short Circuit were respectful of the cultures of West Africa and the Middle East from which they derived their performances. She also informed me that they had been invited to perform their music (although not their dance) at traditional Muslim weddings. At these events, the performers wore traditional gellabeyahs rather than their stage costumes, again out of respect for their hosts (interview 1998). 102 identifying with a particular symbolic space, often through the use of another's musical symbols and language. In these street party performances, the acting out of a cultural identity is not a simple retelling and appropriation of some authentic sound in an alien space. Many of
Moreland's musical cultures no longer represent the stable, 'original' parent cultures. Instead they become a reworking of music, and so identity, to accommodate a new context, for such musical performances resonate with our being here and somewhere else, a capturing of who we are that lies within a web of intricate connections.
4.6 Conclusion: identity effects
Music is both a marker and a process of belonging, with the musical practices of the festival constructing the symbolic spaces in which these communal identities are constituted and spatialised. The political economist Jacques Attali argues that music reflects and affirms the social structure of a community. He suggests that that "music appears in myth as an affirmation that society is possible. That is the essential thing. Its order simulates the social order, and its dissonances express marginalities. The code of music simulates the accepted rules of society" (1992: 29, italics in original). Although dissonance has a specific musical meaning, Attali's use of it has a wider, political implication, that those not speaking in the harmonic language of the community are a potentially destabilising influence. In this framework, the other (musical) voice draws attention to its difference and, in doing so, to issues about identity. Conceptualised in this way, the community music festival is a major site of a community's celebration of a coherent identity; through discursive practice, performativity and participation. Yet throughout this construction of communal identity there is a tension: how does a community define itself when that identity is fluid, multilayered and dynamic in
nature?
In this chapter, I have focussed on the processes of identity formation through engagement and
participation within a community music festival, where notions of identity and belonging are 103 based around an officially defined communal identity of multiculturalism. However, as the examples of the Brunswick Music Festival's concert series and street party performances demonstrate, this identity is more complexly formulated. Participants express a yearning for an ideal community grounded in nostalgic notions of a homeland from another time or another place. Complicating this concept of community, the relationship of identity and place is embedded within and expressed through a set of relations that highlight issues of cultural and ethnic identities. Nonetheless, participants (audience, performers, organisers) conceptualise this plurality within a framework of 'local community.' Central to understanding the constitution of identity in such a context is the concept of performativity. Identity/identities are created out of performative acts that are themselves about the individual's articulations of the complexities of being and belonging. Therefore, dissonances — the sounds of difference — rather than being the destabilising presences suggested by Attali, are markers, pointing to our multiple selves that cohabit a space of other, multiple selves.
Performer, Anne Harkin's comment — that performing at the music festival "changes the nature of the place where I conduct my daily life" — points to these dynamic, heterogeneous, and complex relationships between the performative acts of identity and their location in space.
In the following chapter, I want to pursue the suggestion of a reconstitution of space that
Harkin's comment brings out, in order to determine what sorts of music relations constitute a spatialised identity when framed by a different type of community music festival. Chapter 5: markings
connecting to place
5.1 Introduction
Instead of the motif being tied to a character who appears, the appearance of the
motif itself constitutes a rhythmic character in the 'plenitude of a music that is indeed
filled with so many strains, each of which is a being.' It is not by chance that the
apprenticeship of the Recherche pursues an analogous discovery in relation to
Vinteuil's little phrases: they do not refer to a landscape; they carry and develop
within themselves landscapes that do not exist on the outside (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 319).
The analysis of the Brunswick Music Festival in the previous chapter demonstrated that music operates on two levels. First, music can be understood as a marker of identity, signifying a particular cultural and/or ethnic identity. Music is a key means of constructing and positioning the self because it can function both expressively — it connects the self to the emotional life of the individual — and symbolically, in that music is a cultural code operating within the social world. As the musicologist Jill Stubington points out, music is "an elaborate aesthetic working out of coherent sets of ideas about self and other, through expressive sounds generated by and felt within the body" (1998: 85-86). However, it is also the music itself that constitutes identity in the time and place in which it is performed. That is, as Deleuze and Guattari propose in the quote above, the (musical) motif articulates an imagined, spatialised identity that comes into being as the music is performed. In this chapter, I develop the themes detected in chapter four
— that is, musical performances are performative acts — in order to interrogate the place component of the spatialised identity/identities that are constituted within the framework of the 105 music festival.
The focus of this chapter is the Top Half Folk Festival, which brings to the festival event a different set of national imaginings about identity and place. Unlike the Brunswick Music
Festival — a festival fixed in one place and constructed within a framework supposedly reflective of an essential (multicultural) character — the Top Half Folk Festival is a festival shared amongst a given number of places within northern Australia. Generally, community music festivals are linked to a particular and geographically small place. The Top Half, in contrast, locates itself within a large geographical area that requires participants to travel quite extensively so as to be present at the event. The rotation of the festival site is understood by participants as characterising the different lifestyle of the Top Half to that of the south-eastern states (such as Victoria in which the Brunswick festival is held). The name of the festival, the
Top Half,' locates the event in a particular space, that of the top or northern end of Australia.
More specifically, the towns that take part mark out a boundary 'on the ground' of a roughly triangular area covering approximately 58 000km2. By travelling and re-establishing a Top Half
Festival at points within this region, festival participants engage in a performative act of difference — each year participants 'return' to a festival space that is elsewhere — to those folk festivals held in the south-east. In this way, the Top Half festival is a part of performative act that reiterates a Top Half identity, and shifts the focus from one of locality to one of regional, even national, imaginings of place and identity. This chapter, then, addresses the spatial element of communal identity; what does a moving festival tell us about the relationship between identity, place and music?
The Top Half Folk Festival is held each year on the Australian Queen's Birthday weekend in
June. The festival is directed by an umbrella organisation, the Top Half Folk Federation. This committee ensures a certain format is maintained at each festival, and part of its responsibilities is to assist in deciding where the festival will be held each year. Sharing the administration and expenses of the festival between a number of cities and towns is a 106 pragmatic move, but the re-creation of the Top Half Folk Festival at different sites around northern Australia also invokes particular ways of being a member of a region known locally as the 'Top Half.' It is the members of the local folk club at the place chosen for that year's festival who usually assume responsibility for the festival program, venues, promotional work and so on. The Top Half Folk Federation was formed in 1972, the year after the first Top Half
Folk Festival held in Alice Springs (Pickworth 1991: unpaginated). Unlike the Brunswick
Music Festival, which has a significant input from local government, the driving force behind the Top Half Folk Festival is a group of people living in this sparsely populated region of northern Australia who have a passionate interest in the folk aesthetic and its music. This aesthetic, as musicologist Graeme Smith and sociologist Judith Brett (1998) have noted, is based around an ideal of a folk community, one which emphasises participation and face-to- face social groupings in which culture is maintained and created through oral transmission.
The irony of this is that people of the sparsely populated north are investing in a style that promotes personal, social relations, one not necessarily accessible in the everyday lives of those interested in folk music. The initial gathering of Top Enders' was in response to a sense of isolation, a motive expressed to me by a number of the festival organisers interviewed
(Jayne Nankivell interview 1997; Allen Shaw interview 1998). Jayne Nankivell, who helped co-ordinate the 1997 festival in the Northern Territory town of Jabiru, explained that this 'Top
Half festival was one way to combat distance and travel costs which hindered participation in folk events held in the more populous south-eastern Australian states (1997; refer also to
Shaw interview 1998). The festival is a shared event, rotated each year through a number of places in the Top Half of Australia — Darwin, Mt Isa, Katherine, Alice Springs and Jabiru '
(Refer to figure 5.1) The apparent dislocation of a singular place for the festival event and a singular geographically located (festival) community unsettles any simple relationship between place and festival community — the annual return of the festival always occurs
elsewhere. Yet paradoxically it is this seemingly 'out of place' experience that is the impetus
for attempts at some form of communal coherence. Woven into the exchange between the
36 For a time Townsville had also been a host for the festival (Shaw interview 1998). 106a
DARWIN abiru Kakadu National Park
Katherine •
Cloncurry Mount Isa• I •
Alice Springso+Anzac Hill tf4COQNNELL RANO~
0 200 km • Uluru
Figure 5.1 Map of Northern Australia, the `Top Half' 107 administrative body of the Top Half Folk Federation and the various festival hosts is a number of discourses constructed around imaginaries of identity, place and nation that become activated within the space of this folk music festival.
This chapter will trace through some of the discursive and performative threads that occurred within the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival — the "sonorous, gestural motor lines" (Delezue and
Guattari 1987: 311) — that become the marking out of a multivocal place which these spatialised identities inhabit and articulate as 'community.' Each section in what follows presents a series of performative acts from which festival participants extract notions of the festival and their relationship with this event and this place. The chapter explores those ideas about a sense of being in a place that repeatedly arose in discussion, observation and performance. These are taken to be key features of the festival in that they shape a reality of place and community — albeit temporarily — for the festival participants. In my analysis, I determine how these senses of place are activated by the musical processes of the festival.
What is the relationship between the performance of music and place, that is, how is the performance of music entangled with acts of identification? From the data collected, three key clusters of ideas arose: first, the festival is a space in which a sense of community is created through folk musical practice and ideologies; second, festival participants felt a sense of identity that was explicitly associated with images of place; and finally, landscape played a significant role in marking one as belonging to place and/or community. These more general observations are illustrated in a close reading of one performance of the 1998 festival. This performance, by Michael Fix and William Barton, show how these interconnected ideas animate the festival space, and embed it in a series of social, historical and cultural contexts. 108
5.2 Towards mapping the festival space
I had trouble finding the folk club rooms on my first visit. I crossed the dried up river bed of the Leichhardt, the outline of Mt Isa Mines dominating the skyline, and eventually spotted a sign, 'Top Half Folk Festival' and an arrow pointing to a dry track off the well— made road I was on. (Refer to figure 5.2). The various club buildings were some way back from this track. For the festival organisers this was an important location, as were the other venues used over the weekend. Gwen Berry, member of the Mt Isa folk club committee and
Arts Development officer in the Mt Isa Council, explained that the folk club had been a major part of the culture of Mt Isa, with strong connections maintained between the various different leisure groups. I asked the current folk club president, Barry Rodgers, what they as organisers were looking for when putting the festival program together. He replied,
"What we're looking for is a festival using mainly folk music playing. It won't be total folk music, mainly folk music. And this one in particular is more for the old folkies of Mt Isa who really helped put the Top Half Festival together twenty-eight years ago."
Allen Shaw, who had attended the folk club almost from its beginning told me a bit of the history of the club venues:
"They had various venues over the years. A little hall that got burned down,
Wheeler's Hall, was my first major venue. Then [the club] moved to what's called
Opportunity School on the far side of town. And [then] back in town in what's now the Buffalo
Club. Then [the club] moved to a series of hotel venues, the Tavern, the Isa and the Argent
Hotels. In the boom years of the late 70s, the club was flush with money, and at the Isa Hotel,
[there] was an underground venue under there, called the K57 Bar after the name of one of the big shafts of the mine, which is now renamed the 162. The place was just overwhelmed by crowds every fortnight, [and] the club was flush with money, so they invested their money in a
property. So a lot of the activities in the early 80s is the folk club doing gigs, bush dances,
having concerts and things to raise money to pay off the house. The clubhouse then was over
in Simpson Street, the actual building is still there but there is someone building a new 108a
1•
Figure 5.2 Alma Street, Mt Isa: sign pointing to the Top Half Folk Festival 109 building behind it. And in around 1990 they moved from that site on to this site, on Alma
Street. This building was actually a house moved here by the Rugby Union Club — they put up the beer garden. The site beside us actually belongs to the Lapidary Club and we share the use of it. The rugby union club eventually built their own new club house, and that's it out the door there. At the time they wanted to sell this. Now previously the club owned their own property, their own land, but here they're on lease. So they transferred — what happened was that the Rugby Union Club wanted to sell it, but there was no clubs with twenty-eight, well they wanted thirty-two thousand I think for it. And there were no clubs around with that sort of money. The folk club said, well we have a club house that's worth that much. And they were offered twenty-eight thousand for the premises over there, and the rugby union said it's a deal. So they moved from there to here and bought it outright. So the club has operated here since 1990" (Shaw interview 1998).
The festival organisers choice of venues from the Mt Isa folk past, such as the Irish
Club and the Barkly Hotel, ensured historical links were made to the current Mt Isa folk scene, connecting the participants of 1998 with those of the early 1970s and Mt Isa's social past. (Field notes June 3 1998).
The 1998 Top Half Folk Festival was held in Mt Isa, the major administrative centre of the
North West Statistical Division of Queensland. In 1998, the population of Mt Isa was around
22 000 people, with approximately 3000 people who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Islander (www.statistics.gld.gov.au cited 7 February 2000). Of the non-indigenous population, the majority were Australian-born while around 3 000 born were overseas
(www.abs.gov.au cited 8 July 1998). Approximately fifty-three percent of those born overseas were from North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa. The year 1998 was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the city, a celebration of the city's origins in
1923, when John Miles' discovered silver/lead ore along the Leichhardt River. This anniversary was acknowledged with celebratory events held throughout the year, and was 110 promoted as "a very important year for the City's present and past residents" and "an opportunity to revisit old haunts, meet up with old and new acquaintances and most of all reminisce on the 'old days' " (Saunders and McCullogh 1998, unpaginated; italics in original).
It had not been Mt Isa's turn in the festival roster to host the Top Half festival, but the Mt Isa folk club requested of the Top Half Folk Federation that it be held there as part of the city's larger celebrations (Rodgers interview 1998). Working with the anniversary and its themes of nostalgia and remembrance, the organisers put together a festival program under the theme of
'Back to the Isa'. The festival was promoted by the organisers as an opportunity for festival participants to be part of an event that remembered the origins and history of the Mt Isa folk club, a club that was acknowledged as a significant part of the city's social life (Barry Rogers interview 1998; Shaw interview 1998; Annette Gordon interview 1998).
The main site for the 1998 festival was situated in the Mt Isa folk clubrooms, called 'the
Shack.' Located in Alma Street, it places the folk club amongst other Mt Isa clubs, such as the lapidary and soccer clubs, which together form a focus for the city's social networks. These recreational clubs were understood by local Mt Isa residents to be a vital means of assisting newcomers, for they provided a place to meet others and so a chance to begin to feel at home
(John Hamilton interview 1998). So, it was here at the Shack that I tried to ascertain how the festival, the folk club and Mt Isa interact and become part of the constitution of place and identity through the festival event. I initially attempted to map out the sites involved in the festival — marking out where particular events occur and why such venues were chosen — but I found this notion of tracing did not account for the multiplicity of connections between the various musical, geographical, social and cultural components that then become this particular festival. The Top Half Folk Festival is a site in which certain residents of Mt Isa come together with non-resident folk music enthusiasts around a shared interest in folk music.
The ways in which Mt Isa is articulated through this genre of music will be discussed later.
What I want to signal here is that, through this event, participants connect and embed 111 themselves within a community of social relations that is a particular expression of the place,
Mt Isa, one structured and performed through folk music. As Doreen Massey argues, the identity of a place, in this case the 1998 Top Half Folk festival in Mt Isa, is constructed:
through the specificity of [Mt Isa's] interaction with other places ... The geography of
social relations forces us to recognise our interconnectedness, and underscores the
fact that both personal identity and the identity of those envelopes of space-time in
which and between which we live and move (and have our 'Being) are constructed
precisely through that interconnectedness (1994b: 121-122).
In my examination of the relationship between identity and place associated with the Top
Half festival, these connections and interconnections appear to pulse back and forth between the actual festival site of Mt Isa and the positioning of the festival in a much wider sense — its geographical, historical, cultural and musical forms. The analysis of particular performances undertaken later in this chapter, demonstrate the ways in which notions of 'here' and 'there' are what constitute the regional/national imaginings of the festival participants. As a means to contextualise these 'here' and 'there' relationships, the following section examines how the folk music genre and the ideals of community associated with its practice are the basis for the creation of a Top Half and, more specifically, a Mt Isa, community.
5.3 Musical practices as community forming practices
The Mt Isa Mines company (MIM), in terms of employment opportunities as well as in its physical presence, dominates Mt Isa (refer to figure 5.3). Indeed, employees of MIM initially established the Mt Isa club. Nick Belcham and fellow miner Chris Buch, a member of a Mt
Isa-based folk group, Rafferty, placed an advertisement for the first folk evening in the local newspaper the North West Star. Buch and Belcham had not expected many to attend, but the evening was immensely popular. The enthusiasm expressed on that night entered into Mt Isa corner of West and Isa Streets, Mt Isa, Mount Isa Mines (MIM) in background 112 folk club lore (Buch interview 1998). A recent account of this inaugural event gave this description:
In May 1970, two Englishmen who loved to play guitar and who saw the need for
musicians in Mount Isa to bond together, organised an evening of music in a Mount
Isa Mines staff house. It was on record that eighty people were there, and the first
song that was sung was Whiskey in the Jar. During the course of the evening it was
decided that the Mount Mt Isa folk club be formed (Pickworth 1998 unpaginated).
The number of people interested pleasantly surprised the English migrant Buch, but he was puzzled that Australians would want to perform such a repertoire, for, as he told me, what did such music have to do with Australia? Allen Shaw, another long-time member of the Mt Isa folk club and curator of the folk club history exhibition held over the festival weekend, explained:
I think perhaps the first folk clubs were very Irish-oriented because that's the origins
of our folk and everything else. Perhaps [in] the 1980s the Australian influence [was
more noticeable], you know, Australian people were writing a lot of stuff. And that
came through and we were doing bush dances, a lot of Australian tradition and a lot
more Australian music came through. And so you really get a mix of both [traditional
British and Australian music] now (interview 1998).
This folk music repertoire was a continuation of the British, particularly Irish, folk music
traditions, a reflection of the cultural profile of those employed early the 1960s and early
1970s by MIM (Buch interview 1998). With the City of Mt Isa's anniversary celebrations in
mind, the Mt Isa folk club festival committee decided to reunite two bands from this early 113 period of the folk club's, Rafferty and Buckley Chants, and obtained a grant from Festivals
Australia to do so." Talking about this reunion project, Annette Gordon said that:
I think the reunion [of the two bands] was a great thrill for the former band members
and they will have wonderful memories from the event that will last for the rest of
their lives. For the members of the folk club, especially newer members such as
myself, it has made us more appreciative of all the hard work the members of these
bands and many others did to ensure we have the great facilities and resources the
folk club enjoys today (interview 1998).
What the reunion of these early Mt Isa folk club bands did for the contemporary club members was to give a feeling of being part of a continued musical tradition, a tradition that was recognised by these participants as a significant part of the social life of Mt Isa. The festival organisers also hoped to remind those who were not actively involved in the folk scene of this tradition, that the folk club could be a space of community formation. The two reunited bands were to be emblematic of this return to a past community that could perhaps be traced into the current scene. But the life of this folk community has proved to be fragile, as the future of the club, which is the focus of these activities, is uncertain. Many of the committee members who were involved in the 1998 festival have moved away from Mt Isa, and it seems few people have replaced them (Gordon interview 1999; Ken Glasco interview
1998). However, these past traditions were significant in shaping the Mt Isa folk community, as well as the ways in which these traditions shaped the program of the festival. The following section examines the ways in which the festival participants define the character of this community.
37 Festivals Australia is a federal government grant that provides funding to regional and community Australian festivals for the presentation of cultural activity. It specifically tries to assist those festivals in rural and remote areas (www.artsinfo.net.au cited 20 June 1999). 114
5.3.1 gathering the folk
The folk club committee had decided to try to promote the festival weekend to the general population of Mt Isa by busking in the shopping district along Simpson Street.
Thursday evening prior to the start of the festival was chosen to coincide with what has come to be the traditional evening for families to shop, and the performers, mainly folk club members, set up a temporary stage across the road from the Kmart complex. Only very few shoppers stopped to listen, many merely glance across as they headed towards their cars. The small audience that was present was made up of folk club members and their families, including eight young children who enthusiastically jumped around to the reels and jigs played by Barry Rodgers (guitar), Allen Shaw (banjo) and Kerry Sipos (flute). No program was set, people got up and performed when they wanted. So although an acoustic folk space was created, an audience — outside of those from the folk club — did not eventuate. It appears that the site of performance is important in establishing how engagement with particular musical processes will occur. (Refer to figures 5.4.1 and 5.4.2)
The folk club and festival were seen to be important to Mt Isa residents in other ways.
The audience members I spoke to saw the festival as a chance to catch up with friends they had not seen in some time (Pam and Peter, audience members, interview 1998). I asked Ken
Glasco, a member of the folk club committee, what the reunion of Rafferty and Buckleys
Chants had done for Mt Isa. He replied,
"The Rafferty and Buckley Chants reunion was good, because it reunited a lot of old
friends and rekindled old memories. Hopefully people will continue with their friendships as
time goes by. As far as having a long term effect on Mt Isa, I'm unsure because the majority of
those people have moved on to live in different areas around the country. My impression of
Mt Isa, is that it is a place people have fond memories of which probably has a lot to do with
the 'sense of community' you asked me about earlier."
I noticed this meeting of old friends when attending the free lunch time concert held
on the lawns outside the Civic Centre on West Street, again an event to try to encourage those 1 4a
Figure 5.4.1 Busking in Simpson Street, Mt Isa: Performers (1 to r) Annette Gordon, Gwen Berry, Kerry Sipos
Figure 5.4.2 Busking in Simpson Street, Mt Isa: audience 115 outside the folk club to attend the festival. This appeared to be more successful than the busking held the previous evening, as an audience of around one hundred people were present (although the numbers varied over the course of the afternoon, and by the end of the afternoon around twenty people were present with most of these the performers). Groups of families and friends, seated under the shade of the trees planted along the edge of the lawns, enjoyed picnic lunches and chatted while the performers were introduced and played. Many called out their appreciation, particularly during the whip cracking display (an unusual act for a folk festival as agreed by the organisers, but suited to a town made know by its annual rodeo) and laughing at the verbal antics of the poets Shirley Friend and Ray Essery. (Refer to figures 5.5.1 to 5.5.2) I overheard a number of the audience reminiscing about the early days of the folk club, particularly when the group Rafferty were on stage, and they talked about how they had been friends with members of the band or were present when such-and-such had occurred in past performances. I noticed that the band members of Rafferty and the audience were keen to catch up with one another over the time period of the festival.
The local newspaper were also recruited by the folk club to promote the festival and particularly the performance by one of the folk club's original bands. On page one of the
North West Star, I read, "This weekend's Top Half Folk Festival will take on special significance as Mt Isa folk club co-founder Chris Buch and long-serving members Robin
Buch and Dermot Kylie (sic) have returned for the event" (The North West Star, June 5 1998:
1).
And it seemed many 'old folkies' were present Saturday evening, for, after their time on stage, Chris Buch, Diermot Keiley and Robyn Buch stood in the beer tent surrounded by
friends and well-wishers, all reminiscing and asking after lives led now.
(field notes June 4 and 5 1998)
The performance of these founding groups enabled folk festival participants, particularly
current folk club members, to frame their activities within an historical context that bound
them closer to a Mt Isa folk tradition. This connection to a folk past was made more explicit 116 in Allen Shaw's folk club exhibition, an exhibition of newspaper articles, fliers and posters that was held in the Mt Isa folk club rooms over the time of the 1998 festival. (Refer to figure
5.10). Festival participants could see and read about the club's past activities, and its presence generated much discussion about the folk club and festival, and opened up a potential dialogue with this past. The mines have continued to influence the life of the folk club's musical culture. Barry Rodgers, the then president of the Mt Isa folk club, talked of Mt Isa's transient population, a population whose source of employment is based on contracts with the
Mt Isa Mines (MIM). I had asked him what he thought were the key characteristics of Mt Isa, and he replied:
It used to be hard work and drink!
Used to be? I asked.
Well, it's not as bad as it was. Actually, it was a better town. I came here in '84, I
think it was a better town then. MIM looked after its workforce a lot better and it was
a big happy town and I thought, 'Oh, how long has this been going on?' Everyone
made good money, the mines treated you well, and were a very family-oriented
company to work for. That's not the way it is now.
What's happened?
Under the cloak of restructuring and cost-cutting and all this, it all goes under the
thing of the world's best practice. They just, they give all the big bosses an extra
couple of hundred thousand a year and try and trip us off, which they've done. And
taken a lot of us off. We still don't make bad money, but we lost air fares and things
like that that we used to get.
So most people who come through here or come to stay here are actually involved
with the mine?
Yeah, and there's now a-days, there's a lot bigger contract workforce. Whereas before -
MIM employed everyone themselves, now a-days they employ a lot of contracts, so
you get a lot more floaters (interview 1998). 116a
Figure 5.5.1 Lunchtime concert, Civic Centre lawns, West Street: audience
Figure 5.5.2 Lunchtime concert, Civic Centre lawns, West Street: whip cracking display 117
The disappointment felt towards the company that had previously provided much for its workforce and had played such a supportive role in the City comes through clearly here.
Rodgers' response echoes the nostalgia evident in the promotional literature for Mt Isa's anniversary quoted earlier, as well as the ways in which those I spoke to at the festival talked about the festival event. There is a sense of loss of some past, caring community that was 'Mt
Isa' — a trope of an idealised community that many researchers have noted in their studies and critiques of 'community' (Nancy 1991; Read 1996; Young 1990). This utopian vision of community is not unique to the people involved in the 1998 Top Half folk festival, but, as will be shown, the ways in which 'community' is acted out by them illustrates the complexities involved when attempting to (re)create this community ideal.
For example, members of the Mt Isa folk club are very conscious of the transitory nature of
that community. Ken Glasco, a Mt Isa resident originally from North America, explained:
[t]he community in Mt Isa — if there is a such a sort as 'community' — is very
changing. It is a town where people move in and out constantly. It is stronger here
than in most places, there are very few people who have been here their whole life
and who will stay their whole life. The population is nomad. It is a very enriching
situation for the town and at the same time a handicap. Because there are people from
everywhere constantly coming in, new ideas, knowledge and habits get absorbed by
the area but because everyone keeps leaving, it makes it hard to get people
responsible for a task even for a year or wanting to get involved deeply in anything as
they know they will be leaving soon. The folk club is partly an example of the
nomadic spirit of Mt Isa, the president almost left before the end of the year and he
will be gone next year. Bands keep on being formed and folded constantly because
members leave and new ones appear (correspondence undated). y 118
Glasco goes on to note that although a "reflection of only one part of its inhabitants, [my thoughts] cannot represent the whole community as some people are not interested at all in that sort of music or even in music in general" (1998), Glasco recognises the Mt Isa folk club as sharing transient features with the larger Mt Isa community. Indeed, Glasco's comments suggest that participation in musical practices such as that of folk music is a means to re- establish a sense of connectedness to others and to place that is a means of creating the idea of community in a social context characterised by mobility and transience. It is through the aesthetics of folk music that a sense of community is established. With its ideal of face-to- face social groupings and an emphasis on oral transmission, the folk scene is a potentially successful means of recreating some sense of community. The practice of folk music appears to be about an embeddedness in local and national histories and place, but, as this festival illustrates, folk music is practiced by people who are nomadic and mobile. The folk music genre contains within it a dual character, one in which its practitioners express both this mobility and a locatedness within some sense of (national) community. And, as Edward Said
(1991) proposed, music generally is nomadic and able to become a part of numerous diverse
social formations, its meaning constituted within the context it is performed and heard.
Therefore, the folk music performed in this festival spatialises this community, a process that
will be taken up in the following sections. In terms of the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival, both
the theme of return and the ideals of folk music are activated to try recreate this imaginary
folk community.
5.3.2 'no strangers here'
Wednesday evening, and I had been invited to sit in on the Mt Isa folk club meeting,
the last one before the festival starting that weekend. The committee members were talking
over last minute details, seated around a few tables pushed together in the centre of the
clubrooms. The Friday evening concert was not expected to have many attend, as people
would still be heading into Mt Isa. The concert was also up against that evening's telecast of 119 the State of Origin NFA football match. Most people would be expected turn up the next day.
Barry Rodgers, folk club president and member of the band Leichhardt Silt, told me later that
"we should have a big mob of the local people here, especially Saturday night, I think."
Anyway, a TV was to be set up in the beer tent for those who just had to watch the game. As numbers could be low, talk turned to whether or not to hold this concert in the clubrooms rather than the stage set up in the outside grounds. This first concert, called a blackboard concert, was to encourage anyone who wanted to perform. "Whack your name down on the board," called out the festival's MC, Greg Hastings at that evening's get-together. Similar concerts were held on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons, located in the Barkly Hotel and
Irish Club respectively. The committee hoped to emphasise local talent at these events, with the festival's more experienced guests interspersed through the program. Later I asked one of the committee members, Ken Glasco, what he thought the folk club and festival meant for Mt
Isa. He replied,
"I think the main thing is that it's an alternative source for people to come out and enjoy themselves and relax. I've noticed at the folk club, if somebody's actually on stage playing a guitar, whether they're any good or not, people sit there and continue to socialise, have a drink, whatever. But as soon as the guitar's packed away, people walk out, the place goes. The music seems to set a mood or theme. I mean somebody could be up there playing just riffs, you know, just particular pieces of song that they know, but as long as they're up there, the people seem to sit and listen. If nobody's going to get back on the stage, usually within thirty to forty minutes, we're closing the bar, going home" (interview 1998).
(Field notes taken at the Mt Isa folk club meeting, held June 3 1998).
Live performance is a key feature of the Mt Isa folk scene, as it is in most folk scenes, and this emphasis is retained in the programming of the festival. As observed by Glasco, the club is an acoustic space which people comprehend as a sociable space and interact accordingly. It is the music in which the social relations of the folk club are intimately woven. The 120 performance of this music, even if it is only "up there playing just riffs," it is this acoustic quality that constitutes the place. Performer Michael Fix believes that the isolation of populations such as is those in northern Australia means that these types of events are appreciated because they are a rarity. This in turn means a more open attitude to what was presented in performance. He explained:
I think a festival in a city, particularly in Sydney or Melbourne, people are a bit more
blasé about music. It's much harder to reach them. My experiences in travelling are
that the further north you go, the more open the audiences are, the more they're happy
to show their enjoyment. It's almost like in the cities it's a bit uncool to show that
you're having a good time. It's also the fact that there is so much entertainment, so
much really good quality entertainment in the cities, that maybe people are a little bit
blasé. But come up to Mt Isa and this is a fairly rare and unusual event and people are
happy to show their appreciation. It's much more informal, more relaxed. You know
that if things aren't running to schedule, well it doesn't really matter in the grand
scheme of things. There's something about the outdoor aspect of it as well which is
really appealing, which would be a very risky thing to do in Melbourne. But here you
can be out under the stars and it's a fairly balmy evening and all that kind of stuff. It
just adds something to the atmosphere (interview 1998).
The physicality of Mt Isa — its remoteness, the transient population, the warm to very hot
year-long weather — constitute a certain set of relations that occur in place and these in turn
are the means by which participants reconnect to a sense of being part of the Top Half folk
scene in the place of Mt Isa.
The folk club and the festival provide opportunities to participate in communal musical
practices that function also as social practices, without the stresses and competitiveness that 121 many participants saw as characterising music events outside the folk scene. Terry Frost, folk club committee member and performer, told me:
that's another thing I found at folk festivals is that the guest artists mingle with the
people and join in and jam with the people. If you go to [a festival] and you've got
Slim Dusty or someone like that, they're not going to join in and play with the riff-
raff. But at these things I found that [guest artists did join in]. At Jabiru last year they
had this guest down from Perth, and the Friday night, we sat in a big circle and they
came and joined in and played. Everyone joined in with them. It was great (interview
1998).
Annette Gordon, a Mt Isa folk club committee member, added to Frost's comments, saying that such activities as those of the folk festival were a celebration of culture, contributing to the community's cultural development: "A lot of our culture is imposed rather than created. I wish these kind of jam sessions that happen here sometimes — you just sit back and go wow! And it gives you a good feeling" (interview 1998). As these comments suggest, the festival is a process by which participants perform not only their idealised folk image of community but also do produce certain distinctive social relations in specific places and settings. The musical practices that are recognised as creating and embodying some ideal of community are ruptured by the complex, cross-cultural social relations that make the place of
Mt Isa. Contemporary Mt Isa is recognised by its residents as home to "something like fifty-
four different nationalities" (Rodgers interview 1998), a characteristic that is reiterated in the
region's tourism literature (Refer to figure 5.6). The City's transient population means that,
over time, quite different cultural and ethnic groups live in the area and perceptions of what
constitutes Mt Isa have changed, and these changes have had some influence on the practice
of folk music in Mt Isa. 121a
Tug Ora ì+t nafiwaair+r~. !r r and work in Mount
:?ire: 7'hß abant1» cd ~lcrnj Aaihlei m urariunr, rel;i!r, îìnirorr: Facilities for must .cp ets are catered for in the 1st?.
MOUNT [SA HAS A STRONG,. & DIVERSE CULTURAL BACKGROUND
Figure 5.6 "over fifty nationalities live and work in Mt Isa" tourist promotional material (The Isa Queensland Australia 1996 and Beautiful Mt Isa 1996) 122
5.3.3 inclusivity
Although folk music that draws on a British tradition continues both within the folk club and at the festival, what folk music is has started to be questioned, and my presence at this festival further prompted discussion. On numerous occasions I heard that "any music that belongs to someone, some nation, is folk music" (Rodgers interview 1998; refer also to Buch interview
1998; Gordon interview 1998). This belief has led members of the club to attempt more inclusive events, inviting those with quite different cultural heritages to be involved both in the folk club activities and as part of the Top Half Folk Festival. An earlier Mt Isa Top Half
Folk festival, held in 1987, had as its theme 'our world of dance' with the aim of including the various ethnic groups of the area in its program (North West Star 1987: 1) and, as noted by exhibition organiser Allen Shaw, open invitations to club evenings led to a wide variety of instruments and musical genres. How did this move to inclusivity effect the ways in which a folk music practice, and so a folk community, was characterised?
Of interest to me because of the difference to the discourse of multiculturalism surrounding the Brunswick Music Festival, I found that almost no one I spoke to used the term 'multicultural' to describe this diversity, with the exception of one audience member who had come from Brisbane. Kate from Brisbane told me in conversation that Mt Isa is multicultural, although her partner, Michael, disagreed on the use of this term because it suggested assimilation. Interestingly, Kate said that she had not been able to "go that one step further" and get an Australian passport even though she knew she was able to hold both.
She explained that when she married she had given up her name and so she did not want to give up her English identity because she felt that was all that was left of who she was
(conversation 1998).
Greg Hastings, who hosted the festivals' evening concerts, also used the descriptive
term 'multicultural'. Yet those I spoke to who were involved in organising and performing at 123 the festival described the music performed as folk. So I asked them to define folk music, and I received these sorts of responses:
"I mean you could say, yes, strictly speaking what you just heard in the background
[Rafferty performing The Irish Washerwoman] is bush, Australian ballads, but to me
Paul Kelly's music, which is more modern, is also folk music" (K Glasco interview
1998)
"I'd even class blues as folk" (Rodgers interview 1998)
"Well, we got all these young bands [and] I'm sitting back there saying, My God!
This music!' Heavy metal! He just got up there and he was groaning and making all
these sounds in the microphone! And our soundman's going, it can't go up any
louder! But you've got to respect that because that's part of their culture, so you
respect it and you invite them in" (Gordon interview 1998)
"Slim Dusty is the greatest folk singer! Even pop music is the folk music of today"
(Buch interview 1998).
(field notes June 5-9 1998)
For these festival participants, folk is in its aesthetics and its practices, confirming the work of
Graeme Smith and Judith Brett (1998) who argue that folk is a scene defined by its ideology rather than by any particular musical style. The contemporary Australian folk repertoire is relatively open because, as Smith and Brett argue, it is defined by a folk ideology, based around notions of community, participation and 'authentic' musical practices, that ensures a
flexibility in the concept of folk music. In the folk music scene of Mt Isa, this open-ness has
been a response to the changing cultural and ethnic population in Mt Isa. Decreasing
attendance numbers at folk club events has led the club members to think of the earlier and
apparently more actively attended folk scene in nostalgic terms, wanting to recapture what 124 was seen as a strong sense of community in a place noted for its transient population. Folk music, as Smith and Brett have noted, is flexible enough in its defining ideology to enable festival participants to imagine a music and social scene that can include a diverse range of styles.
5.3.4 signs of belonging
Engaging with live performances was a means to personally become part of the folk process, but it also gave people a chance to connect to where they were. One means of marking out this belonging is through visual symbols. Mt Isa is recognised through its mining activities and festival organisers incorporated the image of the mine into wearable tags, identifying those who had paid to attend the festival. An outline of the MIM smokestack was juxtaposed with that of representations of folk instruments (refer to figure 5.7) and this image was stamped onto medallions that were worn by those attending the weekend's music activities.
As other researchers on festival events have noted, this marking of festival participants ensures that they are identifiable as attending the event, which also has the potential to increase group cohesion and a sense of communal identity (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog 1994:
203). The participant wearing the medallion is marked as belonging within this festival space.
Active participation in the preparation for the festival was another way to create some feeling of community. Annette Gordon, a singer-songwriter and a committee member of the Mt Isa
folk club, talked to me about creating a backdrop for the main stage of the festival, located at
the Mt Isa folk club grounds. She explained how it was put together, saying:
[t]hese fellas — it started months ago, and especially this week — they painted the
banner! See that's what music — there's a good story with that too. See it's all
intermingling of cultures here. The Shack was drawn by a local cartoonist, Brett
Curry. Bazza3E got him to do the cartoon of the club. We paid him fifty dollars, so
38 Gordon refers here to Barry Rodgers. Figure 5.7 Medallion for the 1998 Top Half Folk Festival logo incorporates folk music instruments and the smoke stack from the Mt Isa Mines 125
now it's ours! And the vine around the outside is symbolic of our vine over the beer
garden, 'cos I think that adds such a great atmosphere. It's a beautiful place out there.
And Frances painted a couple of those paintings in there, too, and I wanted Frances to
help me with the banner, but she was out bush doing some course. But I had good
help in Shooey. The first night I came in, Shooey was the only one [who turned up to
help]. I thought a few people might turn up to help me, so what could I do that would
be a nice pattern for the background and what colours should I use, so everyone could
just do it at the same time. So I thought it would be circles, start big at the bottom and
get smaller at the back. And Shooey was the only one who came. And he walks in
and says, "ah! circles mate, eh?" — it was something like that. I convinced him that it
was going to work. We got into it and we started joining them up, just putting them
everywhere, willy nilly. We talked about what colour — there's a streak of grey
through it — that was a big talking point, about what colour we should use.
The colours at the back, is that the sunset?
Yeah. That's the sky, the sun's going down. There's little animals in the sky, you can't
see them from here. They're little hidden animals. We had kids here [later]. Shooey's
little girl, I was doing the vine, and she said, "are you painting this?" [I said] yeah,
and then she's painted in, [asking] "is that good?" [I said] yeah. Shooey, when he
started painting, he was so nervous! [But then] we relaxed and we talked about it
more and we just, we were really pleased with the result (interview 1998).
As Gordon illustrates in her narrative, the banner (for an image of the banner, refer to track 2
Top Half Folk Festival menu, CDrom) contains images of people and places that would be
readily recognisable to those attending the festival. Images from the folk club's beer garden,
the actual clubrooms themselves, capturing the colours of the land around the city, all become
a re-creation of the Top Half festival within images of Mt Isa. Yet, it is not the visual image
alone that connects it to the Mt Isa folk/festival space. Those involved in making the banner
— from the cartoonist who depicted the folk club to those who turned up to help paint — 126 connect the place, the people and their representation. Gordon wanted to prepare a visual image of the festival that would make it representative of Mt Isa, and in doing this, enable as many people as possible to be included in its production. Yet, as she said, only one person turned up to help her. The making of the imaginary of Mt Isa as a place was to be a collective endeavour, representing not only visual images of place, but also recreating the ideal of the
Mt Isa folk club community in its collective making of this image. And as Gordon told me, this did not happen. Instead, the community ideal was expressed by a few. The social relations that compose the community are fractured and discontinuous, rather than the face-to- face relations expressed as an ideal, and particularly the ideal of a folk community. Not everyone is involved in the production of the community festival, but the ways in which participants characterise participation in the event suggests that the imagined folk community is a powerful cohesive force.
In a similar way to that of the visual markings of bodies in space described above, the festival program marked out performers, audience and place so as to signal that this festival was about
Mt Isa. The notion of what folk music is has been consciously constructed by participants as a relatively open category. Folk music is that which "belongs to someone, some nation" and this suggests a porous boundary through which other musics not from an Anglo-Celtic folk tradition can enter into the festival space. Yet this open-ness paradoxically encloses these other musics within the folk music and folk festival frameworks. For the performer, this folk frame establishes a set of criteria that will in some ways determine the success or otherwise of
the reception of that music. For those whose music falls outside what is the much narrower,
and more commonly accepted definition, of folk music, the festival framework may suggest
that other notions of identity and place could be drawn on or even subsumed by the over-
arching concept of the folk genre. This creates some tension in the actual practices of folk
music, for, no matter how inclusive and open the folk festival attempts to be, it has developed -
out of white, British and subsequent Anglo-Australian traditions. As with the debates around
the concept of multiculturalism discussed in the chapter five, these Anglo-Celtic traditions 127 construct a framing discourse within which music practices from other cultures are framed. In the following section, I present an example of one of the contradictions that arise in the ideal folk community that demonstrates the ways in which it frames non-folk and, more specifically, non Anglo-Celtic traditions.
5.3.5 troubled imaginings
The Friday evening concert was opened By Delma Barton and her son William, who, we were informed by Greg Hastings the host of the concert, were to perform a traditional
Kalkadoon welcome 'for the gathering of many tribes' (, Greg Hastings stage talk 5 June
1998). Kalkadoon is the name of the indigenous Australian group of the region in which Mt
Isa is located, although most live in and around Cloncurry.39 While William Barton accompanied on the didjeridu, Delma Barton performed the song of welcome.
I was not prepared for the vocal quality of Delma Barton — which sounds presumptuous and chauvinistic on my part, but I had expected the vocal production I usually associated with traditional indigenous performers, a much more nasal and flattened sound.
Delma Barton's voice just stunned me. Talking to her later, I found that she was untrained in western vocal techniques, yet her voice most resembles that of a mezzo-soprano, bell-like and clear. And it carried! Annette [Gordon] told me that some members of the folk club didn't like the sound of Delma's voice, especially because of its perceived loudness. There had also been some problems at a past festival where Delma was meant to perform but didn't, so Annette was glad Delma was performing this year. At another point in the festival, Delma performed
on didjeridu and again I was taken aback by the sounds that she produced. It was like her
singing voice this time conveyed through the didjeridu.
(Field notes June 5 1998).
s9 A massacre some time in the 1880s had decimated the Kalkadoon population of the Mt Isa region (Shaw, conversation 1998) 128
The Barton family, including Charles Barton, Delma's husband, who died only a few weeks before this festival, had been associated with the Mt Isa folk club over a number of years. The presence of performers specifically identified for this festival as members of the Kalkadoon people, and the traditional welcome to the festival site performed by the Bartons, suggested to me that the presence and participation of this indigenous group served to intimately link the
Top Half festival within the place of Mt Isa. This process of indigeneity continued throughout the time of the festival. For example, in a later performance, the non-indigenous performer Annette Gordon introduced her song as being about Kalkadoon land, saying, "I sing about being part of this land and the coming of white people and how this effects this land" (Gordon stage talk 1998). Historical and cultural connections are established in such explanations, remaking the festival in a way that draws participants towards an indigenous way of being in the country. However, this produces a dilemma for non-indigenous members of the audience. As Gordon's introduction suggests, in marking indigenous ties to land, the festival seeks to establish a legitimate presence for Anglo-Australians. Yet, this must occur through the bodies and musical/cultural expression of indigenous Australians. These performers deliver not just a pure model of an indigenous connection to place, but also are
reminders of how non-indigenes impacted upon that connection. I do not wish to imply that
these indigenous performers had little agency in their own performances and the subsequent
activation of musical and cultural codes that create and connect them to place. As I propose in
the close reading of the Michael Fix/William Barton performance, this is not the case. But an
incident occurred one evening at the festival that troubled me, and obviously troubled the
festival organisers.
When the formal program finished each evening, people would gather to talk and drink
around a large tin drum in which a fire had been lit, waiting for the sound equipment to be
packed away and for the jam sessions that would begin a little later. On the Saturday evening,
June 6, a group of us were chatting around the fire, and I noticed an indigenous woman
walking from person to person quietly begging. She was asked to leave by one of the 129 organisers but she ignored him. She was again asked to leave, but again she ignored this request and continued begging. Eventually a police car arrived and escorted her off the festival grounds. I was told later that she was well known to the club members and that they had found the decision to call the police a difficult one (Gordon conversation 1998). The
(mostly Anglo-Australian) folk community present at the festival had demonstrated a desire to recognise an indigenous presence and connection to the place of Mt Isa, as well as the troubling effects of colonisation. Yet, what this example shows is the disturbing juxtaposition of an imagined indigeneity, with its spiritual connection to land, and the reality of many indigenous lives altered by a non-indigenous presence.
5.4 Identity: people in place
There are no strangers just friends I've not met
And my time on the road has been long
Thanks to you folks who have opened your hearts
Where we've shared a good yarn and a song
Chorus: From where the sun sets to where it will rise
From Darwin to old Hobart Town
Fond are the memories that I will recall
'Til the next time that I pass around
(extract from a cappella song performed by Greg Hastings, blackboard concert, June 61998,
Mt Isa Top Half Folk Festival)
As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the name of the festival, thè Top Half, locates the
event in a particular space, that of the top or northern end of Australia. Participation in this
festival is an engagement with various discourses constructed around imaginaries of identity,
place and nation that become activated within the space of this folk music festival. In this 130 section, I want to examine the relationship between the landscape of the Top Half and, more specifically, Mt Isa with festival participants, as it is through their imaginings of place through folk music performance that constructs this particular festival. A particular textual and musical vocabulary described this landscape imaginary and was woven into the acts of the festival performers. For example, the sense of scale in which this imagined national folk community resides, and of which the Mt Isa scene is a part, is illustrated in the words of the song, 'No strangers' quoted above. The lyrics express a sense of distance, of the scale of the geographical area in which these performances take place, and the movement of people as they seek employment or simply catch up with family and friends. This was illustrated by a conversation between three participants at the Festival:
Ian: I think that's a part of the thing with living in the Territory especially, you tend to
have very transient populations. People generally live a long way away from their
own families, and their own sort of social support networks they've grown up with.
So they tend to go out and make their own fun, friends, move, go out and become
involved.
Peter: Mt Isa is the same as the Territory, it's a very transient population. No bloody
sewing circles, no knitting clubs for ladies. Women either love it or hate it, and so do
the blokes. And if you can go out, they're the easiest towns in the world to socialise
in, aren't they? It's part of it. Toowoomba, and I reckon places like that, are some of
the most difficult towns to get to know anyone. They've all got their extended
families, they all stay in-doors with the doors shut, they won't go to the pub. The only
people you meet in pub bars are idiots and drunks, bar flies and so forth.
Ian: Because they've lived there all their lives, they've got their own little sort of
social networks and they don't tend to expand.
Pam: While if you're anywhere like this, you've always come from somewhere else
(audience members interview 5 June 1998). 131
These audience members echoed the view of the festival organiser, Barry Rodgers mentioned previously. In particular, they stressed the transience of populations in northern Australia, and they spoke of the importance of social networks in creating a sense of community in the more isolated northern regions of Australia. The 'somewhere else' mentioned by Pam, for example, suggests longing and loss, and the need to re-establish the self in place, a place that appears to be continually shifting because of its transient populations. As noted earlier, this festival is attended by those who are nomadic and mobile, and the aesthetics and practices of folk music creates for them a sense of embeddedness through folk's references to local and national histories and places. In this way, the music performed within the framework of this festival serves to create and spatialise a sense of community. There are two key characteristics that define the Top Half Folk Festival. As the festival name implies, it is about the performance of folk music. The second characteristic is also evident in the festival's name; it is a festival of the `Top Half' — the northern part of Australia, particularly the Northern Territory, commonly spoken of as the Top End. By moving through and re-establishing the Top Half festival at points within this region, participants act out how they imagine themselves to be as identifiable as a group. As one participant reflected:
I think it's because in the Territory and the north here generally it is a relatively
unpopulated place with a lot of distance between places. And it's a lifestyle thing, too. I
mean people who live in the north are generally much more laid back. These Territory
festivals are much more friendly and laid-back than the big festivals down south.
They're not so involved in making a show of things. People are more interested in
having a good time than competing with people, judging people, or whatever. I mean,
we've come up from Maryborough, Pete and Aud have come from Toowoomba, and
basically the festival is why we've travelled all this way — to be here. We'd left the
Territory and moved down to Maryborough. We went back [to the Top Half Festival]
for the first time last year, to the one at Jabiru. When we heard that this one was to be at
Mt Isa, we thought great! That's only half way! We'll be there! (Ian interview 1998). 132
Participants see themselves as members of a far-flung group, and hear festival performances framed within these images. Distance in particular was a recurring theme, with performers introduced or introduce themselves with such statements as: "I've come all the way from
Maryborough — hop, skip and jump of 3000 miles!" (Ian stage talk 1998); "All the way from
Karumba" (Campbell stage talk 1998); and finally, "I'd like to welcome everybody to this Top
Half festival, especially those who have come from so far away" (McCullogh official opening of festival 1998). Being part of the Top Half festival helps create an identity as part of the north. The festival becomes a space of an intensification of connections — particularly the musical and social — that resonates to notions such as 'northern Australia', distance, inclusiveness, travelling, being relaxed, all notions that for participants at this festival means being `Top Half folkies.' However, these perceptions of impermanence and vastness were not the only ways in which the festival was, ironically, spatialised. In the following section, I examine the ways in which the landscape of the Top Half has influenced the musical composition and performance of those who participated in the Top Half Folk Festival.
5.4.1 landscape
A number of the performers at this festival spoke of the influence of the outback landscape in
their compositional practices. Michael Fix, a guitarist-composer, explained that, for him, awe-
inspiring places like central Australia were a source of compositional inspiration (Fix
interview 1998). The landscape is also used to confer identity onto people in place. For
example, the site in which the clubrooms are situated has been incorporated into the identity
of at least one of the local folk bands, conferring upon the band a specific Mt Isa identity
through its name, Leichhardt Silt. Barry Rodgers said of the origins of his band's name, that
"[w]e call ourselves Leichhardt Silt because this club is in the riverbed, we're in the middle of
the Leichhardt River' at the moment and we just sort of said, you know, we just sort of
washed in like a couple of cask bladders and here we are!" (Rodgers interview 1998). Perhaps
period each year, and the clubrooms are elevated to cope with this (Hamilton conversation +0 The river exists for only a short 1998). 133 in the image of cask bladders we also hear some hint towards the perceived characteristics of
Mt Isa's transient population, a population whose source of employment is based on contracts with the Mt Isa Mines (MIM).
The Spinifex and Stone,' a song written by non-indigenous performer Annette Gordon, describes the physical landscape around Mt Isa. Gordon contrasts the beauty and what she senses as the spiritual within the land with the effects mining has had on the area. She told me that the song was:
years in the making. When I went to Townsville, to Uni, I used to come back on the
bus all the time. And when you get to just outside Cloncurry, and you get there early
morning and you're just waking up, you know you're nearly home because you're
hitting the hills. The colours of the hills in the morning, it's just incredible. And some
of the places out bush have got a real spiritual feeling, so that's what I wanted to say
in the song. You can't go bloody digging big holes and big mines everywhere because
this land has got a spirit. And by doing that, it's just ruining it (interview 1998).
In her descriptions of the place, Gordon's words point to the uncanny in her image of the land
around Mt Isa, in the paradox of the city's presence that destroys landscape, recreating it into
something else, and its overlapping of a spiritual space. This land is both familiar and strange
to her. In thinking about the effects of the city on the surrounding landscape, Gordon said,
"you go for a drive out behind those mines — I drove out there just on sunset. Oh, the hills
are dead. I thought I was on the moon. It was just an incredible landscape. It's just dead. It's
just a dead kind of colour, there's no life, you know, and where there's no life, there's no
spirit" (interview 1998). In their recent publication, Uncanny Australia (1998) Ken Gelder
and Jane Jacobs argue that Aboriginal sacredness has been "crucial in the recasting of
Australia's sense of itself" (1). They contend that the Aboriginal sacred (encompassing sacred
sites and sacred objects) is an activated thing that continues to impact upon modernity, just as 134 modernity continues to reformulate the context in which the sacred is manifested (22). This results in an oscillation between a potential unity and reconciliation on one hand and division at another, 'one nation' and a 'divided nation.' " It is the ceaseless movement back and forth between these two positions which is precisely postcolonial. And the various promiscuities arising from this movement, where sacredness and modernity solicit each other, produce a condition for the nation which we will designate as 'uncanny' " (2). Within this fluctuation, the familiar is made strange, an 'uncanny' experience where one senses being both in place and 'out of place' (23). For Gordon, that sense of spirit in place enables her to connect and bond with this particular location. Her travels through this space reinscribe her sense of belonging, but it is more specifically her perception of the landscape around Mt Isa and its sheltering of a spiritual sacredness that connects her to this particular place. Gordon shows she belongs to Mt Isa in that she is both marked by the landscape and puts her mark onto it through her song; she carries within her the landscape she know as Mt Isa.
5.4.2 giving voice to the land
A number of workshops were held over the weekend of the festival that were designed to be a time where professional and less experienced performers could talk and exchange ideas and techniques about music performance. The workshop concept reflects the folk ideal of the
importance of oral transmission within the folk community (Smith and Brett 1998: 6). At one
of the voice workshops, presented by Nadia Sunde a vocalist with the Brisbane-based band
Spot the Dog, a discussion arose on the use of different accents when performing songs from
different countries. David Waite, a Mt Isa resident and member of the group Buckley's
Chants, told the group that he deliberately used various accents in order to convey the
meaning of the song. He also noted that a north American accent was a fairly standard
convention in country and western song even when the subject matter was based in Australia.
Waite wanted to know how it was possible to remain himself when performing while still
managing to get the message of the song across to an audience. Sunde and some of the others 135 present talked about the ways in which particular words shape the mouth so producing some
word sounds that were more easily sung. Someone thought that the use of accents also had to
do with the content of the song, so that a song such as 'Copperhead Road' had to be performed
with an Arkansas accent. (refer to track 2 Top Half folk Festival menu CDrom). Sunde
suggested that what accents did was to allow the singer to step into character, although noting
that this could lead to conflict between the singer and the song. Waite asked if then he was not
singing but mimicking the performances of others (notes taken from vocal workshop 1998).
The discussion at this workshop demonstrates how music is a performative act that enables its
practitioners to take on an identity — a similar process that was uncovered in the analysis of
the dance performances of the Brunswick Music Festival, examined in the previous chapter.
Those who took part in the workshop expressed a concern about such performative acts (as
was asked by one person, how is it possible to remain themselves while still performing these
identities) even as they thought these identifying accents were a necessary way to recreate the
context of the songs. And, as did the Brunswick Music Festival performers, these
performative acts are a means for participants of this festival to express their own
situatedness.
In ways that contrast with this discussion, Frederique Glasco, an audience member originally
from America, talked to me about Australian folk music. She said:
[i]t's funny how the difference in each nation organised a different rhythm almost.
The beat, the beat is different. It's much faster here than in the [United] States. Mainly
in bush music, it's like that, if you call it bush music. You know this lagerphone?
Well this lagerphone beat is usually much faster than you would hear in America.
That's the way we felt it when we first arrived. Now it's fine, it fits, you know! But
for some reason, it didn't quite [fit], it was just a bit too fast for what I was used to
from the States (interview 1998). 136
Glasco talks of her unsettled experience upon hearing what she described as an 'Australian rhythm': it felt different, it was too fast, and it did not fit her own sense of rhythm. Yet her initial perception changed after living for a time in Australia and this new rhythmic pulse did feel appropriate to her in her new surroundings. I asked her later if she could expand on what she meant by rhythm and its connection to a sense of nation. She responded:
Australian folk music, for what I can understand of it, has very little influence from
Aborigines' music sensibility, it is not a deeply grounded type of beat. It seems to be
more deeply anchored in European origin of its population. The migration is too
recent to have developed a ground source to the rhythm. It is this European heritage
mixed with the influence of the country itself that seem to create this Australian bush
music. The tempo doesn't seem to be much different than the United States or Europe
but the beat itself is quicker. The way the beat is marked with the lagerphone is much
faster than would be expected in other circumstances. I need more knowledge to
attribute it to the right origin but it might be of Irish influence (correspondence
undated).
Glasco's comments demonstrate a more essentialised point of view. The discussion of those
who took part in the workshop implies that musical elements such as accents, rhythms, and
instrumentation are matters of choice when performing, although certain choices are more
desirable. Glasco's characterisation of national musics implies that music expresses a much
more embedded relationship between identity and place. Participants at this festival imply in
these discussions that there is a connection between where you are and who you are, and that
musical performance is an expression of this relationship. Yet, they also recognise the
tensions and contradictions in this. Although the festival can be seen as an articulation of the
connections between identity and place expressed through musical performance, this is
problematic. These discussions about accents and rhythms suggests there can be no simple
linking of a style of music to a bounded and identifiable group of people to a particular place, 137 for identity and place are not fixed and unchanging, but multiple and shifting. As Arjun
Appadurai argues, contemporary society is best described as an ethnoscape, a fluid landscape of tourists, immigrants, exiles and other moving groups and persons (1991: 192). Nor do participants at these festivals understand themselves as bounded groups set apart from the rest of the world. Instead, there is an active engagement, or an attempt at such engagement, with those who could be classified for various reasons as 'outsiders' — those from different musical and cultural backgrounds, those from other geographical locations — and part of this active engagement is the ability to question what is being performed within the festival space.
The next section presents a close reading of one performance from the Top Half Festival, the duet of Michael Fix and William Barton. This performance is not characteristically recognised as folk music, however its inclusion in the festival and the sorts of ideas about place and identity it activates brings together a number of the issues discussed thus far in this chapter.
5.5 Performing landscape
Given these performative processes that circulated around the event of the 1998 Top Half
Folk Festival, I want to utilise Hakim Bey's notion of overlaying maps and networks
discussed in the methodology chapter, to see how the networks and processes of this festival
may activate the making of musical performance. The performance is a musical duet and it is
framed by the festival and by the performers such that a particular image of place is created.
A way into understanding this is through notions of 'rhythm,' drawing on two particular
concepts, that of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their essay 'Of the Refrain', and the
musical understanding of 'rhythm' as discussed by the musicologist Christopher Hasty in his
book Metre as Rhythm (1997). Both ways of understanding rhythm suggest a sense of agency.
Christopher Hasty argues that central to an understanding of rhythm within music is the
notion of regular repetition. Yet, in this there lies a paradox. Rhythm can mean both 138 regularity, lawfulness and measure, but also it is an expressive or compelling motion, gesture or shape (4). The regular repetition of a time period - the metre - controls the unfolding of music, while what Hasty calls the rhythmic is heard as expressive and musical because it seems to work against this metrical constraint. Hasty writes that:
rhythm focuses our attention, not on time as a substrate or medium for events, but on
the events themselves in their particularity, creativity and spontaneity. To speak of
rhythm is to speak of the rhythm of something - a characteristic gesture or shape that
makes this something special. Moreover, it is to raise the question, special for whom?
(7).
Hasty suggests that this structuring of the musical experience points to a framing presence outside the music, one that recognises the musical structure as having meaning.
Deleuze and Guattari have also explored the notion of rhythm, using it in a metaphorical
sense that nonetheless has some similarities to Hasty's examination of musical rhythm. They
argue that every living thing is formed from a series of milieus — or worlds — composed of
interiors, exteriors and the boundaries between. They use music as an analogy for the
processes involved in living things marking out and making claims to a territory. Space is
territorialised through the use of periodic repetitions that signal ownership to others. What
they call rhythm are the traces of encounters between different worlds, between self and non
self. Bird song, marking out the bird's territory and trying to attract a mate, are obvious
examples of this. The resulting rhythmic improvisations are observable changes, reactions to
challenges that call for a signalling of ownership. As rhythm orders sounds into a musical
structure, so mapping space through repeated signs is a means of establishing a structure of
possession. 139
At the Top Half Folk Festival, the guitarist-composer Michael Fix and William Barton, a
didjeridu player of the Kalkadoon people, performed a duet, one of Fix's own compositions,
'Sunrise over Alice.' This was written in 1992, in response to Fix's experience of a sunrise
seen from Anzac Lookout in Alice Springs (Fix interview 1998). The piece has been recorded
commercially at least twice, in 1993 on his CD Fingerpaintings, and again on The Heart Has
Reasons, released in 1996. I asked Fix about the way in which he composes his music, and if
he often wrote music about places he had visited. He replied:
I end up writing from memories. Those memories might be to do with a place, or an
experience or a person, or an event of some sort. I liken it to putting a soundtrack to a
movie. So I have an experience and it's effected me emotionally or whatever. Then later
on, when I've got a quiet moment, I sit down and I think about and remember what it
was — it might have been the sun coming up over Alice Springs — and I run it though
my mind like a movie. And then the music is the soundtrack for the memory. I think
very visually and that's how a lot of this stuff comes together (interview 1998).
Fix composes music out of memories, in this case of a physical experience that has in some way
effected him. As with singer-songwriter Annette Gordon's work and even in the naming of the
band Leichhardt Silt, the physical landscape stimulates a creative response. With regards to Fix's compositional process, he incorporates such experiences into visual — that is, his
memories of the scene — and musical codes that he can then communicate to others. This
communication through performance, presenting a narrative about life, is a quality that many of
the musicians saw as vital to what they were doing in performing (Paige interview 1998; Paige
correspondence 1998; Gordon interview 1998).
The sense of being within the place of the performance, where the performers are bodily
present, was suggested to me by a number of people I interviewed as significant in feeling an
involvement in the performance. Frederique Glasco explained that "live music attracts an 140 audience because people see and feel the performer. It's an interaction of emotion, sight and sound. The performer conveying his emotion and the audience feeling it and responding to it"
(correspondence undated). Fix, in talking of his own listening experiences, explained that:
I've never liked this idea of the performer being above the audience, sort of like a god
who's out of touch with the audience. I like the feeling of knowing a performer. I like to
feel that I've been led into that person's life and it's revealed that that person is really
like everybody else. Their talent is the way they express their emotions. I think that's
what John Lennon had, that's what's so magical about his song writing. It is the every
person experience, right through from girlfriend and boyfriend splitting up to really
advanced relationship things. He always put it in like a really basic lay person['s
language], said things that everyone was thinking in just a lovely simple way (interview
1998).
Yet, within the framing structure of the festival, this emotional relationship between performer and audience becomes something else. As discussed in the previous chapter, the performing space becomes a performative one, where the expressive acts of music become a means of constituting identity. In 'Sunrise over Alice' interlocking images of place and
identity activate the musical narrative, informing the spatialised identities of the festival
participants.
At the festival, Fix told the audience that he wanted to encapsulate in music the scene of a
sunrise at Alice Springs, an introduction he uses both in concert and on the sleeve notes of his
recordings (1993, 1996) of the work. Fix told of the sunrise scene of 'Sunrise over Alice,' so
locating his work in a particular place, Anzac Hill near Alice Springs, with these words:
This piece of music is designed to evoke the sunrise in central Australia. If you can,
imagine yourself up on Anzac Hill overlooking Alice Springs. It's absolutely pitch 141
black. It's about a quarter to six in the morning, maybe five thirty. And it's a little bit
eerie, 'cos you're right out there in the middle of Australia. And you start to see the
first rays of the sun coming up over the Macdonnell Ranges and the sky changing
cßlour-(stage talk-1998).
Fix places his composition at the geographical centre of Australia41 but this also positions
'Sunrise over Alice' historically and culturally. Anzac Hill functions as a sacred site, memorialising the Anzacs at Gallipoli — a First World War battle that Australians were very much involved in — and an event proclaimed by many as the day the Australian nation was born (Inglis 1991: 17). Each year on Anzac Day, April 25, this event is celebrated nationally with dawn services around the country. In the Northern Territory, it takes place at Anzac Hill.
Although not explicitly talked about by Fix, these associations with the Gallipoli commemoration colour the performance, linking it to a particular imagined Australia and one attached to an Anglo-Australian notion of its own history.
In both the 1993 and 1996 recordings of Fix's 'Sunrise over Alice,' the piece begins with a sound resembling wind blowing followed by percussive sounds that initially have no discernible pulse. The 1993 recording uses a drum machine, followed by electronic keyboard, glockenspiel, shakers and the use of glissandi. After about twenty-five seconds, the shakers and guitar initiate the pulse of the composition — the shakers creating a rhythmic pulse through repeated percussive intervals while the guitar plays a chordal progression that
establishes a key. (Refer to track 4 Top Half Folk Festival menu CDrom). In the 1996
recording (and this is the version heard at the festival) Fix creates the opening's rapid
unstructured percussive effects by tapping the body of the guitar with his fingers. The tonal
quality of this version is deeper and more rounded than that of the 1993 recording, while the
tempo is much slower. (refer to track 5 Half Folk Festival menu CDrom). Unlike the earlier
41 Anzac Hill is the geodetic fundamental point for surveyors (www.wilmap.com.au/—wilmap/ANZACHILL.html cited June 9 1999). 142
version, where the organising pulse originates in the shakers and chords of the guitar, in this
version the unstructured percussive effects gradually evolve into a repeated rhythmic pulse. I
would now like to consider how Fix's introductory comments assist and influence the listener
–in understanding this-piece
5.5.1 Sonic imaginings
The work of musicologist Naomi Cumming (1997) suggests a means of coming to some
understanding of how the sounds of Fix's composition may be interpreted. Her analysis of Peter
Sculthorpe's work 'Mangrove,' used the semiotic methodology of David Lidov to examine
meaning in a musical work. In this approach, music is understood as having specific references
to aspects of the world, bodily motions and emotional states. Cumming argues that Sculthorpe
uses musical sounds to evoke a particular Australian landscape through the imitation of natural
sounds. For example, rapid glissandi in the extreme high registers of the orchestra's string
section resemble the sound of birdcalls. She also argues that while other sections of the work
may not be imitative they nonetheless have referential content, rendering in sound actions or
moods. In Fix's 'Sunrise over Alice' similar strategies are used. For example, birdcalls are part of
the dawn experience and the glissandi, as in Sculthorpe's, suggest the sounds of these birds. The
opening's rapid and unstructured percussive sounds created by Fix are referential; they suggest
the movement of the wind as well as referring to a physical sensation provoked by the sense of
eeriness — shivering. Echoing effects give the illusion of movement within this soundscape and
heighten the sense of unease. Fix has already contextualised the piece in his introduction so that
we know the piece is an attempt to depict early dawn. However, Fix's different versions of
'Alice' are located not only geographically, but in musical sounds that elicit slightly different
images of place.
The Alice Springs of the 1993 version is imagined through the instrumentation and timbre of
country music, in particular the twang and pitch-glides of the electric and slide guitars. We 143
reconstruct Fix's 'Alice' through aural sounds and their visual counterparts, the almost weary
slide of the guitar bringing to mind such images as the outback, stockmen, dust, and heat. This
music aesthetic influences how the listener may 'hear' and so imaginatively recreate place. As
Graeme–Smith–{1992}–notes, the_association_of sound_with _place_reflects hoth_musica
competencies and learned cultural responses; what we hear is influenced by how we have been
taught to hear. The 1993 'Sunrise over Alice' suggests that the listener enters into its soundscape
through the semiotics of country music and its allusions to an untamed landscape and it is the
guitar that invites us into this representation of place. In his discussion of the country singer's
voice, Graeme Smith argues that "we hear the singer as a particular body attitude, which we
neither admire nor fantasise about socially or sexually interacting with, but which we become.
The song gives us access to another experience of the body in ways impossible with visual and
verbal representation" (1992: 40). The country singer's vocal production — created out of a
high, tense voice position, with ornaments and breaks using the falsetto voice decorating the
melodic line — results in what Smith describes as "the coarse tension [of country music],
prominent almost to the point of parody. Breaking under the emotional strain it projects a body
continually defended and all the more vulnerable because of this" (39). In Fix's 1993 version of
'Sunrise over Alice' it is the voice of the guitar that embodies and acts out the sunrise experience
and it is the voice of the guitar which the listener identifies as embodying or recreating the
physical experience of place. Through the vulnerable voice of the guitar, Fix leads the listener S
through the impact of such transient yet awe-inspiring moments in place.
The 1996 version, and that performed at the 1998 Top Half festival, invites the listener into a
slightly different 'Alice.' Fix's introductory comments set the scene so that we hear the
eeriness of early dawn in some primordial Australian landscape through the opening's rapid
and unstructured percussive sounds. These sounds are referential – suggesting the movement
of wind and the sounds of birds at dawn. As well, the physical sensation of shivering
provoked by the dawn chill or perhaps the sense of eeriness gets to us, particularly for
Australian listeners. Perhaps this feeling of unease alludes to the sense of sacredness 144 resonating through the name Anzac Hill. 'Sunrise over Alice' can also be transposed onto a more general place - the Australian outback - so that Fix includes the listeners at the festival into a sense of place. Fix had suggested this the previous night when he introduced this piece saying, "this-piece-was-written-when-1- first- went-to-Alice-Springs: -Anzac-lookout-atsunrise, quite an emotional experience. I suppose you get something pretty similar here in Isa, so I guess you won't have too much trouble imagining [this scene]" (stage talk 1998). Through this performance of 'Alice' — the mood is eerie and you feel "right out there in the middle of
Australia" — Fix locates and activates his musical narrative within a set of notions about this mythical outback. The unstructured introduction, where the rhythmic pulse is yet to be established, conjures up the pre-dawn sky, where it is difficult to discern the land's features.
We can then hear, within the structuring of the music into a recognisable form, that with the sun's first rays Fix begins to see and make sense of where he is. This fixing of place illustrates
Deleuze and Guattari's notion of rhythm on a number of levels. The sunrise experience is translated into music, with physical and emotional responses to the landscape coded in aural images. These images then have the potential to effect the listener and performer. Fix's memories are embedded within a musical sound that gives him possession of an imagined
Alice Springs at sunrise. In turn, these musical narratives and codings offer the listener a way into this 'Alice' landscape.
5.5.2 Reinscriptions
At the 1998 Top Half Festival performance of 'Sunrise over Alice,' Fix included William Barton
on the didjeridu. This brought another layer of possible readings into the performance. Barton's
physical and musical presence activates other discourses about the Top Half, specifically those
around Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Australia has troubled so-called white Australian
notions of history and identity. The violent impact that white settlement had on indigenous
populations and the current federal Government's refusal to officially recognise this relatively
recent past has meant an unease in the relationship between Aboriginal and white Australia. 145
Fix's reference to Anzac Hill looks to an Anglo-Australian myth about origins but Barton indicates a much older and more intimate connection to place. As the festival MC said on introducing him, "he's local — his family's been local for 60 000 years!" With this introduction,
festival participants are-made aware-and-reminded-of-this-juxtaposition-of Anglo=Australian-and indigenous Australian claims to space in the physical presence of these two performers.
Entering after the introduction, the didjeridu follows the unstructured rhythms of the recordings and it too evokes a sense of eeriness and the sounds of birds at dawn. Unlike the previous performance, where the guitar structures the rhythmic pulse, here it is the didjeridu that creates the pulse through its drone. The didjeridu also indicates changes between sections, with Fix listening and watching Barton for musical cues. Fix also follows Barton's cue to finish where Barton breaks out of the melody with blown overtones — a common cadential pattern for some traditional indigenous performers. But the didjeridu functions as more than just a rhythmic framing. Throughout the performance, there is a dialogue between the two performers, with the didjeridu imitating the guitar's melodic fragments or percussive effects. (Refer to track 3 Top Half Folk Festival menu CDrom). This performance alternates between a mythic and a more specifically located sense of place. Barton's didjeridu technique is referential in the way the guitar is, in that it reminds us of birdsong and other aural images referring to the dawn. But the didjeridu is also referential, in that it is an iconic sound that reinforces an aural image of indigenous outback Australia. Barton himself is specifically linked to a place because he is a member of the Kalkadoon, the indigenous people of the region in which Mt Isa is located and this identity is cited during the festival. But how does
Barton's physical and musical presence affect the performance of 'Sunrise over Alice'?
In this performance, the didjeridu bumps up against and asserts itself with regards to the non- indigenous sound and organising function of the guitar. Although it is Fix's composition, in this duet it appears that Barton directs the musical landscape through his rhythms, creating and reinterpreting Fix's memories of Alice Springs through his own musical language. In the 146
sense of rhythm proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, Fix and Barton respond to their musical
and cultural intersections through a musical improvisation. There is a shifting back and forth
between the didjeridu, the iconic voice of the Australian land, and the guitar on Anzac Hill, a
-place-resonating-withthe -myth-of'-the-so-called birth of a natior~The-milieu-of -the-folk
festival and the associated imagery circulating about the Top Half Festival frame the
performance, yet the actions of these individual festival performers recreate and reframe
meaning, activated by the music and its construction of place. The duet is an event in flux,
capturing aspects of both the local and the non-local, of being in and out of place, through
musical, bodily and textual motifs. Hasty refers to rhythmic markings and their effects
arguing that, "we cannot abstract rhythm from the wholeness of the event or the event's
particularity. Whatever being it has rests in the uses memory will make of it in the formation
of novel experience" (1997: 12). Fix and Barton draw on a music vocabulary that resonates
with images and memories, which then create connections between place and identity. They
illustrate how participants at the Mt Isa festival are marked by or mark themselves as
belonging to their imagined place through such musical practices.
5.6 Conclusion: terrains of belonging
The sociologist Anne-Marie Fortier (1999) argues that practices of group identity are about
assembling cultural and historical belongings that mark out terrains of commonality. These
terrains then outline the politics and social dynamics of conforming. The process of
performing music within the folk festival brings people together for a specific space of time.
The folk music repertoire and its associated ideologies enabled the festival participants to
mark out their 'terrains of commonality,' signalled through folk music practices that drew on
notions of a particular, idealised, nostalgic construction of community. This nostalgia was
understood as a possible means of revitalising the Mt Isa folk community, to reactivate
notions of belonging in spite of the disruptions brought about by the city's remoteness and the
transient population due to the type of employment available. 147
The musical repertoire of the folk club and festival incorporated both the club's musical
British origins as well as the new directions of folk music in Australia, a genre that attempts to be—much-more inclusive and—open The participants of the-1998Top-Half Folk Festival negotiated this folk space through their participation. Yet, it is not just the musical that was involved in this marking out this festival space. Memories, interaction with others, the physical location of the festival, the ideas circulating through media and by word-of-mouth, all these are part of this spatial creation. The music performed is not only a physical means of being present (as music is a process unfolding in time and so requires a bodily presence either as performer or as listener"), it is a set of aural symbols of that group of people located for that time in place. In understanding this connection, Sara Cohen (1993) proposes that Ruth
Finnegan's term 'musical pathways' encapsulate how participants open up and maintain links that then go on to create a sense of belonging. This linking is not necessarily to a particular place, although participants may talk in these terms, but more through the numerous people and processes involved in this often fleeting performance of music and its associations to a place. Music, as suggested by Deleuze and Guattari, is an open structure that permeates and is permeated by the world (quoted in Bogue 1991: 85). As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the markings of place, "do not refer to a landscape; they carry and develop within themselves landscapes that do not exist on the outside" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 319). It is the redeployment of such markings within the space and time of the festival that give rise to a sense of connection to place and community, albeit an imagined, temporary one.
In this chapter, I have examined how identities are constituted within and by the structure of the music festival. In turn, this positioning of identity/identities alters space, so creating, for the festival participants, specific, defined places. The Top Half Folk Festival illustrates the
42 Technology has altered the need for a physical presence in the performance of music and also has had repercussions in how we listen to music. But what I want to argue is that within the framework of the festival, a person needs to be physically present at the place of the festival. 148 relationships between identity, place and music with regards to notions of regional and national space. These spaces are articulated through a folk music aesthetic that promotes the ideologies of an ideal community based around face-to-face interactions. Furthermore, the spatialised
identities of this festival-are-tied-to-particular-images-of the-landscape pecifically-that- of--the
Top Half. As the performances and discussions of the Top Half Festival participants demonstrate, although a given place comes to be identified by certain characteristics, it is not a homogenous entity. Rather 'place' is the outcome of numerous, imagined 'places' that intersect and collide as (musical) identities are performed within the festival space. The spatialised identities exhibited by these festival participants are responses to their own inner landscapes
'that do not exist on the outside,' as they, in the activities of being festival participants, negotiate their own understanding of place, interacting and reacting to the festival's structure and framing.
What this chapter has demonstrated is that the old essentialist model of the place/identity/music nexus is no longer appropriate. Rather there is a complex series of negotiations around the making and remaking of this relationship and the ways in which identity is constituted.
The two case studies presented in chapters four and five have had as their focus a local constitution of identity (in the case of the Brunswick Music Festival), and a spatialised identity based on regional and national imaginaries (as the Top Half Festival has illustrated). The final case study of this research in the chapter that follows, elaborates the themes interrogated in these two studies, but this festival, the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, is self-consciously based on a transnational identities. This focus provides another set of conditions for interrogating the negotiations and renegotiations of identity, place and music. Chapter 6: utterances
the becoming-expressive
6.1 Introduction
Let us imagine for tonality two contradictory (and yet concomitant) statuses. On the
one hand ... a screen, a language intended to articulate the body ... according to a
known organisation.... On the other hand, contradictorily ... tonality becomes the
ready servant of the beats within another level it claims to domesticate (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 292).
The previous two chapters examined the ways in which participation in music performances within the framework of the community music festival creates spatialised identities.
Participation acts out notions of identity and belonging based around a particular set of defined characteristics, including notions of place, that come to represent a specific communal identity.
The positioning of these identities in turn alters space, so that these spatialised identities are constituted in the event of the festival. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest in the quote above, and, as the previous two case studies have demonstrated, the music of the festival are 'the beats within' that maraud across boundaries, challenging and transforming our representations of ourselves. Music performance is both a signifying practice, because it serves as a marker of identity, and it is something which reconstitutes and rearticulates identity in the act of that performance. Chapters four and five examined the dynamics involved in the articulations and re-articulations of identity and place as they are expressed locally (the Brunswick Music
Festival) and regionally or nationally (the Top Half Folk Festival). The Festival of Asian
Music and Dance, which is the focus of this chapter, articulates a different communal identity, for, as the name suggests, is about the practice and presentation of Asian musics. Moreover, 150 these Asian musical performances are framed within a larger, officially defined, multicultural
Australia. Yet, as will be shown, the festival performs a multicultural Australia that paradoxically asserts both authentic musical practices and a hybridisation of 'east' and 'west' cultures.
Asia has long figured in (white) Australian history and national imaginary, often as a threatening, alien Other (Broinowski 1992). Yet, the current economic pressures of globalisation have seen the Australian nation attempt to re-position itself in relation to its
Asian neighbours. Furthermore, since the demise of the white Australia immigration policy in
1972, Australia has encouraged Asian migration and received Asian-born refugees. This history of Asian-Australian relations has led to a complicated and complex series of associations. Therefore, the examination of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance brings to the study of the identity/place/music relationship a series of 'here' and 'there' positioning that express Australian/Asian stories and social interrelations that characterise contemporary
Australia.
The Festival of Asian Music and Dance is a relatively recent festival and is organised by the
Australian Institute of Eastern Music (AIEM) based in Sydney. ATEM was founded in 1983 under the artistic direction of Ashok Roy, a leading exponent of the stringed Indian instrument, the sarod. The Institute does not claim to be an umbrella group for Asian cultural organisations, but instead sees its role as a means to establish links with Asian cultural groups within New South Wales. The Festival of Asian Music and Dance is one outcome of AIEM's objective, "to further the music of Asia in Australia through regular performances, teaching and social events" (www.ozemail.com.au/—dukewalk/ cited 24 February 2000). The Institute
proposes that the festival is a means to expose and promote Asian musical culture in
Australia, and it does this in three ways. First, the festival enables performers from various
Asian cultural groups to perform traditional Asian repertoires. This, in turn, makes such music
known to the wider Australian community. Finally, the festival provides opportunities for 151 collaborative work between musicians of different ethnic and cultural groups, and the subsequent development of cross-cultural musical works arising out of such collaboration.
The first Festival of Asian Music and Dance took place in 1995 and for the first three years it was held in the Australian spring months of August and September. These earlier festivals were presented in the Belvoir Street Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. The festival's producer, David Walker, felt that this location framed the festival within a context of serious, even avant garde, theatrical circles, which helped give the festival added "clout"
(Walker interview 1999b). The 1999 festival saw a change in venue, with concerts held in the
Tom Mann Theatre, situated in the Amalgamated Metal Workers' Union National
Headquarters in Chalmer St, also in Surry Hills. This placed the festival site in an area that remains close to the former venue, as well as Opera Australia and Musica Viva.43 The 1999 festival was given promotional and some funding support by Carnivale, the New South Wales multicultural arts festival (Walker interview 1999b).44 Although the Festival of Asian Music and Dance is an independent entity with its own agenda, the relationship with Carnivale situates the Festival of Asian Music and Dance within the state government's framework of muticultural arts.
The 1999 festival, which I attended as part of my fieldwork, (the 1998 festival was postponed) was held in April of that year. The festival is made up of a series of concerts held mostly in the evenings, although weekend timetabling also enabled the organisers to hold afternoon and, in the case of the 1999 festival, a morning concert. The concerts were
presented in a strongly ethnographic format, with performers often of similar ethnic and
national background grouped together. For example, at the 1999 festival, one concert
displayed performances of Burmese and Japanese music and dances, which was held together
more mainstream artistic 43The festival is now held at the Sydney Opera House, so reconfiguring this music festival in terms of a event. "a major opportunity to 44 Carnivale was established in 1976 by the Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW as a means to provide showcase artistic works from diverse cultural backgrounds" (NSW Government White Paper 1996: 14). 152 by the image evoked by the concert's title, Pagodas. Detailed program notes, containing biographies of the performers and explanatory notes with regards to understanding the cultural dimensions of the music and/or dance presented (refer figure 6.1) were made available to audience members. Many of the performers also provided introductory comments on the cultural origins of their music and dance. This means of presentation emphasises the educational aspect of the festival, and its commitment to presenting various Asian musical practices outside of their immediate communities. The collaborative possibilities that the festival organisers hope to encourage was also evident in the ways in which quite disparate cultures were combined for a festival concert. For example at the 1999 festival, the concert entitled Across seas was a collaboration between the performers of the Turkish instrument baglama (a long-necked lute) and two Vietnamese instruments, the dan thran (a sixteen stringed zither) and the dan bao (a monochord).45 The program notes for such collaborative work maintain the strongly ethnographic focus of the festival, as they provide an outline of the separate cultural performances and techniques, as well as the similarities between these cultures, possible common origins as well as historical collaborations.4ó
The musicologist Paul Martin argues that meaning in music is socially constructed, as is language, "through processes in which the musical sounds — just like the sounds of words — become symbols, invested with meanings through the collective actions of people in different cultural contexts" (1995: 142). What a musical performance signifies is dependent on the social and cultural contexts attributed to these sounds. Within the framework of the three festivals studied, music marks the individual as belonging or not belonging to categories of spatially defined identities — such as nation, ethnic group, 'here' or 'there' — as it is a means for participants — whether they be audience members, performers or festival organisers — to
which 45 Previous festival concerts have also featured such cross-cultural work, such as the 1996 festival's concert, Water, showcased a performance of flamenco and kathak dancers accompanied by flamenco guitar and Indian sarod.
46 For example the 1995 concert, Across seas, across centuries explored links between Javanese and north Indian music and dance (www.ozemail.com.au/--dukewalk/ sited 7 April 1997. 152a
Understanding A Hindustani Music Concert
Many of you will have heard Ashok Roy per- modern, being compositions of Allaudin Thus can go for a while, with the musi- fi rm on the sated. Many fyou may not have Khan or Ali Akbar Khan (of whom cians trying to outdo each other with understood the structure of the pieces, and just Ashok Roy is a notable disciple). The their rhythmic patterns. lists is enjoyed the music. However, such a perform- rhythm (tala) is usually tin-Cal (16 beats), thought of as a bit of a gimmick, but ance conforms is a well Alined structure, and an although other calas such as rupak-cal (7 die musicians seem to enjoy it as much understanding of this structure can help expand beats) are also used in the vilambit. (Hari as the audience. your appreciation of the music even more. Prasad's performance involved a rupak -tel vilambit). Some of these other talas can be The Carnatic equivalent is the There are two main classical music systems very interesting, since tin-tai tends to be like Ragam Tanam Pallavi, also consisting in India: Carnatic (south) and Hindustani our 4/4- time whereas rupak-cat is more of three movements, which are, as the (north). both have different approaches to complex (1.2-3, 1.2, 1-2). At the Festival name suggests, the Ragout, Tanam and musical structure. Hindustani instrumental of Asian Music and Dance in 1996, Ashok Pallavi. The ragam and Canon+ are iden- music today is profoundly influenced by the Roy, with Gladwin Charles on tabla, tical to the alap and jhod respectively. Kh yal and Druphad vocal styles. Typically, played a drus with 8'/, beats which is a very The pallavi is the composition with the piece is divided into 3 or 4 movements: complex tal. Only masters like those two percussion (usually inridangasn, but flap, Vtlaehlt, Madhya and Drut. The Mad- are capable of such rhythmic complexity. In sometimes ghatam (clay pot) or thavil, hya movement is often left out, leaving 3 the vilambit and drut, the composition is' also double-headed drum hit with sticks - movements. called the gat (pronounced "gut"), and will very loud). Unlike Hindustani music, span a single rhythmic cycle (16 beats in the the performer does not necessarily The Alap is the section without any per- case of tin-tan. The vilambit starts with the stick to one raga, hut moves through a cussion (tabla), and is further divided into 2 gat repeated several times while the tabla 'garland of ragas'. This means that the or 3 sections. The first is called the slap, comes in with a flourish. It then settles intent of the performance is different: which is slow, exploring the notes of the down to some considered improvisation'bc- instead of exploring the moods and raga, often starting in the lower octave, fore moving into the tans. -These are fast structures of a single raga, the per- gradually working up in pitch and speed. musical phrases that are repeated in various former will be attempting to explore a The way the alap is constructed depends combinations and variations and arrive at the mood or idea by working through a very much on the Gharana (school or tradi- end of the rhythmic cycle (ie, back on to the series of ragas. The rhythm in a Car- tion) as can be seen by comparing Ashok first beat). The musician will move off from natic piece is different as well. This Roy to Ali Akbar Khan (very similar - the gat into a series of tans and then return rhythmic cycles are shorter, meaning same Gharana) or these two to Amjad Ali to the got, often giving the table player a that the composition is usually not Khan (a more lyrical personalised style) or chance to solo. The drus involves a short bound within a single cycle. Some of even Vilayat Khan who en-ploys much gat, and the musician moves quickly into the the most common are Aell talare (8 more of the khaya! vocal style in his play- tans. The ability of a musician to launch into beats - 4,2,2), Rupagam talem (6 heats - ing. This leads into the jhod, the second a series of highly complex and fast tans, and 2,4), Tirupum cerium (7 beats - 3,2,2). section of the Alap. This is more rhytlunic return right onto the first beat is one of the The complexity of the rhythmic struc- (like the drephad style from which it comes) most important and exciting aspects of the ture is a feature of Carnatic music. and in the case of the eared or sitar the music. This and the melodic structure are Although Hindustani music can involve player uses the chikari (drone) strings to the basis of the music, and some musicians highly complex permutations of the bring out this rhythm. To be exact, a pulse are stronger in one area than the other. rhythm, it is within a fairly basic rhyth- is produced by a single strum of the chikari Some musicians, such as the late Nikhil mic structure of something similar to strings, followed by a melodic note. It was 13annerjec (sitar), have that rare quality of our 4/4 time. In Carnatic music, the interesting to see how Hariprasad combining both in equal measure. codified rhythmic structure itself is Chaurasia produced the same effect on highly complex with various combina- the flute. The jhod builds up in tempo and The piece ends with the jhala. The jhala tions of doubling, tripling, and quadru- complexity reaching a climax which finishes is highly rhythmic and involves strumming pling of the rhythm. A feature of a this movement. Some times the performer the chikari strings (in the case of sitar or sc- Carnatic music piece, therefore, is a will end with a short jhala hare, although rod) or that unusual vibrato of the voice in weaving of ragams and talams together this is rare, as it is used to finished the vocal, or a marked rhythmic style of playing to produce a rich and dense piece of whole piece (see later). on the violin or the flute. There is little music. The musicians employ much melody associated with this section, and is more ornamentation in their music as The piece moves into the second move- very much the climax of the piece, ending well, using gamakos. These arc a form ment, the Vilamblt, which includes die with a well established phrase repeated three of vibrato which is quite distinctive, tabla, and is based around a slow composi- times. A common feature in the jhala is the and can be an acquired taste. tion. This is followed by the drus, which is question-answer, where the instrumentalist based on a fast composition. Some of these will play a short passage which is immedi- So as you listen to Ashok Roy today, compositions date back to the time of 'Tan- ately replied to by the tabla, copying the keep these points in mind and try to sen (15th Century), and some are more rhythm and sometimes even the melody. spot the milestones in the piece, as well as the rhythmic cycle.
Figure 6.1 `Understanding a Hindustani music concert,' Morning ragas program 153 engage with ideas about place and who they are or could be in that place. Martin also suggests that:
sounds produced in the context of a musical culture which is alien to us do not — at
least at the level of consciousness — communicate meanings to us in ways which
they do to someone who has been socialised into that culture. Indeed, while we may
find the sounds interesting, or seek to impose some sort of significance on them
(usually on the basis of our prior assumptions), they may nevertheless seem senseless
(144-145).
For Martin, music has certain, fluid meanings that operate within its own originating culture, and outside of this cultural context musical sounds are just that, 'senseless' sound. Although musical meaning is tied into particular and cultural systems of knowledge, as Martin observes, meaning and significance can be imposed on music outside of its originating culture. As in the example of Middle Eastern dance performed by Short Circuit discussed in chapter four, the use and /or appropriation of another's culture, although problematic, illustrates the ways in which these translations and appropriations do produce new and other meanings in a different social and cultural setting. Martin's conceptualisation of discrete musical cultures also hints at the anxieties around the unruly hybrid that is music. The
Festival of Asian Music and Dance is a performative act that explores notions of 'Asian-ness' in an Australian context. However, the presence of an 'Asia' in Australia has historically caused anxieties. Psychoanalytic theory is potentially useful in understanding these anxieties and, in the case of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, the anxieties around
Australian/Asian relations. It offers a means by which to explore the ideologies of an (Anglo)
Australian society, as revealed in and unsettled by the introduction of musical practices of
another, in this case the musical practices of the 'East.' This chapter, then, examines the
tensions inherent in this identity/place/music relationship, the ruptures and fragmentations
arising from the dislocation and challenges to the spatialised identities that come into being 154 and are played out within music festivals produced in transnational times. The chapter begins with an examination of who attends the festival as this will influence the ways in which the event is conceptually framed and promoted.
6.2 Performing 'Asia' in multicultural Australia The Sydney metropolitan area has high proportions of people born overseas in non-English speaking countries (NSW Government white paper 1996: 11). Demographic studies show that those people originating in south-east and north-east Asian countries tend to live in particular local government areas. Significant numbers of south-east Asian born people live in
Blacktown and Fairfield, while north-east Asian numbers are high in Auburn, Ryde, Ku-ring- gai and Bankstown. Those who originated in south-east Asia arrived mainly in the 1970s as refugees and for various reasons (such as a lack of English language skills, low literacy rates, low skill levels) have tended to remain in lower socio-economic groups. In contrast, north- east Asian migration is a later event largely, although not exclusively, associated with the return of Hong Kong to China." These migrants tend to be more skilled, have an excellent proficiency in English and a higher level of education and so tend to be in a higher socio- economic group (Australian Bureau of Statistics cited 7 February 2000). The organisers of the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance hope to encourage members of these ethnic and cultural groups to participate in the festival, and performers are actively sought, approached either directly or through official institutions, such as the Chinese-Australian Institute (Walker interview 1999).
David Walker, the festival's producer, explained that local Asian musicians were happy to
perform traditional repertoires for Western audiences — the 'authentic' music of Anglo-
Australian expectations — as their own communities wanted to hear popular Asian music
genres (1999; refer also to Takahashi interview 1999). His statement implies that the festival
" The events of April-June 1989 at Tianamen Square associated with the pro-democracy movement in China led to many Chinese nationals seeking asylum in Australia. 155 is understood, by the musicians at least — and this is borne out in the objectives behind
AIEM — to be intended for an Anglo-Australian audience, and this is confirmed by the educative pitch of the program notes. John Napier, the current president of AIEM, also spoke of the Anglo-Australian audiences who attended the festival and wondered what attracted such an audience. Festival goers, he explained, attended events chosen on the basis of their perceived authenticity, as well as the abilities particular performers had in reproducing such authenticity (interview 1999). Interviews held with a number of performers also suggest that audiences were seen to be predominantly Anglo-Australian (Xu interview 1999; Takahashi interview 1999), although some cultural groups did show support for performers of the same cultural or ethnic background (Lewis interview 1999).` There was also a class element to the composition of the festival participants, hinted at in the sorts of responses and conversations I had with festival participants." People who attended had a specific interest in Asian musical practice, and were well educated with regards to most of what they heard and saw. Audience members included students and teachers of AIEM, those within the music industry (such as the presenter from Radio National who was there to "plunder talent" as he described it) and well-informed non-practitioners both from within and without the various Asian communities.
The performers' perceptions of who was in the audience corresponded to this (Odamuru interview 1999; Umiumare interview 1999; Xu interview 1999; Napier interview 1999). The assumed audience (and my own observations of the actual audiences appears to bear this out) for this festival is, then, predominantly Anglo-Australian, usually well-educated and with a specific interest in Asian music.
As noted in chapter four, the framework of this type of festival and the assumptions
underlying the composition of its audience can be criticised for the model of multiculturalism
it seems to serve. The festival does not appear to be about inclusivity but rather containment
u It was noted by some performers and festival organisers that the Indian community was particularly supportive of Indian musicians and dancers (Lewis interview 1999; Napier interview 1999)
49 This was data I had not specifically sought to collect. 156 and the subsequent enrichment of Anglo-Australia through a managed Anglo-Celtic appropriation of this diversity (Hage 1998: 120-123). Even so, what is of specific interest to this study are the sorts of spatialised identities that are enacted within this festival. As noted in chapter three, at the Festival of Asian Music and Dance symposium of 1996,5° John Napier suggested that "the extent to which any engagement with another music is either a flight from or a flight to, or both, is a difficult question, to me a troubling challenge. As artists, have we used aspects of Asian arts simply as a way of escaping from Europe? [As] a neo-Orientalist fantasy?" (paper 1996). In this chapter, I will argue that the performances of this festival point to the emergence of other ways of being. The cross-cultural and hybrid forms created within the festival offer opportunities for both finding the self (often through recourse to authentic practices) and remaking or rearticulating the self in these different contexts (through hybrid forms of music practices).
6.3 'We find ourselves again'
As noted, the Festival of Asian Music and Dance promotes both authentic musical practices of Asian countries and cross-cultural collaborative works. The vacillation between authenticity, on the one hand, and cultural exchange and hybrid forms, on the other, is not simply a structure demanded by the festival organisers. Performers participating in this festival also seek to self-consciously place their Asian-ness within an Australian context
through their musical practices. For example, Susan Xu, who specialises in the traditional and
folk dances of China, explained that:
I just want to introduce something, some Chinese traditional dance to Australian
people or even to some Asian people born here, dances they might never see. They
might see them on TV but not live.
5° This symposium was called' the effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity.' 157
So what did it mean to perform at the festival — what does it mean to you to be able
to perform at this Festival of Asian Music and Dance?
Really we were chosen, we did not choose. It's like David51 — I'm not sure who
introduced us to each other. But we loved to do that. We feel we found ourselves
again ( interview 1999).
As Xu suggests in her comments, her performance of traditional Chinese dance in Australia is a way for her to make this genre known beyond its more typical audience. In this way, her performance is framed by a discourse of authenticity, a particular presentation of Asian-ness.
At the same time, there is a deeper significance in her desire to dance. Her response to what it
meant to be a part of the festival illustrates how performing this particular dance repertoire
was a means for her to express her sense of identity within a different ethnic and cultural
context. This section, then, explores the vacillation between this notion of 'we feel we found
ourselves again,' whereby performers articulate a self-conscious notion of Asian-ness, and the
various (cross-cultural, hybrid) ways of being and becoming that performance within a
festival such as this offers.
6.3.1 displacement
As noted in the previous chapter, the "practices of group identity are about manufacturing
cultural and historical belongings which mark out terrains of commonality that delineate the
politics and social dynamics of 'fitting in" " (Fortier 1999: 42). However, as noted in the
introduction to this chapter, for those of Asian backgrounds, such terrains of commonality are
complicated by the history of Asian-Australian relations. How are the practices of group
identity through the construction of 'terrains of commonality' created in such a context? In this
section, I will examine the ways in which the festival offers a space in which a negotiation
between self and place may be acted out, as illustrated by the performance of Satsuki
51 Here Xu refers to the producer of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, David Walker. 158
Odamura (who played the koto) and Yumi Umiumare (a butoh dancer). Odamura and
Umiumare define their collaboration and what it tries to depict in the following way:
Umiumare: I think from my point of view, we are reaching similar kinds of
experiences of the migrant. We both live in Australia, [originally] from Japan, so we
do use some Japanese metaphor or Japanese material, like — Satsuki's obviously
using a Japanese instrument and I'm using a little bit of influence of Japanese dance.
[Our work is] about how we came to Australia, why do we live in Australia and a
similar kind of interest in our home country, what
we feel. So that opens up feelings about nostalgia, or what we're longing for, what
we're feeling, where we belong, that kind of thing. So it kind of metaphorically
becomes a sharing of those sorts of [ideas].
Odamura: And it also — when you're really outside of your country, you can see your
country from a different angle. Different side. You never know when you're in your
country, maybe you couldn't see.
Duffy: So, it's like a critical distance?
Odamura: Yes. And maybe Yumi and I now understand both west and eastern — well,
our culture — so we could see both, you know —
Umiumare: We couldn't see ourselves as Japanese any more, because we moved to
Australia. So we're sort of Australian Japanese or Japanese Australian.
Odamura: Yes.
Umiumare: So we both don't feel Japanese any more. But we don't feel Australian
either. So we're sort of in between. You know that [part of the performance] would be
Australian and that [Asian] — it's complex, you know.
(interview 1999).
In this interview extract, Odamura and Umiumare express the feeling of being between
cultures, which they feel has an advantage in that this status also gives them some insight into
their own cultural background. Yet this insight comes at a price: they do not feel Japanese or 159
Australian, but 'sort of in between'. What Odamura and Umiumare are suggesting is that musical performance is a space in which this dislocation can be productively enacted. This also suggests that, for those who engage with such musical performances, musical practices possess characteristics that are fundamental to expressing this rupture and a re-integration, just as it seems to be fundamental for the remaking/finding of authenticity by Xu. In order to be able to interrogate music performance for these expressive knowledges, cultural geographer Susan Smith urges a reconceptualisation of music, such that we "recognise that ways of hearing are ways of being and becoming" (1999: 6). We can gain some understanding of these other ways of being and becoming in the world "by experiencing music as performance — a performance of power that is creative; that brings spaces, peoples, places
'into form' " (7). This bringing of spaces and people 'into form' may be achieved through the narrative possibilities of music. While music cannot tell stories, it can, as musicologist
Lawrence Kramer (1995) suggests, activate narratographic strategies. Drawing on Jacques
Derrida's logic of supplement, Kramer argues that, as an accompaniment to a narrative, music exposes an "unacknowledged lack that the supplement is needed to counter" (111, 112).
Music adds a depth to the narrative presented because it taps into the bodily responses of the listener; "[ait peak moments, music typically exceeds speech in supplemental force, welling up to suffuse and envelop" (112). Listening and watching Umiumare and Odamura, the audience member may enter the narrative of another's displacement through a series of interpretive moves — which may be consciously or subconsciously felt — that are responses to the relationship between the dancer's body movements and the accompanying music.
Musical performance becomes a means of creating situatedness, of marking out a terrain of
belonging, that acknowledges the rupturing of the self inherent in cultural dislocation and
cross-cultural modes of dwelling. These performative acts attempt to re-situate the subject and
are, consciously or unconsciously, present within the sound structures of the music
performed. For example, the performance described below (refer also to track 6, from the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu CDrom) — of a Butoh-inspired dance created by
Umiumare, accompanied by Odamura on the Japanese stringed instrument the koto — 160 focuses specifically on this state of being 'in-between.' Of significance, and although this performance differs to that of Xu's, who expresses a return to her 'self through authentic practices, the identity of all three performers emerges in a cross-cultural context.
Satsuki Odamura stands over the koto, which has been placed on stage to the audience's right. She strums a few chords, beginning Tadeo Sawai's piece, Sakura. then Yumi Umiumare enters onto the stage from the audience's left. Umiumare does not acknowledge the presence of the audience. She is dressed in a beautiful red brocade gown, wrapped around the length of her body, and her hair is pulled back and up. Umiumare moves very slowly to the centre of the stage, appearing to be drawn by the sounds of the koto. She moves only her feet, the rest of her body held still, pauses, then slowly circles the chair that has been positioned on stage.
With her back to the audience, she holds out the gown, presenting a full view of sleeves and back, and she moves, still in that stately slow manner, to the back of the stage. Wrapping herself once more in the brocade, Umiumare turns to the audience and gives a brief curtsy- like movement, head held to the side. There is no expression on her face, which has been painted white. The koto all this time performing a traditional-like accompaniment.
Umiumare moves back to the chair, again turning away from the audience so as to display her gown. She holds her right hand to the side of her face, then repeats the movement on her left. The koto is then silent as Umiumare removes the gown standing behind so only her face is visible. Odamura plays some sparse, quiet notes — almost echoes— as Umiumare, gown still held up, sits down. Small melodic fragments, repeated over in a more frenzied manner, are played as Umiumare, now seated in a black shift, calmly folds the gown on her knees. She slowly lifts one then the other arm, less fluid in her movements now, and more
doll-like — stiff angular arm movements. She looks out at the audience, then stands, still
holding the gown by one hand, and moves behind the chair. Odamura continues playing
'Alien Moon,' (written by Tony Lewis) — a piece described by the composer as an experience
of "the possibility of seeing something in a different way, thereby making it familiar ... viewed 161 differently, it can become alien" (Pagodas program notes, 1999, unpaginated). This applies so well to the performance we watch.
With the removal of the gown, Umiumare's movements are performed differently, she seems to act out the removal of restrictions. She gets up and moves centre-stage. But now her movements are awkward, less graceful, and we see the body's angular and contorted motions.
She bends, moves in different ways to that of the graceful geisha-like creature she was. The koto's music becomes even more urgent. Umiumare looks over to the gown covering the chair.
Silence.
Umiumare moves towards the gown/chair, then behind it. She bends down so that we can only see her head. Odamura rubs the strings of the koto and Umiumare, panting, pulls out a tape deck from behind the chair. I can hear some in the audience chuckle at this. Lifting her hand high above her head, Umiumare then brings down her forefinger and presses play.
The sound of voices fills the room; Holger Hiller's 'Little Present.' Umiumare again bends down behind the chair, and re-emerges dressed in a slinky gold dress, sunglasses, vibrant pink wig and carrying a leather jacket. She moves towards the audience, then balances on the balustrade of the stairs leading off the stage. She jumps off. A spotlight follows her as she struts and stares, waves and shimmies amongst the audience. Returning to the stairs, she gets onto the balustrade again, imitating a bird's wing movements as the sound of bird song plays on the tape deck. Back on stage, Umiumare lunges and jerks, waving her arms in large circles. Then silence.
She looks down at the stage floor. Odamura draws a bow across the strings of the
koto, and Umiumare responds, arching backwards, raising her arms, then collapsing on her
knees. Odamura begins picking out a melody, one that again seems to be of a more traditional
sound. Umiumare drops the jacket, stumbles and falls, gets up and again arches backward.
Half standing, knees turned in, she covers her body with her hands. She moves away from the
koto, her hand up as though to shield her from its sound, to stand in front of the gown-covered
chair. Her body jerks and she falls again. Slowly standing, she sighs as Odamura plucks the
koto's strings gently. 162
Umiumare moves to the chair, her body jerks, then she lifts the gown slowly. The koto is silent. Then gently plucked as Umiumare seats herself her feet on tiptoes marking out some rhythm of their own. She sits fearfully, staring out. She lifts one arm then another, bringing them down to her sides and gathering up the edges of the gown. She wraps the sleeves one at a time around her. The koto starts tip another melody, and Umiumare listens with one hand held against her cheek. She slowly stands, draping the gown behind her, and steps towards the front of the stage. This time though we see her leg movements, the twisting of her feet, the angular move originating in her knees. Umiumare very slowly lifts the gown, and moving slowly backwards so that we see her face behind the displayed gown, she leaves the stage, the koto accompanying her. The lights dim. Silence. Then the audience bursts into applause and cheers. Umiumare and Odamura receive two curtain calls.
(field notes, April 23 1999).
In the notes accompanying this Pagodas program, the performance by Umiumare and
Odamura was described as:
an interpretation of contemporary Japanese society, which appears to join together
quite seamlessly a tradition steeped in the expected and the known, with the
seemingly random and chaotic unknown of modern technology which constantly
bombards the people of today.
It has been created by two Japanese women artists who have lived in
Australia for some years, and feel themselves to be away from 'home.' At times, from
this distance, they have a strong longing for and nostalgia about Japan, but the more
they experience here, the more they have come to understand the contradictions of
their home country. As in Tony Lewis' notes on 'Alien Moon,' they experience the
'possibility of seeing something in a different way, thereby making it familiar ...
viewed differently, it can become alien' (program notes, 1999 unpaginated). 163
In the performance this collision of tradition and modernity is represented through Umiumare, who first wears a kimono as she moves in response to Odamura's playing of koto music, then through Umiumare's transformation into black dress, pink wig, jacket and sunglasses and her use of contemporary music. With this change, we watched and heard the actions and sounds of tradition, but radically altered. As the quote by Tony Lewis (above) suggested, we saw something in a different way so that it became something else: both familiar and alien.
Through these program notes, the audience was already primed to hear this performance as a comment on the social and cultural disparities in contemporary Japan. We, the audience,
'knew' that the performance was to be about alienation and nostalgia, the pull of traditional lifestyles and values in the face of modern life and the loss felt by leaving your home country.
Yet, it is the performance rather than these words that do the work of conveying this as a felt experience. The sonic landscape in which these emotions were enacted by the dancer and musician is, as Susan Smith states, "the medium through which social life is made and can be known" (forthcoming: 4). Further to this, as geographer Nigel Thrift proposes, performance is concerned with "constantly unstable space, spaces of possibility, 'as-if spaces" (2000: 234).
The performance by Umiumare and Odamura constitutes a spatialised identity similar in kind to that uncovered in the example of the Abruzzese choir, Capella Ars Musicalis, examined in chapter four. The specific location in which the Japanese narrative takes place was not defined, however the framework of the festival as well as the program notes situates it within a narrative of migrancy, a narrative of movement from 'here' to 'there,' Japan to Australia, traditional to contemporary woman. Furthermore, this performance constitutes the 'what-if' space, for as suggested by Umiumare and Odamura, this narrative does not express a complete journey, "we're sort of in between" (interview 1999). Reiterating the musical forms
of their cultural origins within a new context, Umiumare and Odamura transform and are
transformed by the experience. The reiteration of the cultural performative — the marking of
(ethnic) identity through musical practice — within the framework of the festival repeats, as
Giles Deleuze offers, the unrepeatable; "[t]he powers of repetition include displacement and
disguise, just as difference includes power of divergence and decentring" (1997: 288). 164
Repeating musical performances — which are also, in the festival framework, cultural performatives — activates and sets in circulation certain knowledges around the displaced performing self and its insertion into a different cultural terrain, that of contemporary
Australia. Furthermore, these cultural quotations are also, to varying degrees, evocative of aural images of difference, of the exotic, specifically the exotic East. The sonic landscape of the festival is such that the performers are asked to become representative of an ethnic/cultural group even as they enact their difference and displacement.
6.3.2 Musical dialogue
As proposed above, music activates narratographic strategies which adds another layer of meaning to performance. Moreover, the performers draw on a sense of place — of both a
'here and now' and a 'what was' — and a series of musical practices to articulate their relationship to their place/s and identity/ies. This dialogue between cultures, between identities and places, is perhaps more evident in those performances that do not seem to fit so well into the festival framework or that have an almost abrasive quality in terms of a musical coherence, and an example of such a performance will be discussed shortly. However, by indicating that there is a dialogue occurring within musical performance, it may seem I am suggesting that music is a language. I do not believe that it is, however I do think music is
language-like. Music differs from language but both have elements in common in what
musicologist Lawrence Kramer calls the communicative economy (1995: 17). Music
communicates, as ethnomusicologist Louise Meintjes (1990) argues, affectively; it arouses
feeling and emotion through which the listener interprets.
A review written by the Sydney Morning Herald's dance critic, Jill Sykes, noted that the 1999
Festival of Asian Music and Dance presented two cultural crossovers and these examples
illustrated how such collaboration can be difficult. The first was the performance of Holmes
and Singh, which I will return to in a later section. The second was a purely musical 165 improvised collaboration between Sabahattin Akdagcik, a singer and performer of a Turkish instrument, the long-necked lute called the baglama, and Dang Lan, who specialises in two
Vietnamese stringed instruments, the Vietnamese zither, the dan thran and the monochord, the dan bao. Sykes pointed to the problems the two musicians had with the tuning of their instruments as well as the balance of sound between them on stage (1999: 11). This performance illustrates yet another way into thinking about dialogue within an entirely musical process that demonstrates interactions between spatialised identities — both performers embody their own social and cultural articulations of identity and place but within the performance, articulate other emerging spatialised identities (refer to track 2 the Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu, CDrom).
The first work presented by Akdagcik and Lan involved the baglama and the dan bao.
The two performers were introduced from the booth and, once on stage, Lan thanked the
audience for giving her the opportunity to present Vietnamese music. She went on to explain
that the piece she was to play was of a musical structure characteristic to South Vietnam. For
those who had read the program notes, the technique of performing on the dan bao had been
outlined in some detail:
'At the very moment when the string is plucked by the artist's hand holding a quill,
the lower part of the palm of the same hand slightly touches a chosen knot on the
string to produce the sound. The left hand adjusts the tension of the string with a
lever to make the typically Vietnamese sound' ' (program notes Across seas 1999
Festival of Asian Music and Dance).
The timbre of the dan bao is eerie with the pitch bent around by altering the string, its sound
alien-like and resembling those electronic sounds often generated for the soundtracks of sci-fi
bao performed by Dan Lang, recorded at the 1997 sz The CD entitled East released by AIEM contains 'Lullaby', a track of the dan Festival of Asian Music and Dance. This was the composition performed at the 1999 festival as a duet. The liner notes describes the technique in a somewhat abridged manner, stating that "one of the most unusual instruments ever invented, the Dan Bao has a single string which is plucked with a chopstick and the pitch varied with a leer which the string is attached" (various (1999) East AIEM 001). The notion of east and eastern music signified in the object of the chopstick! 166 movies (Refer also to track 3, the Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu, CDrom). After
Lan finishes, Akdagcik then introduces his instrument, noting that it is part of a wider family of similar instruments with versions present in Arabic countries, Armenia, amongst the Kurds and even Greece. He then wryly tells the audience 'I will try and accompany Lan'.
Lan begins, at first alone, then with Akdagcik very quietly strumming three or four notes. Akdagcik builds onto this strumming, creating a rhythmic support for Lan. Unlike the
East recording, in which Lan suggests in her playing that the dan bao has a much freer rhythmic line, the addition of the baglama provides a regular pulse that almost constrains this sense of ease. Yet Lan's playing is not hindered as she appears to ignore what Akdagcik is doing, making no attempt at eye contact nor does she seem to listen out for the aural cues in his accompaniment. Akdagcik builds on the few notes he has picked out and tries to reinforce
Lan's melody, but this appears to be difficult given the amount of bending of pitches played on the dan bao. The collaboration is not overly successful, and not just because of the different ways the two instruments are pitched and make sound. This aesthetic 'failure' is also the result of the different approaches of the two musicians. Lan is trained to perform a solo instrument and this shows in her focus on her own instrument during the performance.
Akdagcik on the other hand has performed with others as well as accompanying himself while singing, so is more flexible in his music making. This problem aside, the performance does
almost work as an interchange of two quite different soundscapes.
Akdagcik and Lan followed this with a more musically coherent piece in which the
dialogue between the two was made more explicitly (refer to track 4 the Festival of Asian
Music and Dance menu, CDrom). This more successful collaboration was an improvisatory
piece using baglama and the dan thran, a sixteen-stringed zither. It again begins with Lan,
who languidly strums an arpeggio, following it with a simple melodic phrase plucked out on
the strings. Akdagcik repeats this phrase. Lan responds with a phrase that varies the pitch of
the first phrase, and this is again taken up by Akdagcik, this time Akdagcik adding his own
melismatic decoration to the penultimate note of the phrase. This dialogic process continues,
often with Lan extending the phrase through the use of an arpeggio so that it overlaps with 167 that Akdagcik's. A slow arpeggio is played on the dan thran then the baglama takes up the lead. Akdagcik picks out the notes of the arpeggio-like figure used by Lan, pauses, then repeats this motif at a much quicker tempo. The dan thran joins in, emphasising the new section's pulse by repeatedly plucking out two-note groupings. Akdagcik plays a melody with characteristic Turkish melodic embellishments over this pulse. The piece ends with a section in which the dan thran returns as the main focus, its music accompanied by the strumming of a much slower rhythmic pulse on the baglama. As with the earlier duet, this, too, did not quite
work together. At times the rhythmic pulse was lost, particularly when a performer altered the
pulse by a tempo rubato-like action. However, what this piece did accomplish was to create a
structure in which both were able to give musical support to the other. As well, both musical
traditions, the two different voices of the collaboration, remained distinct.
(field notes, April 24 1999).
In this field note, I describe the interaction between the two performers as dialogic, but I
would like to clarify this. There is within the structuring of this improvisation a sense that one
performer makes a musical statement which is then echoed in some way by the other's reply.
You can hear it within the music and you can see it in the visual clues that Lan and Akdagcik
give one another. Although operating within the plane of music — the key, rhythm,
articulation, tempi of the piece that gives it a sense of coherence — each performer embodies
both their own social and cultural position and their relationship with other social and cultural
positions. That is, both musicians use the musical codes of their separate cultural backgrounds
as a means to contribute to the musical dialogue. Their performance expresses this
positioning, not through language, because there is no direct meaning that can be ascribed to
these sounds, but through utterance, a concept that I was prompted to consider after reading
the work of psychoanalyst Julie Kristeva and again after reading an essay on this subject by
the musicologist Kevin Korsyn. 168
6.3.3 utterance
In Revolution in poetic language (1984), Kristeva examines the process of signification in the wake of changes to literary representation brought about by nineteenth-century avant garde writers. She argues that these linguistic changes also created changes in the status of the subject, that is, in the relationships the subject has to the body, to others and to other objects
(1997: 29). The subject speaks and creates texts that signify the positionality he or she has with the world. This speaking subject is a split self, divided between its physiological processes and the constraints imposed by societal rules and law. For Kristeva, the text is the mechanism through which the subject creates him/herself. She defines the text as a trans- linguistic device that brings together communicative speech and pre-linguistic drives, a process that parallels the selfs split. The positioning of the subject is intertextual as numerous texts are used and reused by the subject in order to situate itself within the social world. As the musicologist Kevin Korsyn points out, Kristeva proposed that "any text is constructed as a
mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. In the space of
a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts intersect and neutralise one another"
(1999: 56). Korsyn remarks that, unlike the sentence, utterances cannot exist as isolated units,
they "always have a history, addressing the 'already-spoken-about' and the 'not-yet-spoken-
about" (57). However, Kristeva argues that transposition, rather than intertextuality, is a
more specific term to use as it designates:
the passage from one signifying system to another [that] demands a new articulation
of the thetic — of enunciative and denotative positionality ... one then understands
that its 'place' of enunciation and its denoted 'object' are never single, complete, and
identical to themselves, but always plural, shattered, capable of being tabulated. In 169
this way polysemy can also be seen as the result of a semiotic polyvalence — an
adherence to different sign systems (1997: 48).
The subject is created then out of the transposition of numerous signifying systems. Art, and in Kristeva's analysis this is exemplified by poetry, is "the process that exceeds the subject and his communicative structures" (30). Kristeva argues that the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic is disturbed in modern poetry because modern poetry transgresses the laws of the symbolic by transgressing the rules of grammar; modern poetry violates both the positing of the object (denotation) and the positing of the enunciating subject (meaning).
Within modern poetry's structure, the semiotic drives are made to signify within the thetic, the place where the energies of the both semiotic and symbolic are harnessed and unified.
Kristeva argues that "the very practice of art necessitates reinvesting the maternal chora53 so that it transgresses the symbolic order ... no text, no matter how 'musicalised', is devoid of meaning or signification; on the contrary, musicalisation pluralises meaning" (52). The non- verbal, presymbolic semiotic states of being are communicated through such transgressive art practices. These utterances are presymbolic, and the poetic word, "polyvalent and multi- determined, adheres to a logic exceeding that of a codified discourse and fully comes into being only in the margins of recognised culture" (1981: 65). It is within those spaces of cultural practice that the unconscious, libidinal desires may find some expression, and it is within these spaces in which fluid and complex meanings are generated.
53 The semiotic chora is part of the signifying practice, yet it is a series of energies and drives that arise prior to the regulating functions of the symbolic. The semiotic chora (from Plato's usage meaning space, land or area) is defined by Kristeva as "a modality of signiflance in which the linguistic sign is not yet articulated as the absence of an object and as the distinction between real and symbolic ... it preceded and underlies figuration and thus specularisation, and is analogous only to vocal and kinetic rhythm" (1997: 36). Kristeva argues that the semiotic chora cannot signify of itself, but is influenced and ordered by natural and socio-historical constraints, such as biological difference and family structure. The semiotic is a necessary precondition for the symbolic but this "is only a theoretical supposition justified by the need of description. It exists in practice only within the symbolic and requires the symbolic break to obtain the complex articulation we associate with it in musical and poetic practices" (54 italics in original). 170
This psychoanalytic reading of artistic practice has parallels with Giles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari's concept of the refrain, discussed earlier in chapter four. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that rhythm is present whenever there is a movement from one milieu, or, codified space to another. These transpositions between milieus are expressed through a rhythmic
response, a tying together of "critical moments .... Action occurs in a milieu, whereas rhythm
is located between milieus, or between two intermilieus, on the fence, between night and day,
at dusk, twilight or Zwelicht, Haecceity" (1987: 313-314). The movement between milieus is
similar to the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic in that both Kristeva's
semiotic and Deleuze and Guattari's rhythm correspond to a vocalisation that is not yet
symbolic. Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari describe a transposition of a relationship(s) that
attempts to break into or transgress codified space in such a way that this space is reinscribed
with utterances outside that of the symbolic law of that codified space. For Deleuze and
Guattari, this re-marking of space is a process of territorialisation, where "territorialisation is
an act of rhythm that has become expressive" (315). The expressive qualities of rhythm mark
out the subject, creating spatialised identities for this subject, "not in the sense that these
qualities belong to a subject, but in the sense that they delineate a territory that will belong to
the subject that carries or produces them" (316). Territorialisation and subsequent acts of
reterritorialisation and deterritorialisation are the struggles between the 'already-spoken about'
and the 'not-yet-spoken-about', of Kristeva's speaking subject.
In the music festival, the performance of and engagement with music enables participants to
be a part of an active articulation of the self and its identity, one that expresses the multiple
and overlapping positions of the subject because of the plurality of meaning that arises as the
performance occurs. The utterances of self and desire, the 'not-yet-spoken-about' of Kristeva's
semiotic, are given expression through music performance, as it is within this performance
space that the self can situate and inhabit various subject positions: the Japanese national who
feels an affinity with classical Burmese music, the dancer trained in both western ballet and
the Indian musician who performs jazz and in the duet of Vietnamese and Indian kathak, 171
Turkish music. For many participants this attraction and appropriation of sounds gives expression to who they believe themselves to be. Festival performer and Japanese national
Yuri Takahashi explained it this way: "when I listen to Burmese music, I just thought ah!
That's the sort of style I wanted to listen to and if possible perform" (interview 1999). John
Napier, president of the Australian Institute of Eastern Music and himself a musician, was more explicit, stating that he feels that Asian music is a major part of his core identity.
"Should I abandon playing Bach before I give up my efforts to play music influenced by
India? Can we un-hear or ignore what we have heard? Are we to impose on ourselves what
Thérèse Radic has called a censorship of the imagination?" (paper 1996). The power of music
to challenge accepted expressions of identity and vocalise other forms is in what Kristeva
terms a 'musicalisation'; music opens up possibilities because its meaning is multiple and
ambiguous. These processes are the 'we find ourselves again', the potentialities of who we are
and could be fashioned from the juxtapositions of identity/ies that are enacted through
musical performance. The following section develops the contradictions and complexities of
this transnationally constituted event through an interrogation of the cross-cultural
performance presented by dancer Kate Holmes, a contemporary ballet dancer of Anglo-
Australian identity, and singer Sukhbir Singh, English-born, but who studied music in Delhi
before eventually migrating to Australia.
6.4 Kathak incursions
The audience of about sixty, mostly Indian and Anglo in appearance, moved into the
hall. Many seemed to know each other, greeting friends and introducing others, and the
sound of talking and laughter gives a cheerful, sociable atmosphere. As the lights dim, the
audience quietens. Kate Holmes and Sukhbir Singh are introduced. They will present three
kathak form collaborative works, a fusion of "contemporary Western dance drawing on the
with Indian vocal for inspiration" — as we are informed by the evening's program notes (Sun
& Moon program notes, unpaginated). I watch them through the lens of my video recorder as 172 both wait patiently while stagehands attach Sukhbir's microphone and sweep the floor to protect Kate's feet. The stage is bare, apart from the festival's banner of a dancing figure,
flanked by two red and gold saris and Sukhbir's harmonium placed to the side. A single
spotlight shines down on the two performers. Both wear traditional costume. A voice from the
sound booth tells us what we are about to see and hear. The description of their third work,
inspired by the jazz musician Leo Thomas, catches my interest, but it is during their second
piece that I become intrigued with what they are doing. Sukhbir sings a song in the Punjabi tradition, setting to music his own father's lyrics.
We had been told the meaning of these words by the voice from the booth: the singer talks to
God about this world, talking of rest, of shelter, food, of the rich and the poor, and how this
God is something to rest against, something in which to have faith and trust. And then I watch
as Kate, an Anglo-Australian trained in both western ballet and the north Indian dance form
moves to these words sung by Sukhbir, a musician born in England, who studied of kathak, tabla in Delhi, then harmonium and voice on returning to England before eventually
migrating to Australia. Both stand side by side, facing the audience, their arms held loosely at their sides. A
a stringed instrument used to fill space with musical sound, wends recording of the tampura, its way around the stage. Sukhbir begins to sing, a gentle, almost lilting melody, his repeated
phrases decorated with melismatic turns. Both remain standing quietly. After the repetition of
the opening phrase, they both sway gently, then lightly tap the rhythm with their right hands
onto their sides. Now softly clapping the rhythm, right hand onto left, they mark the end of the
bar's four beats with a small swoop of the right hand down to the ground with their palms up.
Sukhbir maintains this movement throughout, yet for Kate this hand gesture becomes the
or hand movements, beginning with one that suggests she places food basis of other mudra from her hand into her mouth. Still standing in place, she brings both arms down, presenting
herself to the audience, then lifts her hands, holding them to her temples before following
through with a gesture to the space around her. Clasped hands held to her head then heart,
Kate then rejoins Sukhbir as he repeats the opening phrase, now functioning as a refrain, 173 with both marking the song's four beats, right hands onto left. Sukhbir extends the melodic line, the husky texture of his voice embellishing the sound, and Kate again moves out of her rhythmic clapping, her hands now held together and conjuring the movement of, perhaps, water trickling then flowing. Starting small, this gesture is extended until her whole body is engaged in the fluid motion. Kate moves forward and pivots slowly, once more clapping along with Sukhbir. She holds still for a moment, pivots slowly, then returns to stand beside Sukhbir, still marking the rhythm with her hands, before her final dance sequence, one that is more in
more traditionally earthy qualities. As Sukhbir hums the melody, Kate keeping with kathak's brings out the beat more forcefully, firmly clapping her hands and then rhythmically stamping a whirling motion that her feet. Sukhbir repeats the refrain. She follows with the chakkar, fraction of time after each whirl but is still contained within the song's rhythmic_ stops for a sequence. She slows down to stand beside Sukhbir. He pauses slightly as he repeats his
nish, their hands brought down gently to their sides, both looking opening phrase and they fi at the audience. (Refer also to track 5, Festival of Asian Music and Dance menu, CDrom) (field notes, April 22 1999)
Sun and Moon, of the 1999 This performance was a component of the opening concert, Festival of Asian Music and Dance. Within this performance, a series of relationships is
played out. There is the obvious overlapping of various traditions as embodied in the two
performers — one, male, vocalist, of Indian ethnicity and performing in the Punjabi"
tradition, the other female, dancer of Anglo-Australian identity and performing in the North
Indian classical style — and their contextualisation within the framework of this festival. A
close reading of this particular performance is a means of further interrogating the diverse
ways in which space and identity are articulated through musical performance and in
particular in a transnational context.
54 The north west region of India, in an area along the border with Pakistan. 174
Holmes and Singh had been very carefully promoted, both in the program notes and in the of the introduction given on the evening, as presenting a performance that has elements kathak tradition, rather than as an exhibition of such a traditional practice. The festival format nonetheless meant that all performers were presented within an ethnographic discourse. Quite detailed musical and cultural traditions were explained, both within the program as well as in the voice-over introductions, so as to educate and inform the audience. The function of this presentation avoids what might otherwise be meaningless noise, as Paul Martin (1995)
(quoted earlier), suggested, music performed outside of its social and cultural context could be. This ethnographic discourse is aimed at an audience assumed by the festival organisers — and performers — to be of a particular distribution and with particular desires with regards to
what they have come to see performed. And it is this discourse which very carefully frames
and contextualises the performance program prepared by Holmes and Singh. Audience
members were led into an understanding of this particular performance through the tradition information presented at the event. For example, we were informed that the kathak
has throughout its history been open to other cultural influences, maintaining a flexibility so
that the fundamental structures of the dance form are not lost or diffused. The program notes
also explain that this north Indian dance was itself "the fusion of indigenous Indian music,
and the performance that evening was to take "this Persian and Central Asian influencesi55 form with fusion one step further with contemporary [western] dance drawing on the kathak
program 1999 unpaginated). Informing the concert Indian vocal for inspiration" (Sun & Moon
audience of this tradition in the program notes serves to place this performance, one that
kathak's lineage of might otherwise be misunderstood as somewhat un-kathak-like, within
tradition. Thus, this performance is presented as complying with an authentic practice. Yet the
audience, primarily Indian but also including non-Indians, as well as dance critics for the
various Sydney metropolitan newspapers, seemed reluctant to accept this presentation.
originated in Hindu temples, where professional storytellers recounted and interpreted tales from Hindu mythology. 55 Kathak practice was introduced into the Muslim courts. This cultural intermingling During the Mughal period (1526-1857) the kathak produced a dance technique that required fast turns, complicated footwork and an intricate rhythmic language
(www.dancemuse.com/dance.htm sited 10.3.2000). 175
dance critic, A review of the performance described above by the Sydney Morning Herald's
Jill Sykes, illustrates this point. Sykes wrote:
Two cultural crossovers" illustrated the difficulties of such ventures. Kate Holmes
has taken on India's kathak dance with technically accomplished enthusiasm, but its robust earthiness is lost to the buoyant ballet skills in which she was originally
trained, making the attempted fusion look fussy and leaching the vigour of both styles
— despite her precision and commitment (1999: 11).
Sykes' criticism was that the dance's power and passion, be that Indian or western, had been diminished. In her view, this attempt to combine elements of two different cultural traditions had not been successful. What is striking is that Sukhbir Sing was rendered silent in Sykes review. He performed a song with lyrics written by his father, that he then set to music. The song, like the dance by Holmes, was in a particular Indian tradition, but this was not questioned let alone acknowledged. Nor was his rendering of a jazz song in English. In fact in
this review, Singh is not even mentioned as being present. Sykes may not be expected to talk
about Singh's music as she is primarily a dance critic but this did not prevent her from
commenting in this same review on other musicians performing at the festival. It is as if
Singh's bodily authenticity — he is Indian — confers an untroubled and unquestioned cultural
authenticity upon his musical performances. Even though he performs a song from the jazz
repertoire, this does not unsettle the Asian-ness of the festival because his identity is
understood as essentially Asian. His performance suggests a channelling of some 'pure'
cultural and/or ethnic set of traits, and so he becomes the Indian background to which the
dance is performed. Singh becomes invisible/silent because he is 'India.' Anxieties around
cultural authenticity demonstrated in this review of the performance point to deeper
psychological anxieties about identity and the coherence of that identity. Holmes is the
The second performance Sykes reviewed, of Dang Lan and Sabahattin Akdagcik, discussed earlier in this chapter. 36 176 unforgiven transgressive element because she represents, through her white body, the danger of the hybrid to a pure and uncompromised idea of Australian and Indian national identity. 177
6.4.1 hybrid encounters
Jill Sykes has often expressed her support of cross-cultural collaborations in the media, and in her discussions and reviews of such work is particularly favourable of the influences Asian musical practices have already had in Australia. She believes that Asian influences have been intertwined in Australian culture in a "quiet, organic kind of way" to such an extent that it is difficult to separate out so-called Asian components (paper 1996). Perhaps in an aesthetic formalistic sense, Holmes and Singh did not live up to expectations. Perhaps the performance was not as polished as it might have been, lacking the feeling that, in performing the music and dance, the performers transcend who they are and 'become' the performance. Yet it is in the uneven-ness and roughness of the performance that underlying tensions and expressive performative narratives may be discerned, as I will now demonstrate.
Holmes and Singh presented, and were presented as, performing a cultural hybridity, a form
of ambivalence, played out in what could be termed a liminal space, the space between. As
the cultural theoretician Homi Bhabha (1994) argues in the context of colonial encounter, the
encounter itself creates a 'third space', a place arising out of a need to communicate across
cultural divisions. This idea is developed further by cultural theorist Paul Carter (1992).
Carter conceptualises sound as a means of fixing ourselves to place while in a state of moving
through spaces. Carter proposes that it is the space in which (audible) interaction between
cultures occurs that enables a connection to that place. This performance of meeting creates
an 'authentic' experience that then gets (re)translated into discourse as we contextualise our
place and our identity. In the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, 'Asian' identity is
retranslated and recontextualised. Further to this, musicologist Louise Meintjes (1990) argues
that projects of musical collaboration can be understood as a complex polysemic sign that
become representative of social collaboration through a series of interpretive moves on the
She argues that collaboration operates first, in the ways in which musical part of the listener. styles, composition, production and promotion are intertwined and, second, in how this 178 musical product is heard by the listeners/interpreters, themselves positioned within their own sociopolitical and cultural experiences. These multiple positions, from which the music is both created and heard, means that the music is ambiguous in its meaning. Drawing on the work of Jennifer Giles and John Shepherd, Meintjes writes that:
[t]he political is not merely an adjunct to the sound but embedded in it through
strings of connected signs. The embeddedness of the political in the sonic means that
the political becomes entangled in and communicated through affective experience.
This capacity of music to communicate through affect, to communicate feelingly and
intuitively, is a source of its potency (1990: 38).
The sounds of the different cultural groups within the Festival of Asian Music and Dance are strings of connected signs that point to the cultural practices of both western and eastern cultures in collision and exchange. Meaning in music, with all its ambiguities, arises from its position within a web of connections: cultural, social, ethnic, political, and economic. Music situates the listener, and in a festival such as this, where the focus is on Asian musical
practices, it is the ways in which the listener (and here the performer, too, is included as a
listener) is positioned that unsettles and asserts notions of 'Asian' and 'Australian' and various
hybrid identities within place.
Listening to discussions between audience members, reading reviews of the performance, as
well as talking to the festival's producer, David Walker, the hesitancy surrounding the
performance of Holmes and Singh appears to be focused around issues of authenticity, and
more specifically around the body of Kate Holmes. In the following section, the hesitancy that
arises when people are faced with certain forms of perceived inauthenticity will be explored.
The example of Holmes and Singh and the censures that operate, in this case at least, around
the constitution of an identity is then examined in light of the performing body as a site for
conferring an authentic identity. 179
6.4.2 transgressing boundaries
As noted earlier in this chapter, many involved with the festival (as either organisers or performers) characterised the audience as predominantly well educated, middle class and
Anglo-Australian with a specific interest in Asian music. Certain other ethnic and cultural groups were expected to attend in support of the cultures programmed into the festival event, and this expectation held when Indian performers were presented and there was a significant
Indian turn out. For example, Yuri Takahashi, a Japanese national who performs Burmese classical song and dance, was asked to describe the audience attending the festival. She replied:
When we performed it was a combined program of Burmese and Japanese groups, but
I hardly saw a Japanese or Burmese person in the audience. But David told me that he
didn't think that many Japanese or Burmese people would come. He was right. So this
festival is mainly for music lovers, cultural scholars, researchers — those who are
interested in different cultures. Not ordinary people (interview 1999).
A number of performers gave similar responses. They seemed reluctant in general to describe
their audience as white Australian, instead noting that the Asian communities to which they
belonged, or a significant number from any Asian community, were not evident in the
audience. The difference in the perceptions and characterisations of the audience by both
performers and organisers is most likely a reflection of the strength and cultural traditions of
these different Asian communities within Australia, and their support for events such as the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance. Takahashi explained that the act of performing within
Burmese community is:
a little bit closed. Performing outside the Burmese community — it was very unusual
to perform in public... and particularly our selection for the program is focussed on 180
introducing real classical music in the strictest sense. Even in Burmese communities,
it's very, very unusual to perform these programs because the modern audiences are
more interested in the modern, popular music from Burma. [They are] not so
interested in such old songs! (interview 1999).
I did not collect data that would provide information about cultural and ethnic groups and the influence of factors such as socio-economic and education backgrounds had on arts support, I can only speculate that, in contrast to the Burmese, those larger Asian communities such as the Indian community which has a well-established local network, appear to be more aware and supportive of these festival performances. This was demonstrated by the visible assistance of the Indian community in the running of this festival, as well as their strong attendance of events.
As noted above, Takahashi, a Japanese national, performs a repertoire of Burmese song and
dance. Interestingly, this crossing of essentialised nationally-defined musical borders did not
receive the criticism that the performances presented by Singh and particularly Holmes
received. Walker noted that both Indian and western audiences had criticised Holmes's dance
performances in past festivals because they were not seen as authentic. Holmes was seen as
(interview 1999). Poor acceptance of non- primarily a western dancer who had learnt kathak
Indian performers who work within Indian traditions is not isolated to the reception of
Holmes' performance at this festival. Leela Venkataraman, a freelance journalist and dance
critic based in India, has studied the difficulties faced by dancers from Europe who train and
work in India. She states that for many Indians "the synthesised identity of dance comprising
philosophy, music, literature, sculpture and mythology was considered too culture-specific to
be fully absorbed by any but those born and reared in [India's] exclusive soil" (1994: 82). This
conceptualisation of the identity/place/music relationship is a bounded and essentialist one,
drawing on nationalist notions of the constitution of identity. In the context of the Festival of
Asian Music and Dance a slightly different process occurs. The expectations of the audience 181
(Anglo and Indian) — expectations that are encouraged by the festival organisers through the provision of detailed, ethnographic program notes — are that what is performed will adhere to an 'authentic' musical and cultural practice. The measure of this authenticity focuses on the ethnically identified body, as the body and its movements to music become signifiers of an ethnic identity. Holmes is a white dancer and her 'inauthenticity' in relation to expectations of
dance becomes a signifier of a wider cultural the correct body to perform kathak inauthenticity. Her bodily relationship to the kathak tradition irretrievably disturbs the ways in which her performance is received.
6.4.3 hearing awry
In this section, I wish to explore what lies behind the critiques and formalist understandings of these Asian performances, particularly that of Holmes and Singh, so that what is being
constituted in such performances may be more clearly developed. Earlier in this chapter I
drew on Kristeva's concept of the semiotic in order to provide a means for conceptualising
music performance as an intertextual device through which the self can enunciate identity and
desire. The self can inhabit various subject positions, and the function of the performance
space is, paraphrasing musicologist Terry Threadgold (1999), the stuff of theatre and
theatricality/performativity. But, as the criticism of Holmes demonstrates, these subject
positions are regulated. I propose that this surveillance of the performance space operates
through desire. Slavoj Zizek (1997), in his reading of popular culture through the
psychoanalytic work of Jacques Lacan, suggests that our comprehension of reality is filtered
through desire. Using a dialogue between the Queen and Bushy the King's servant from
to illustrate the complications introduced by our desires and Shakespeare's Richard II
anxieties, Zizek argues that the object of our desire is, paradoxically, only clear and
distinctive if we perceive it awry, "with an 'interested' view, supported, permeated and
'distorted' by desire." He continues: 182
[t]his describes perfectly the objet petit a, the object-cause of desire: an object that is, perceived in a in a way, posited by desire itself ....the object a is always, by definition,
distorted way, because outside this distortion, "in itself', it does not exist, since it is
nothing but the embodiment, the materialization of this very distortion, of this surplus
of confusion and perturbation introduced by desire into so-called "objective reality"
(12; italics in original).
Desire distorts our perceptions, even as it seems to clarify what it is we visualise. But, rather than following Zizek's suggestion to look awry at this performance, which as the responses to this performance have demonstrated bring into view the 'inauthenticity' of the body performing, it may be more useful to focus on 'hearing awry.' By this, I mean listening to the ways in which spatialised identities are distorted by desire. The performance of Holmes and
Singh was presented and understood within narratives of authentic musical practices, both
Indian (kathak and the Punjabi song tradition) and western (ballet and jazz), and the
relationship the performers have to these traditions. The reviews of these performances
suggest that there is an expectation that some sort of vigorous new performance style,
resulting from a fusion between these different cultural practices, will emerge. The
performance is also expected to conform to certain strictures delineated by the techniques and
styles of dance and music. However, as the critiques and discussions around this performance
suggest, there are contradictory desires circulating within the festival about (inter)national
identity and its (re)articulation of a national imaginary through cultural practices.
The festival producer proposed to Holmes a strategy to lessen the criticism directed towards
her, and in his concern for her apparent disruption of borders, lies the dilemma of the 'white'
body in a multicultural framework. In chapter four, I drew the conclusion that the
performances of groups such as Short Circuit in the Brunswick Music Festival were a
reworking of music, and so identity, to express a localised identity, in the case of this festival,
that of 'Multicultural Moreland.' In contrast, participants of the Festival of Asian Music and 183
Dance perceive Holmes's dance as disturbing the reiteration of an authentic 'other' identity.
This criticism of her performance points to anxieties around the national imaginary in the context of a multicultural nation like Australia. Ghassan Hage argues that multiculturalism and its promotion of tolerance are strategies aimed at reproducing and disguising relationships of white power. They are a "form of symbolic violence in which a mode of domination is presented as a form of egalitarianism" (1998: 87). Furthermore, multiculturalism operates within a fantasy space in which the "White fantasy of the multicultural collection are imagined as dead cultures that cannot have a life of their own except through the 'peaceful coexistence' that regulates the collection" (163). Australia's re-orientation towards Asia, Hage argues, is shaped by this discourse of multiculturalism such that the Australian nation is an international body constituted through a non-European identity (145). The danger of the hybrid, and in this example the hybrid is the performance of Indian dance by Anglo-
Australian Holmes, is the loss of clearly demarcated identities, that is, the failure of an
authentic identity (Ahmed 1999: 97). Holmes's dance can be understood as a rupturing of the
delineation between an Asian body that signifies certain contained ethnically-defined
identities, accommodated within a framework of multiculturalism managed by the apparently
non-ethnic Anglo-Australian. What the anxieties around Holmes's dance points to is the
concern for an Australian national identity if clear demarcations are not maintained.
Interestingly, the festival producer suggested that Holmes present herself as a white,
contemporary dancer who incorporates elements of kathak in her repertoire (Walker interview
1999). Within the context of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance, Holmes appears to be
more accepted when she positions herself, not as an authentic practitioner of kathak, which
implies an embodiment of a physicality and spirituality intimately connected to India, but
through her own whiteness. Holmes presents herself as an Anglo-Australian dancer who uses
elements of another culture to expand her own cultural tradition. That is, she can appropriate
and create hybrid dance forms but cannot do the same with her own cultural identity. 184
As demonstrated in these responses to Kate Holmes, the performance of other subject
positions can unsettle assumptions about a discrete and authentic identity that are based in
notions of embodiment and the performative acts the expression of such identity. In her study
of women's music, anthropologist Stacy Holman Jones draws on the work of Judith Butler
and Elizabeth Bell to argue that "those who do not perform genders correctly can create
performances that challenge socially constructed systems of meaning by making the implicit,
invisible 'politics of sexuality exposed and felt' " (1998: 62). Holman Jones understands the
performance of women's music as a site in which the various texts of the performance
"accommodate and create various overlapping, yet separate competencies and cultural
capitals. In performance, these texts help create a complex network of competing interests and
viewpoints that intersect and collide, are accommodated and resisted, are given voice and
muted" (64). This underlying feminist paradigm from which Holman Jones understands the
production and process that defines women's music helps make sense of the diversity of
performance practice within the Festival of Asian Music and Dance. The 'incorrect'
performances of Asian cultures challenge and expose the politics of ethnicity and race. The
performances of Asian music are ways in which festival participants are able to express a
complex situatedness. The musical utterances made by these festival participants are attempts
to reposition the self and the selfs identity within an unstable and fluid social context. The
semiotic, and the desires of the self, are given some form of expression through a series of
musical processes that can signify a realigning and a rearticulation of self and signifier(s).
Deleuze and Guattari suggest that such a re-positioning of the self in a new terrain is the
tracing "along sonorous, gestural motor lines that mark the customary path of a child and graft
themselves onto or begin to bud 'lines of drift' with different loops, knots, speeds, movements,
gestures, and sonorities" (1987: 311-312). The power of music to challenge accepted
expressions of identity and vocalise other forms is in what Kristeva terms a 'musicalisation';
music opens up possibilities because its meaning is multiple and ambiguous. These processes
are the 'we find ourselves again', the potentialities of who we are and could be fashioned from
the juxtapositions of identity/ies that are enacted through musical performance. However, 185 anxieties arise in relation to those performances in which the participant may irretrievably
transgress and rupture the space of the symbolic, which in the case of this festival is the
ethnically-defined multicultural national imaginary, as such transgressions threaten the
capacity of white Australia to manage and maintain marauding hybrids that threaten the
cohesion of the national space.
6.5 Conclusion: becoming-expressive
Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman (1999) argues that:
the ontological presence of music in time and outside time makes it possible to
remember the past and imagine the future, to cross boundaries between narratives
experienced and those transposed on to other beings, and to embed music in cognitive
and spiritual processes of knowing experiences and worlds other than one's own
(1999: 30).
As this festival demonstrated, participants may engage with musical practices that permits
experience of another's way of being. I want to suggest that the music performed within the
music festival corresponds to a becoming, first in terms of the 'being and becoming in the
world' proposed by Susan Smith (forthcoming) and, second, in the sense of a becoming-
expressive, a concept borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari. Smith argues that music is not a
packaging and subsequent expression of identity but is the process through which identity is
constituted. Sound is significant to understanding the social world and its relations because, as
Smith suggests, it is in the doing of music that being and becoming occurs. Further to this,
becoming, in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari, is a continual state of heterogeneous relations
that deterritorialises space (1987: 238, 291). The becoming-expressive refers to the emotional
self and its performative acts of identity that makes claim to particular spaces. The
examination of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance demonstrates that the 186 identity/place/music relationship is a series of 'here' and 'there' positionings that express the
Australian/Asian stories and social interrelations that characterise contemporary Australia.
In a study on performance, racial difference and psychoanalysis, Ann Pelligrini positions the performer as an acoustic mirror, "whose multiple 'frame[s] of reference' provoke, invite, and goad [the] audience to different ways of hearing, sighting, and citing others" (1997: 75). The acoustic mirror re-presents the world, by resituating audience and performer in relation to what is constituted in the space of the performance. As an acoustic mirror, the performances at the Festival of Asian Music and Dance reverberate with, and reiterate, the participants' situatedness; a situatedness that works through positions of the self in tropes such as gender, race, nostalgia, migrancy, in and through a framing discourse of multiculturalism. For some festival participants, these utterances remind and connect festival participants to their ethnic and cultural origins, the 'we feel we found ourselves again' sentiment expressed by Susan Xu.
Anxieties about authenticity reflect differing positions in relation to ethnicity and its cultural performatives. In the example of Xu, concerns with authenticity correspond to concerns in maintaining an essential identity that is expressed and maintained through cultural and ethnic characteristics. The performer of Asian music practicing in a cross-cultural setting, as
Odamura and Umiumare demonstrate, inhabits a complex space, of neither one culture nor the other but the space in-between. Such performers are asked to become representative of an ethnic/cultural group even as they enact their difference and displacement. However, hidden in these performance narratives are the destabilising effects of cultural pluralism that can, in a multicultural context that marginalises difference even as it seems to celebrate it, cause
unease. The example of the dancer Kate Holmes illustrates how challenges to the framing
devices that contextualise cultural performatives constitute challenges to the maintenance and
control of national identity in the face of transnational relations. Anxieties about authenticity,
then, are also anxieties about the consequences of a reconstituting national selfhood. Chapter 7: conclusion
7.1 Findings
7.1.1 Chapter summaries
An individual ontology of music, then, maps the global musical landscape from local
perspectives, and imagines what music is according to the conditions that determine
those perspectives. While depending on a distinction between self and other, each
ontology blurs that distinction: self is understood as entangled with another
(Bohlman 1999: 34).
This thesis sought to interrogate the ways in which spatialised identities are constituted within a particular musical event, the community music festival. The assumption on which this work was based is that music is assigned meaning through the context in which it is performed, therefore my research was grounded in an interpretive sociology. This project was considered necessary because, until recently (as examined in chapter two), sound and music has been neglected as field of inquiry dealing with mainstream social relations. Studies in disciplines such as ethnomusicology and anthropology have examined the function of sound and music in the social relations of specified cultures and ethnic groups. However, the focus of my research has been on the ways in which everyday life is constituted through the music of groups who are not culturally or ethnically defined but characterised through spatial dimensions. Within the framework of the three festivals I have studied, it was found that participation in certain musical practices marked you as belonging, or not belonging, to particular spatialised groups, as it situated the participant within some sense of shared community, be that one of neighbourhood, regional, national and even transnational communities. 188
The research question that drove this thesis — how a spatialised communal identity is constituted within the framework of the community music festival — was located in several
bodies of literature. Chapter two examined this body of literature, structured around three
themes: music and identity, music and place, and festivals, which are, of course, the specific
music performative that has served as the focus of this research. The 'music and identity'
section examined the ways in which researchers from various disciplines have conceptualised
the associations between music and identity. As discussed in this chapter, early studies in
anthropology and ethnomusicology were based on somewhat essentialist assumptions of
identity, as researchers attempted to categorise certain patterns of sounds with specific
national, cultural or ethnic groups. Although the assumption of homology, on which these
earlier studies were based, has been challenged, there does remain some correlation between
sound structures and social structures, for, as with language acquisition, we learn to recognise
certain musical patterns or conventions as 'correct.' Even so, this recognition is contextual.
Music cannot have an unequivocal relationship with a particular group of people, first,
because identity is not a fixed quality and so will be constituted differently in different
contexts, and second, music is not a language. Music communicates affectively; it arouses
feeling and emotion through which the contextualised listener interprets meaning.
'Music and place' traced through studies that focussed on the dialectic relationship between
music and the construction of place. Much research in this area has tended to focus on either
the diffusion of musical styles and genres, or the ways in which music, and particularly song
lyrics, evoke images of particular places. Yet, as in the studies of the relationship between
identity and music, so too, research in this area demonstrates that places are not bounded,
singular and fixed in terms of an identity. Nor is the identity of a place derived from a set of
essential characteristics distilled from some intrinsic nature. Instead, the identities of place are
always in flux and changing. A promising way of interrogating music's role in place
formation, as more recent work demonstrates, is to understand music as a means of giving
order to spatial experience. Conceptualised in this way, music becomes a medium in which 189 social agency can be enacted. This approach emphasises immediacy and presence in the relationship of music, place and identity, that is, place and identity are constituted through
music in the very acts of people engaging with the event of the musical performance.
The literature of the third section, 'festivals,' presented research that explored the notions of
participation and process within an event such as the music festival. The underlying
assumption of the festival literature is that the event functions as a form of community
building, be that community one with a long established connection to a particular place, or
one that has had a more recent migration and settlement. This conceptualisation of the
festival, as a liminal and temporary spatialised process and as an event apart from the
everyday, has been a common grounding for many studies on festivals. The festival may be
conceived as a site that has the potential to transform space so that participants have a certain
freedom to experiment with and debate the form and content of their spatialised identities.
However, rather than being something separate from the everyday, more recent work — and
something this thesis has sought to demonstrate — has conceptualised a performative event
such as the community music festival as a heightening of everyday behaviour with all its
contradictions and sites of transient and fluid identities. Identity and place are (re)negotiated
and (re)constituted in the course of such an event, so that the festival can be understood as not
an extra-ordinary event, but an intensification of the everyday.
My thesis, then, interrogated the relationships between identity, place and music by way of an
examination of three specific case studies: the Brunswick Music Festival, the Top Half Folk
Festival and the Festival of Asian Music and Dance. The multidisciplinary nature of this study
lent itself to a multiple methodological approach, (as discussed in chapter three), and included
strategies of case studies choices, interviews, and participant observation. Further to this, I
believe that the presentation of the research material is significant to the understanding of the
relationships of identity/place/music, for as Lawrence Kramer argues, "[w]e hear music only
as situated subjects and hear as music only that acoustic imagery which somehow 'expresses' 190 part of our situatedness, our ensemble ways of being" (1995: 24). As demonstrated in this
research, what a musical performance signifies is dependent on the social and cultural context
given to these sounds. Moreover, the musical and performative aspects of these events and the
argument on which this thesis is based — that a spatialised identity is constituted in and
through the event — required a (re)performance of the researched event.
Two methods were chosen to do this. First, ethnographic field notes were incorporated into
the analysis as a means to present a sense of these festival events. These field notes were also
a means to convey my presence at these festivals for, as discussed in chapter three, my
research activities did effect the research process. My observations and questions became a
springboard for discussion amongst groups of festival participants and they entered into their
own reflexive discourse on what a community music festival is about. This in turn influenced
later observations and interviews that were carried out with me. By presenting excerpts of
field notes within the body of the thesis, an intertextual presentation was created as a means to
capture what ethnomusicologist Timothy Cooley describes as "chasing shadows in the field"
(1997: 3). Second, the inclusion of a CDrom in this presentation was a strategy to signal the
significance of the performative in the creation of spatialised identities. Studies that focus on
song lyrics or some set of essentialised musical traits as a means to see place making and
identity formation neglect the becoming of these activities. In this work, I attempted to
explore becoming, drawing on this concept as used by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
(1987) and Susan Smith (2000). As discussed in chapter six, I called the constitution of a
spatialised identity through music performance 'becoming-expressive' in order to refer to the
emotional self as it is expressed through performative acts of identity. The creation of
spatialised identities is a contextualised performative set within a network of social relations
that makes claims to particular spaces, for, as Philip Bohlman, quoted above, reminds us, "the
self is entangled with another." 191
Chapter four presented an analysis of the first of the three case studies. It examined the sorts of particular and spatialised identities that were created and performed within the Brunswick
Music Festival, identities that were responses and challenges to notions of a localised place-
based and bounded community. Central to understanding the constitution of identity in such a
context was the concept of performativity. Identity/identities were created out of performative
acts that were themselves about the individual's articulations of the complexities of being and
belonging. I examined the processes of identity formation through engagement and participation
within a community music festival, where notions of identity and belonging were based around
an officially defined communal identity of multiculturalism. However, as the examples of the
Festival's concert series and street party performances demonstrated, this identity was more
complexly formulated. Participants expressed a yearning for an ideal community grounded in
nostalgic notions of a homeland. Complicating this concept of community, the relationship of
identity and place was embedded within and expressed through a set of relations that
highlighted issues of cultural and ethnic identities. These identities, in turn, demonstrated a
further complexity, a sense of presence and absence, of being here and somewhere else. The
performed identities constituted within the framework of the Brunswick Music Festival
inhabited and were understood as a re-enactment of the officially defined Moreland
multicultural space, yet were also responses to individual searches for identity and belonging.
Furthermore, these performances pointed to the significance of the spatiality of the event and its
influence on the constitution of identity, in that a sense of community arose in the time and
space of the music festival event.
Chapter five, which focussed on the Top Half Folk, examined a festival event that introduced
a different set of imaginings about identity and place. The Top Half Folk Festival
demonstrated the relationships between identity, place and music that emerged in response to
notions of regional and national space. This festival space was a site in which a sense of
community was articulated through a folk music aesthetic that promoted the ideologies of an
ideal community based around face-to-face interactions. Participation in such musical 192 practices was a means to re-establish a sense of connectedness to others and to place.
Attending and being part of the festival event was also a means to create the idea of community in a social context characterised by mobility and transience. Furthermore, the spatialised identities of this festival were tied to particular images of the landscape, specifically that of the Top Half region of Australia. Performative acts of identity as expressed through various musical elements, such as recreating vocal and musical sounds associated with particular people or regions, were a means for participants of this festival to express their own situatedness. Yet, these sorts of characterisations also indicated that music expressed a much more embedded relationship between identity and place. Participants of the
Top Half Folk Festival implied in their discussions on performance presentation that there is a
connection between where you are and who you are, and that musical performance is an
expression of this relationship. Yet, they also recognised the tensions and contradictions in
this belief. As the performances and discussions of the Top Half Festival participants
demonstrated, although a given place comes to be identified by certain characteristics, it is not
a homogenous entity. Rather 'place' is the outcome of numerous, imagined 'places' that
intersect and collide as numerous (musical) identities were performed within the festival
space.
The Festival of Asian Music and Dance, the focus of chapter six, articulated a different
communal identity, for, as the name suggests, it was about the practice and presentation of
Asian musics. As in the case study of the Brunswick Music Festival, these Asian musical
performances were framed within a larger, officially defined, multicultural Australia. Yet, the
festival performed a style of multicultural Australia that paradoxically asserted both authentic
musical practices and a hybridisation of 'east' and 'west' cultures. The performances at the
Festival of Asian Music and Dance constituted the participants' situatedness; a situatedness
that worked through positions of the self in relation to gender, race, nostalgia, migrancy and
in discourses such as multiculturalism. Practicing Asian music within in a cross-cultural
setting, performers demonstrated through discussion and performance that they inhabited a 193 complex space, of neither one culture nor the other but the space in-between. Interestingly, this in-between situatedness compelled performers to become representative of an ethnic/cultural group even as they enacted their difference and displacement. Anxieties about authenticity reflected differing positions in relation to ethnicity and its cultural performatives.
Concerns with authenticity corresponded to concerns in maintaining an essential identity expressed and maintained through cultural and ethnic characteristics. What the performance of Asian music highlighted in this thesis was that the complexities and uncertainties surrounding the emerging spatialised identity were powerfully expressed through • non- representational means.
7.1.2 thematic summaries
Each of the three case studies presented had, as their focus, a different constitution of spatialised identity/identities. In the case of the Brunswick Music Festival, it was a local constitution of identity based around notions of multiculturalism. The Top Half Festival illustrated a spatialised identity based on regional and national imaginaries. The Festival of
Asian Music and Dance was self-consciously based on transnational identities, particularly with regards to Asia/Australia relations. As the analysis for each case study demonstrated, identity was constituted within dynamic, heterogeneous, and complex social relationships between the performative acts of identity and their location in an imagined space. Moreover, it was location that appeared to have significant influence on the sorts of identities that were constituted and the ways in which these spatialised identities were regulated.
The ways in which the relationship between place and identity were described with regards to the Brunswick Music Festival suggested a relationship embedded along traditional lines of community, that is, on notions of an ideal community, bounded geographically and in which social relations are characterised by small-scale, personal ties. Yet, numerous performances demonstrated identities that were created across boundaries and cultural vectors. However, 194 participants of this festival understood these performances as operating within a network of identity in which a constantly changing assemblage of expressive and musical forms was nonetheless understood as a coherent whole.
The Top Half festival, too, was a performative practice of community based on notions of an ideal community. This Top Half community was constituted through the aesthetics of folk music, where community was created through practices that emphasised face-to-face social groupings and on oral transmission of its culture. The practice of folk music appeared to be about an embeddedness in local and national histories and place, but, as this festival illustrated, it was practiced by people who were nomadic and mobile. The folk music genre therefore contains within it a dual character, one in which its practitioners express both this mobility as well as a locatedness within some sense of (national) community. Yet, as discussed in chapter five, the social relations that composed the Top Half folk community were fractured and discontinuous, rather than the face-to-face relations expressed as the folk community ideal. Not everyone was involved in the production of the community festival, but the ways in which participants characterised participation suggested that the imagined folk community was a powerful cohesive force.
The Festival of Asian Music and Dance was a performative act that explored notions of 'Asian- ness' in an Australian context, and so brings to the thesis a different form of community. The discussion of performances at this festival demonstrated that hidden in the performance narratives of 'Asia' were potentially destabilising transgressions of cultural performatives, particularly in the performance of the Anglo-Australian woman performing a north Indian dance style. I argued that, in this case, the delineation between an Asian body, which signified certain contained identities, defined and managed within a discourse of multiculturalism, was ruptured by this performance. The anxieties around this particular performer pointed to the concern for an Australian national identity clearly demarcated when performed in a transnational context. Issues surrounding the maintenance and surveillance of clearly bounded 195 identities perhaps arise in this larger context because it would seem that there is more at stake, particularly when the current economic pressures of globalisation have seen the Australian nation attempt to re-position itself in relation to its Asian neighbours. The differences, therefore, between the local performing of hybrid identities and their transnational performance are one of scale.
I have suggested that a becoming-expressive is articulated within and through the festival event, in which a constituted and spatialised communal subject lays claims to space. This becoming-expressive is not fixed but continually reconstituted within, and because of, the various networks of heterogeneous social relations in which it is found. Yet, as demonstrated in the responses of some festival participants, the identity/place/music relationship is also about resistances and returns, about nostalgic and at times utopian imaginaries of place, and in particular imaginaries of 'home.' Some performatives were perceived as threatening or disruptive to these imaginaries and consequently challenged or rejected as acceptable representations of certain spatialised identities. For the example, in chapter six I argued that the performing body of Kate Holmes suggested a resistance to particular hybrid forms of identity in a transnational context. In contrast, the more localised spatial framework of Short
Circuit's cultural appropriations were understood as a conscious transformation of traditional music and dance that, framed by the multicultural format of the Sydney Road street party, located these performances and the group members in a specific space, the contemporary urban setting of (multicultural) Moreland.
The performances in each of these music festivals demonstrated a complexly formulated identity, an identity that was created across boundaries and cultural vectors, that nonetheless was understood by the performers as constituting a coherent identity within a particular place.
Although talking about these spatialised identities within terms of 'community,' performances and participants did consciously transgress this community ideal, so that community was understood as both embedded in place and, at the same time, changing, movable, unfixed and 196
transient. One means to interrogate these contradictory positions is through the concept of
performativity. Performance as a metaphor and performativity as a concept move towards a
non-representational approach to identity formation and may be a means to examine how
identity is actively constituted. Identification is an enacted fantasy in which the subject attempts
to create a coherent, whole self where its internal 'self is expressed through the external body.
The assertion of this coherent self is produced through words, acts, and gestures. The powerful
expression of identity through performance, as this thesis has examined, is through the non-
representational utterances and intertextual references of the performance. Any text — and in
this definition, I include non-representational texts such as movement, music and dance — is constructed as a mosaic of quotations, that is, a text is always intertextual, as it is the absorption and transformation of another. Such a text is not an isolated unit but rather a composition of
fragments that refer to something else, 'already-spoken-about' and the 'not-yet-spoken-about.'
The identity of the subject is created, then, out of the transposition of numerous texts, that is, out of numerous signifying systems. Within the heterogenous spaces of cultural practice that the
unconscious, libidinal desires may find some expression, and it is within these spaces in which
fluid and complex meanings are generated. Spatialisied identities therefore inhabit and are constituted by multiple and overlapping networks and social relations.
7.2 Future work
The research involved in preparation of this thesis has generated a its own set of unanswered
questions as well as potential areas for further work. First, in the analytical work of this thesis
what remains unresolved is the relationship between bounded notions of identity/place/music
and disruptions to that perceived boundedness, that is, are bounded notions of
identity/place/music always lost in conditions of nomadic movement, migration, frameworks
of multiculturalism or globalisation? Or are numerous forms of spatialised identities
constituted in these new conditions; sometimes unbounded hybrid forms, sometimes identities
that are reactively constituted, bounded and expressed through essentialised forms of identity? 197
Further research could be undertaken with regards to the event of the community music festival. This thesis has presented material from three specific case studies and in each of these festivals further work may be undertaken. For example, each festival operates within specific organisational frameworks that are significant in the choice and presentation of particular music performances. Although my study examines this framework, a close analysis of the relationship between policy and its practice at different spatial scales (local, state, regional, and national) as it emerges in individual festival events would provide a more in- depth investigation into the connections between identity, place and music. Community music festivals from different locations in Australia would be expected to produce other ways in which identity is constituted. For example, Opera in the Outback, held near the Flinders
Ranges, South Australia, the Cape York Aboriginal Dance Festival and the Deniliquin Easter
Jazz Festival bring to the identity/place/music relationship different spatial locations, social relations and performance genres. What sorts of spatialised identities would be constituted at these events?
My research was also synchronic, in that I tried to catch a process in action as it occurred in a particular time period, and this meant that I carried out fieldwork for each case study once.
The themes that have arisen in this thesis could be further elaborated by revisiting the event.
For example, such an approach may also help resolve the issues around authentic and hybrid musical practices and their constitution of spatialised identities at various spatial levels.
Furthermore, an examination of what the festival event may mean for those outside of its framework — such as performers who do not fit the festival criteria and people who do not attend the event — would enhance understanding of the identity/place/music relationship.
Such a study would point to the exclusionary effects in identity creation that may accompany such festivals but which are not evident when the focus is on, as was mine, solely on the festival and its participants. 198
Further to this, what a musical performance signifies is dependent on the social and cultural contexts attributed to these sounds. Within the framework of the three festivals studied, music marked the individual as belonging or not belonging, as it was a means for participants — whether they be audience members, performers or festival organisers — to engage with ideas about place and who they are or could be in that place. Therefore, issues of belonging and the ways in which music is a means to belong to a community may be a potential research project, in that issues of belonging and exclusion raise issues of anxiety with regards to the self. In this thesis, such anxieties were demonstrated by the troubling process of indigeneity in the Top Half Folk Festival and the anxieties raised by the presence of an 'Asia' in Australia as discussed in relation to the Festival of Asian Music and Dance. Louise Meintjes (1990) argues that music works affectively, that music arouses feeling and emotion through which the listener interprets. The ways in which musical practice and expression contributes to the creation of identity and the emotional impact of this constitution could be pursued through the music therapy literature, in conjunction with psychoanalytic theory, as potentially useful framework in which to address these issues of belonging and anxiety. 199
Postlude
How can a tone be a place? How can a pattern in air be a home we can leave and
return to? Yet entrenched somewhere between your ears is the territory of music,
sensible and concrete as the woods of home....Music does what any passionate
protagonist would do: it probes any alley and pursues any promise to get what it
wants. ... To travel musically is to continually harken back to your origins (Mathieu
1994: 77, 79, italics in original).
During the course of this research, it was clear to me that music was a significant element in the lives of many of those who took part in these festivals. It was a means to identify who they believed they were and how they were situated within their social world. Music created those social environments and organised their experiences of place and being so that these festival participants felt connected in some way. Nonetheless, as composer, WA Mathieu, quoted above, asks, how can music (or tone) be a place? The work of this thesis has been an attempt to answer, in some small way, how music constitutes place and identity in the act of its performance. Bibliography
Primary sources Interviews Audience member, Argentinian woman 30s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, Australian man early 40s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, Australian man 40s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, Australian man (1), Key Carmody and the House Band concert, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 22 March.
Audience member, Australian man (2), Key Carmody and the House Band concert, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 22 March.
Audience member, Australian woman 50s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, English woman, Key Carmody and the House Band concert, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 22 March.
Audience member, Australian woman early 30s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, English woman mid 30s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Audience member, Irish-Celtic woman, Key Carmody and the House Band concert, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 22 March.
Audience members, Ian, Pam, Peter, Audrey. (1998) Personal interview. 5 June. 201
Audience member, Turkish woman mid 30s, Sydney Road street party, Brunswick Music Festival. (1998). Personal interview. 1 March.
Berry,G., Mt Isa folk club committee member and Arts Development Officer, Mt Isa Council (1998). Telephone interview. 9 June. r
Buch, C., founder of Mt Isa folk club, member of Rafferty, (1998). Personal interview. 4 June.
Fix, M., performer, (1998). Personal interview. 7 June.
Frost, T., Mt Isa folk club member and performer, (1998). Personal interview. 6 June.
Glasco, F., Mt Isa folk club member, (1998). Personal interview. 7 June.
Glasco, K., vice-president Mt Isa folk club, (1998). Personal interview. 7 June.
Gordon, A., Mt Isa folk club committee member and singer-songwriter, (1998). Personal interview. 6 June.
Hamilton, J., ex-Mt Isa resident, (1998). Personal interview. 6 June.
Harkin, A., founding member of Short Circuit, (1998). Personal interview. 25 June.
Lewis, T., composer/performer. (1999). Personal interview. 24April.
Manning, A., Moreland City Council Arts Officer, (1998). Personal interview. 6 May.
MC, Moreland resident, (1999). Personal interview. 9 March.
McAuslan, J., Brunswick Music Festival director, (1997). Personal interview. 15 April.
Napier, J., performer, president of the Australian Institute of Eastern Music. (1999). Personal interview. 24 April.
Odamura, S., musician. (1999). Personal interview. 23 April.
Paige, S. singer-songwriter, (1998). Personal interview. 4 June. 202
Rogers, B., president of Mt Isa folk club (1998). Personal interview. 4 June.
Shaw, A., life member Mt Isa folk club, curator of Mt Isa folk club exhibition. (1998). Personal interview. 4 June.
Takahashi, Y., singer/dancer. (1999). Personal interview. 16 September.
Umiumare, Y., dancer. (1999). Personal interview. 23 April.
Walker, D., director of the Festival of Asian Music and Dance. (1999a). Personal interview. 24 April.
--- (1999b). Personal interview. 25 April.
Xu, S. dancer. (1999). Personal interview. 17 September.
Correspondence Glasco, K. Letter to the author. Undated.
Glasco, F. Letter to the author. Undated.
Paige, S.(1998). E-mail to the author. 30 October.
Government documents and publications Canberra, Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. (1998). Festivals Australia Program Guidelines. Canberra, Government Printer.
Moreland City Council. (1999a). Annual report. Internet 18 January. Available www.moreland.vic.gov.au
--- (1999b). Mayor's speech: fostering democracy and building community. Moreland. 203
--- (1998a). Item DSD120: 1998 cultural exchange program: evaluation and options for future project development. Includes Attachment 1: 1998 cultural exchange program with L'Aquila, Italy and options for future development. Council report. Moreland. tabled 14 December.
--- (1998b). Multicultural development policy 2: reconciliation policy and action plan. Moreland.
--- (1997a). Council plan 1997-2000: creating our future. Moreland.
--- (1997b). Report: festivals Moreland 1997-2002. Moreland.
--- (1997c). Tender package: Brunswick Music Festival and Sydney Road street party. Moreland.
--- (1997d). Multicultural development policy: embracing our non-English speaking background communities. Moreland.
--- (1997e). Item DCS309: cultural visit from L'Aquila, Italy. Includes attachment: memorandum of understanding. City strategy Council agenda. tabled 8 December.
--- (1996). Item CMD90: Moreland festivals. Includes Attachment 1: proposed project brief for report Festivals Moreland review. Community development Council agenda. tabled 16 December.
National Multicultural Advisory Council (1999). Australian multiculturalism for a new century: towards inclusiveness. Canberra, Government printer.
Smith, G. (1987). A feasibility study into the establishment of a music centre in Brunswick. Report funded by the Federal Government of Local Government and Administrative Services. Commissioned by the City of Brunswick and Northern Arts.
Stanley and Milford (1999). Market research. Audience satisfaction report: 1999 Sydney Road street party. Moreland. 204
Newspaper articles Brunswick Sentinel. (1989). Face painting, Aboriginal style. 10 April: 1.
Brunswick Sentinel. (1990). Something for all at festival. 26 March: 5.
Brunswick Sentinel. (1991). Music feature of community day. 25 February: 4.
Francis, S. (1998a). Band sparked by distant beat. Moreland Sentinel. March 22: 9.
Francis, S. (1998b). Forging links for the new millennium. Moreland Sentinel. 16 March: 9.
Hill, M. (1989a) Mayor's Diary. Brunswick Sentinel. 13 February: 10.
Hill, M. (1989b). Festival had the sweet sound of music success. Sentinel. 10 April: 38.
Jenkins, S. (1993). Many children and much music. Sentinel. April 5: 7
Jenkins, S. (1992). Potpourri is the 'true Brunswick.' Sentinel. April 6: 8.
North West Star (1998). Reunited for fun weekend. 5 June: 1.
North West Star (1987). Didgeridoos, dance, diversions: 1987 Top Half is trumps. 8 June: 1.
Sentinel (1994) People get ready, the fun starts soon. 21 February: 9.
Sykes, J. (1999). Relax and kick back as only the Tibetans can. Sydney Morning Herald. 27 April: 11.
Thompson, S. (1997). Aye it's a right fine festival. Moreland Sentinel. 17 February: 6. 205
Pamphlets, brochures Brown, R. (1996). Beautiful Mt Isa. Queensland: Robert Brown and Associates.
Transcript Pickworth, M. (1991). The History of the twenty-one years of the Mt Isa Folk Club. from Mt Isa Folk Club records. Unpaginated.
Saunders, G., chairman of the steering committee for the 75`h anniversary celebrations, McCullogh, R., Mayor of Mt Isa, (1998). Calendar of Events program, unpaginated.
The Isa Queensland Australia (1996). Tourist brochure, Isa-Riversleigh Tourism Association.
Performances, exhibitions Arabic Folkloric Dance Institute. (1999). Sydney Road street party, Moreland. 28 February.
Barton, Delma. (1998). Friday night blackboard concert, Top Half Folk Festival. Mt Isa soccer club grounds, Mt Isa. 5 June.
Busking performance, Top Half Folk Festival. (1998). Simpson Street, Mt Isa. 4 June.
Capella Ars Musicalis. (1998). Brunswick Town Hall, Moreland. 11 March.
Fix, Michael, guitarist/composer, Barton, William, didjeridu. (1998). Duet, Mt Isa soccer club grounds, Mt Isa. 7 June.
Fix Michael, guitarist/composer. (1998). Saturday night concert, Mt Isa soccer club grounds, Mt Isa. 6 June.
Friday night blackboard concert, Top Half Folk Festival. (1998). Mt Isa soccer club grounds,
Mt Isa. 5 June.
Gordon, Annette. (1998). Friday night blackboard concert, Top Half Folk Festival. Mt Isa soccer club grounds, Mt Isa. 5 June.
Hastings, Greg. (1998). Saturday night blackboard concert, Top Half Folk Festival. Mt Isa soccer club grounds, Mt Isa. 6 June. 206
Holmes, Kate, dancer, Singh, Sukhbir, singer. (1999). Indian and Western music and dance collaboration, Sun and Moon, Festival of Asian Music and Dance, Tom Mann Theatre, Surry Hills, Sydney. 22 April.
House Band, Key Carmody. (1998). Brunswick Town Hall, Moreland. 22 March.
L'Aquila: the birthplace of the Holy Year. Photographic exhibition. (1998). Atrium, Brunswick Town Hall, Moreland. 25 February - 12 March.
La Paella restaurant performers. (1998). Sydney Road street party, Moreland. 28 February.
Mt Isa folk club exhibition. (1998). Curator A. Shaw. Mt Isa Folk club rooms, Mt Isa. 5-8 June.
Odamura, Satsuki, koto, Umiumare, Yumi, butoh. (1999). The music and dance of Japan, Pagodas, Festival of Asian Music and Dance, Tom Mann Theatre, Surry Hills, Sydney. 23 April.
Sabahattin, Akdagcik, baglama, Lan, Dang, dan thran/ dan bao. (1999). The music of Turkey and Vietnam, Across Seas, Festival of Asian Music and Dance, Tom Mann Theatre, Surry Hills, Sydney. 24 April.
Short Circuit. (1998). Sydney Road street party, Moreland. 1 March.
Voice workshop, Top Half Folk Festival. (1998). Presented by Nadia Sunde, vocalist with Brisbane-based group Spot the Dog, Mt Isa folk club rooms, Mt Isa. 6 June.
Performance programs Brunswick Music Festival program. (1998). Moreland. 27 February - 5 April.
Higgins, R. (1998) Welcome. Program for Sydney Road Street Party. Moreland, Moreland City Council.
Sydney Road street party program. (1998). Moreland. March 1. 207
Public addresses McCullogh, Ron (1998). Official opening address, Top Half Folk Festival, Mt Isa. 7 June.
Napier, J. (1996). Paper given at the 1996 Festival of Asian Music and Dance symposium, The effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity. Held 10 August 1996, Surry Hills, Sydney. held August 10.
Sykes, J. (1996). Paper given at the 1996 Festival of Asian Music and Dance symposium, The effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity. Held 10 August 1996, Surry Hills, Sydney. held August 10.
Broinowski, A. (1996). Paper given at the 1996 Festival of Asian Music and Dance symposium, The effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity. Held 10 August 1996, Surry Hills, Sydney. held August 10.
Sound recordings Lan, Dang. (1999). "Lullaby." East. Australian Institute of Eastern Music. CD: AIEM001.
Fix, Michael. (1996). The heart has reasons. EMI/ABC Soundscapes. CD: 8369142.
--- (1993).Fingerpaintings. Michael Fix. CD: MFM 003CD.
Web sites Artsinfo. Online. 20 June 1999. FTP: www.artsinfo.net.au
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Online. 7 February 2000. FTP: www.abs.gov.au
Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation. Online. 20 December 2000. FTP: www.antar.org.au
Australian Institute of Eastern Music. Online. 7 February 2000. FTP :2000www.ozemail.com.au/—dukewalk/ 208
Moreland City Council. Online. 18 January 2001. FTP: www.moreland.vic.gov.au
Office of Economics and Statistical Research. Online. 7 February 2000. FTP: www.statistics.gld.gov.au
The Age Newspaper. Online. 4 January 2001. FTP: www.theage.com.au
The Aussie Traveller. Online. 9 June 1999. FTP: www.wilmap.com.au
Traditions: classical music and dance of India. Online. 10 March 2000. FTP: www.dancemuse.com
Secondary sources Ahmed, S. (1999). "She'll wake up one of these days and find she's turned into a nigger": passing and hybridity. in Performativity and belonging. edited by V. Bell. London, SAGE Publications. 87-106.
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. London, Verso.
Appadurai, A. (1991). 'Global ethnoscapes', in Recapturing Anthropology. edited by R.G. Fox. Santa Fe, School of American Research Press. 191-210. •
Attali, J. (1992). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press.
Auerbach, S. (1991a). The brokering of ethnic folklore: issues of selection and presentation at a multicultural festival, in Creative Ethnicity: symbols and strategies of contemporary ethnic life. edited by S. Stern and J. Cicala. Logan, Utah, Utah State University Press. 223-238.
--- (1991b). How to grow a multicultural festival: a handbook for California organisations. Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
Barrett, J. (1996). World music, nation and postcolonialism. Cultural Studies 10(2): 237-247. 209
Barz, G., Cooley, T. eds. (1997). Shadows in the Field: new perspectives for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. New York, Oxford University Press.
Bealle, J. (1993). Self-involvement in musical performance: stage talk and interpretive control at a bluegrass festival. Ethnomusicology 37(1): 63-86.
Bell, V. ed (1999). Performativity and belonging. London, SAGE Publications.
Bell, D., Valentine, G. (1995). The sexed self: strategies of performance, sites of resistance. in Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation. edited by S. Pile, Thrift, N. London, Routledge. 143-157.
Bernard, H. R. (1995). Research methods in anthropology. Walnut Creek, CA, AttaMirra Press.
Bey, H. (1990). The temporary autonomous zone: ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism. Autonomedia. Internet 19 May 2000. Available at www.t0.or.at/hakimbey/taz/taz.htm
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London, Routledge.
Bohlman, P. (1999) Ontologies of music. in Rethinking music. edited by N. Cook, M. Everist. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 17-34.
Bogue, R. (1991). Rhizomusicology. Substance 66(3): 84-101.
Breen, M. (1994). Constructing the popular from public funding of community music: notes from Australia. Popular Music 13(3): 313-326.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, Routledge.
Carmody, J., Conyngham, B., Hannan, M., Henderson, M., Covell, R., Mills, R., Smalley, R. (1991). Debate: that Australian composers should set out to develop a distinctive Australian music. Sounds Australian June: 3 - 16.
Carney, G. (1997). The sounds of people and places: readings in geography of American folk and popular music. Lanham, MD, University Press of America. 210
Carter, P. (1992). The sound in between. Kensington, NSW, NSW University Press.
Cohen, S. (1997) Liverpool and the Beatles: Exploring relations between music and place, text and context. in Keeping Score: Music, disciplinarity, culture. edited by. Schwarz, D., Kassabian, A., Siegel, L. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
--- (1995). Sounding out the city: music and the sensuous production of place. Transactions: Institute of British Geographers 20: 434-446.
--- (1993). Ethnography and popular music studies, Popular Music, 12(2): 123-138.
Cooley,T. (1997). Casting shadows in the field: an introduction. in Shadows in the field. edited by G. Barz and T. Cooley. New York, Oxford University Press. 3-22.
Cumming, N. (1996). Encountering Mangrove: and essay in signification, Australasian Music Research. l: 193-229
Currie, N. (1991). Issues in the appropriation of sources for musical composition. Sounds Australian. 30: 15 -18.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, University of California Press.
de Gorog, L. (1989). From Sibelius to Sallinen: Finnish nationalism and the music of Finland. New York, Greenwood Press.
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1997). Difference and Repetition. trans. by P. Patton. London, the Athlone Press.
DeNora, T. (2000). Music in everyday life. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Denzin, N. (1989). The Research Act. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall.
Erlmann, V. (1996). The aesthetics of the global imagination: reflections on world music in the 1990s. Public Culture 8: 467-487. 211
Eyles, J. (1988). Interpreting the geographical world: qualitative approaches in geographical research. in Qualitative methods in human geography. edited by J. Eyles and D. Smith. Cambridge, Polity Press. 1-15.
Feld, S., Basso, K. (1996). Sense of Place. Santa Fe: New Mexico, School of American Press Research.
Feld, S. (1984). Sound structure as social structure. Ethnomusicology 28(3): 383 - 409.
Finkelstein, S. (1989). Composer and nation: the folk heritage in music. New York, International Publishers.
Finnegan, R. (1997). Music, performance and enactment. in Consumption and everyday life. edited by. H. Mackay. London: SAGE Publications/ Open University.
Flick, U. (1998) An introduction to qualitative research. London, SAGE Publications.
Forner, M. (1996). Apple pie meets baklava: reconfiguring identity through Oriental dance. Arabesque March/April: 8-11.
Forsyth, C. (1911). Music and nationalism: a study of English opera. London, Macmillan.
Fortier, M. (1999). Re-membering places and the performance of belonging(s). Theory, Culture and Society: Performativity and belonging. 16 (2): 41-64.
Frith, S. (1996). Performing rites: evaluating popular music. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Garofalo, R. (1993). Whose world, what beat: the transnational music industry, identity and cultural imperialism. The world of music 35(2): 16-31.
Geertz, C. (1973). Interpretation of cultures. New York, Harper.
Gelder, K., Jacobs, J. (1998). Uncanny Australia: sacredness and identity in a postcolonial nation. Carlton South, Melbourne University Press.
Gerard, C. (1998). Jazz in black and white: race, culture and identity in the jazz community. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press. 212
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Goodwin, A., Gore, J. (1995). World beat and the cultural imperialism debate. in Sounding Off! Music as subversion/resistance/revolution. Edited by R. Sakolsky, R. and F.W. Ho. Brooklyn, NY, Autonomedia.
Grace, S., Haag, S. (1998). From landscapes to soundscapes: the northern arts of Canada. Mosaic 31(2): 101-123.
Grosz, E. (1989). Sexual Subversions. St Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin.
Guilbault, J. (1997). Interpreting world music: a challenge in theory and practice. Popular Music 16(1): 31-44.
Hage, G. (1998). White nation. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press
Halfacre, K., Kitchin, R. (1996) 'Madchester rave on': placing the fragments of popular music. Area 28(1): 47-55.
Hannan, M. (1982). Peter Sculthorpe: his music and ideas. St Lucia, University of Queensland Press.
Hasty, C., (1997). Meter as Rhythm. New York, Oxford University Press.
Hawkins, G. (1993) From Nimbin to Community arts: constructing community arts. St Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin.
Haywood, P. (1998). Sound Alliances: indigenous peoples, cultural politics and popular music in the Pacific. London, Cassell.
Herndon, M., McLeod, N. (1983). Field manual of ethnomusicology. Norwood, Pennsylvania, Norwood editions.
Hetherington, K. (1998). Expression of identity: space, performance, politics. London, SAGE Publications. 213
Hollows, J., Milestone, K. (1998). Welcome to dreamsville: a history and geography of Northern soul. in The place of music. edited by A. Leyshon, D. Matless, G. Revill, New York, Guilford Press. 83-103.
Holman Jones, S. (1998). Kaleidoscope notes: writing women's music and organisational culture. Walnut Creek, AltaMira (SAGE publications).
Inglis, K. (1991). Anzac revisited: Australia, New Zealand and the Anzac tradition, in Anzac: meaning, memory and myth. edited by A. Seymour and R. Nile. London, Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. 13-20.
Jackson, P. (1988). Street life: the politics of carnival. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 6: 213-227.
Jackson, P., Penrose, J. eds. (1993). Constructions of race, place and nation. London, UCL Press.
Jacobs, J.M. (1998). Staging difference: aestheticization and the politics of difference in contemporary cities. In Cities of difference. edited by R. Fincher and J. Jacobs. New York, The Guildford Press. pp. 252-278.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. London, Verso.
Katz, C. (1994). Playing the field: questions of fieldwork in geography. Professional Geographer. 46(1): 67-72.
Keil, C., Feld. S. (1994). Music Grooves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kisliuk, M. (1997). (Un)doing fieldwork: sharing songs, sharing lives, in, Shadows in the field. edited by G. Barz and T. Cooley. New York, Oxford University Press. 23-44.
Kong, L. (1996a). Popular music and a 'sense of place' in Singapore. Crossroads 9(2): 51-77.
--- (1996b). Popular music in Singapore: exploring local cultures, global resources and regional identities. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 14: 273-292. 214
--- (1995a). Popular music in geographical analyses. Progress in Human Geography 19(2): 183-198.
--- (1995b). Music and cultural politics: ideology and resistance in Singapore. Transactions: Institute of British Geographers 20: 447-459.
Kong, L., Yeoh, B. (1997). The construction of national identity through the production of ritual and spectacle. Political Geography 16(3): 213-239.
Korsyn, K. (1999). Beyond privileged contexts: intertextuality, influence, and dialogue. in Rethinking music. edited by N. Cook and M. Everist. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 55-72.
Kramer, L. (1995). Classical music and postmodern knowledge. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Krims, A. (1998). Introduction: postmodern musical poetics and the problem of 'close reading'. In Music/ideology: resisting the aesthetic. edited by A. Krims. Critical Voices in Art, theory and culture. series editor S. Ostrow. Amsterdam: G+B Arts International. 1-14.
Kristeva, J. (1997). Revolution in poetic language, in K. Oliver (ed) The portable Kristeva. New York: Columbia University Press. 27-92.
--- (1981). Desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(s). London, Verso.
Laclau, E., Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. translated by W. Moore and P. Cammach. London, Verso.
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. trans. C. Porter. New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Lavenda, R. (1992). Festivals and the creation of public culture: whose voice(s)? in Museums - and Communities: the politics of public space. edited by Karp, I., Mullen Kreamer, C., Lavine, S. Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press. 76-104. 215
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space. Oxford, Blackwell.
Lehr, J. (1983). 'Texas (when I die)': national identity and images of place in Canadian country music broadcasts. Canadian Geographer 27 (4): 361-370.
Leppert, R., McClary, S. (1987). Music and society: the politics of composition, performance and reception. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Leyshon, A., Matless, D., Revill, G. (1998). The place of music. New York, Guilford Press.
Lewis, L., Dowsey-Magog, P. (1993). The Maleny 'fire event': rehearsals toward neo- liminality. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 4(3): 198-219.
Levy, A. (1984). Music nationalism: American composers' search for identity. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press.
Lipsitz, G. (1997). Dangerous Crossroads: popular music, postmodernism and the poetics of place. London, Verso.
Lomax, A. (1976). Cantometrics: an approach to the anthropology of music. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Martin, P. (1995). Sounds and society: themes in the sociology of music. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Massey, D. (1994a). Double articulation. in Displacements. edited by A. Bammer. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. 110-121.
Massey, D. (1994b). Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Mathieu, WA. (1994). The musical life: reflections on what it is and how to live it. Boston, Shambala.
McClary, S. (1987). The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year. In Music and society: the politics of composition, performance and reception. edited by. R. Leppert, S. McClary. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 13-21. 216
Meintjes, L. (1990). Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa and the mediation of musical meaning. Ethnomusicology 34(1): 37-73.
Melucci, A. (1989). Nomads of the present: social movements and individual needs in contemporary society. London, Hutchinson Radius.
Middleton, R. (1990). Studying popular music. Milton Keynes, Open University Press.
Mitchell, T. (1996). Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, pop and rap in Europe and Oceania. London, Leicester University Press.
Mouffe, C. (1994). For a politics of nomadic identity, in Travellers' Tales. edited by G. Robertson. London, Routledge. 106-113.
Nancy, J-L. (1991). The inoperative community. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Nast, H., Pile, S. (1998). Places through the body. London, Routledge.
Negus, K. (1996). Popular music in theory: an introduction. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Nettl, B. (1964). Theory and method in ethnomusicology. New York, Free Press.
Parker, A., Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. (1995). Introduction: performativity and performance, in Performativity and performance. edited by A. Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. New York, Routlegde. 1-18.
Pelligrini, A. (1997). Performance anxieties: staging psychoanalysis, staging race. New York, Routledge.
Penbarthy, J. (1991). The Aboriginal influence. Sounds Australian. 30: 23 - 24.
Pickering, J. (1997) Spirit of place: the relationship between the Australian landscape and music in Aboriginal and White culture. Australian Sudies. 12 (1): 23-35.
Pile, S., Thrift, N. eds. (1995). Mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation. London, Routledge. 217
Purdue, D., Durrschmidt, J., Jowers, P., O'Doherty, R. (1997). DIY cultural and extended milieux: LETS, veggie boxes and festivals. Sociological Review. 45(4): 23 - 35.
Rajchman, J. (1995). The Identity in Question. New York, Routledge.
Read, P. (1996). Returning to nothing: the meaning of lost places. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Regev, M. (1992). Israeli rock, or a study in the politics of "local authenticity". Popular Music 11(1): 1-14.
Rose, G. (1997a). Spatialities of 'community', power and change: the imagined geographies of community arts projects. Cultural Studies. 11(1): 1-16.
--- (1997b). Performing inoperative community: the space and the resistance of some community arts projects. in Geographies of Resistance. edited by S. Pile & M. Keith. London, Routledge. 184-202.
Said, E. (1991). Musical elaborations. London, Vintage.
Sedgwick, Eve Kofsky. (1991). Epistemology of the closet. Berkley, University of California Press.
Sharma, S., Hutnyk, J., Sharma, A. eds (1996). Dis-Orienting rhythms: the politics of the new Asian dance music. London, Zed Books.
Shepherd, J. (1991). Music As A Social Text. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Sherwood, P. (1997). The didjeridu and alternative lifestylers' reconstruction of social reality. in The didjeridu: from Arnhem Land to internet. edited by K. Neuenfeldt. Sydney, John Libbey/ Perfect Beat Publications. 139-154.
Slobin, M. (1992). Microcosms of the West: a comparative approach. Ethnomusicology 36(1): 1-87.
Sloboda, J. (1985). The musical mind: the cognitive psychology of music. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 218
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening. Hanover, Weselyan University Press.
Smith, G. (1992). The country voice', Arena Magazine. 1: 38-40
Smith, G., Brett, J. (1998). Nation, authenticity and social difference in Australian popular music: folk, country, multicultural. Jóurnal of Australian Studies 58: 3-17.
Smith, S. (2000) Performing the (sound)world. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 18(5): 615-637.
--- (1997) Beyond geography's visible worlds: a cultural politics of music. Progress in Human Geography. 21(4): 502-529.
--- (1994). Soundscape. Area 26(3): 232-240.
Society for Ethnomusicology (1994). A manual for documentation, fieldwork and preservation for ethnomusicology. Bloomington, Indiana, Society for Ethnomusicology.
Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern geographies. London, Verso.
Spivak, G. (1993). Outside the teaching machine. New York, Routledge.
St John, G. (1997). Going feral: authentica on the edge of Australian culture. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8(2): 167-189.
Stokes, M. ed. (1994). Ethnicity, identity and music: the musical construction of place. Oxford, Berg Publishers.
Stratton, J. (1998). Race daze: Australia in identity crisis. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press.
Strauss, A., Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA, SAGE.
Straw, W. (1991). Systems of articulation, logics of change: communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 5(3): 368-388. 219
Stubington, J. (1998). The reconciling spirits of Port Fairy. Perfect Beat 4(1): 84-105.
Sturman, J. (1997). Movement analysis as a tool for understanding identity. The World of Music. 39 (3): 52-69
Taylor, T. (1997). Global pop: world music, world markets. New York, Routledge.
Threadgold, T. (1999). Performativity voice corporeality habitus becoming assemblage: some reflections on theory and performing metaphors. in Music and feminisms. edited by S. Macarthur and C. Poynton. Sydney, Australian Music Centre. 63-77.
Thrift, N. (2000). Afterwords. Environment and planning D: society and space. 18 (2): 213 - 255.
Titon, J.T. (1997). Knowing fieldwork. in Shadows in the field. edited by G. Barz and T. Cooley. New York, Oxford University Press. 87-100.
Topolski, J. (1981). Conditions of truth in historical narrative. History and Theory 20: 47-60.
Tunley, D. (1971). A decade of musical composition in Australia. Studies in music (WA). 5: 66-76.
Turner, V. (1984). Liminality and the performative genres. in Rite, drama, festival, spectacle: rehearsals toward a theory of cultural performance. edited by J. MacAloon. Philadelphia, Institute for the study of human issues. 19-41.
Valentine, G. (1995). Creating transgressive space: the music of kd lang. Transactions: Institute of British Geographers 20: 474-485.
Venkataraman, L. (1994). Transcending the cultural divide: foreigners who study classical Indian dance. TDR. 38 (2): 81-89.
Wallis, R., Malm, K. (1984). Big sounds from small peoples: the music industry in small countries. New York, Pendragon. x
Weintraub, A., (1998). Jawaiian music and local cultural identity in Hawai'i. in Sound Alliances. edited by P. Haywood. London, Cassell. 78 - 88. 220
Willems-Braun, B. (1994). Situating cultural politics: fringe festivals and the production of spaces of intersubjectivity. Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 12: 75-104.
Willet, C., ed. (1998). Theorising multiculturalism: a guide to the debate. Maldon, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publications.
Young, I (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.
Zizek, S. (1997). Looking awry: an introduction to Jacques Lacan through popular culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press. Appendices
Appendix 1: Questionnaires
1.1 Questionnaire to be completed by performer(s)
(interview may be with either individual or with ensemble) SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION 1. name & address: surname / given name / nickname / title / address, ph, email (please note that giving all or part of this information is optional) 2. role:( eg dancer, consultant, drummer) 3. age: approx 4. length of time involved in role 5. prior association with festival or other related activities (eg other festivals attended, involvement with associated cultural groups) 6. brief biographical information and performance history
ETHNICITY 1. What is your ethnic background? 2. What is your first language? 3. Do you speak other languages? What are they? 4. What language or languages do you speak in your everyday life?
MUSIC PERFORMANCE a. performance history 5. How long have you been performing? 6. Has your performance changed since you first started performing? How? 7. If an ensemble, has the line-up of the group changed since you first started performing? How? 8. If an ensemble, how did you get together? 9. If an ensemble, how long have you been performing together? 10. Where do you usually perform? eg festivals, clubs, concert venues 11. How often have you attended this festival? b. musical style 12. Please describe to me the style of music that you perform. 13. Do you perform music that is part of a traditional music culture? Please tell me about this musical culture. 2
14. What instruments do you use? If an ensemble please describe to me who performs on what instrument. 15. Do you use instrumental or vocal techniques that are not used in mainstream Anglo-Australian music? If so, please describe this to me. 16. Do any of the songs you sing tell a particular story? eg tells of an historical event or person 17. Is the music you perform associated with a cultural activity or event? 18. Do you introduce the story or meaning behind the song or music to the audience? If so, why? c. influences 19. How have you learnt the music that you perform? eg from traditional teachers, family members & friends, listening to records. 20. Is this way of teaching and learning this music common amongst other performers that you know? 21. Are there other versions of the music you perform? By whom? 22. Who or what has influenced the way that you perform your music? d. the festival 23. What does it mean to you to perform your music at this festival? 24. What do you think this festival means to the audience? 25. What do you think this festival means to the local community? 3
1.2 Questionnaire to be completed by audience member
SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
1. name & address: surname / given name / nickname / title / address, ph, email (please note that giving all or part of this information is optional)
2. role in festival 3. age: approx 4. length of time involved in festival 5. prior association with festival or other related activities (eg other festivals attended, involvement with associated cultural groups) 6. brief information about history of festival attendance
ETHNICITY 1. What is your ethnic background? 2. What is your first language? 3. Do you speak other languages? What are they? 4. What language or languages do you speak in your everyday life?
FESTIVAL ATTENDANCE 1. How often do you attend this festival? 2. Who do you attend this festival with - eg family/ friends? 3. Do you attend other music festivals? Which ones? 4. What attracts you to this festival? rts? 5. What sort of events do you attend at this festival, eg workshops, dances, conce 6. Which performers do you particularly want to hear? Why? 7. How would you describe the sort of music performed at this festival? 8. Do you attend similar music performances when you are at home? 9. What does attending this festival mean to you?
LOCAL COMMUNITY 10. What do you think this festival means for the local community? 11. If you have been to this festival previously, have you noticed changes to the local community? eg street scaping, increased eating venues, accommodation availability 12. Do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival? How? 4
1.3 Questionnaire to be completed by a member of the festival committee
SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (please note that 1. name & address: surname / given name / nickname / title / address, ph, email giving all or part of this information is optional)
2. role:(function at event eg dancer, consultant, drummer) 3. age: approx 4. length of time involved in role 5. prior association with festival or other related activities (eg other festivals attended, involvement with associated cultural groups) 6. brief biographical information and performance history if applicable
FESTIVAL COMMITTEE 1. What is the structure of the festival committee? (A diagram may be given to illustrate this) 2. Where do you fit into this structure? 3. How long have you been involved with the festival? 4. Has the committee structure changed since the festival's beginnings? How? 5. Why was this particular town chosen for this festival? 6. What sort of venues are used for festival events? Why?
FUNDING 7. How is the festival funded? 8. Has this changed since the festival's beginnings? How?
LOCAL COMMUNITY 9. What sort of support does the festival receive from the local community? 10. What do you think the festival means to the local community? 11. What benefits does the festival bring to the local community? 12. Is there any interaction between the festival committee and the local community? Please describe this to me. 13. Is there any interaction between the festival committee and the local council? Please describe this to me. 14. What affiliations, connections or groups are associated with the festival? 15. How do these groups help with the festival?
FESTIVAL PROMOTION 16. How and where is this festival promoted? eg local newspapers, specialist journals, radio, TV, web site. 5
17. What is promoted as being a main feature of this festival? eg the performers, the location, the atmosphere of the festival 18. Please describe the audience you are targeting when promoting this festival.
FESTIVAL PROGRAM 18. Do you have a theme or issue that shapes the festival? 19. Does this theme or issue change with each festival? 20. What sort of performers are you looking for when you put a festival program together? 21. Has this changed over time? eg has the style or genre of music performed broadened or narrowed, have international performers been brought in, is there a focus on local performers. 6
1.4 Questionnaire to be completed by a member of the local council
SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
1. name & address: surname / given name / nickname / title / address, ph, email (please note that giving all or part of this information is optional)
2. position in local council: 3. age: approx 4. length of time involved in local council 5. prior association with festival or other related activities 6. brief biographical information and history of association with festival
LOCAL COUNCIL 1. What is the structure of the local council? (A diagram may be given to illustrate this) 2. Where do you fit into this structure? 3. How long have you been a member of council?
MUSIC FESTIVAL 4. What sort of interaction is there between local council and the festival committee? 5. In what ways does local council support the festival? 6. What does this festival mean for the local community? 7. Has the festival brought about changes to the local community? What are they? 8. Has there been objections made to local council about the festival? Please tell me about these. 9. How would you describe the audience attending this festival? 7
Appendix 2: Participant observations
2.1 Diagram illustrating use of venue space Festival: Venue: Formal or informal performance: Name of performer/ensemble: Day & time of performance: diagram of venue showing i. where performers are positioned in relation to venue ii. where audience positioned in relation to venue iii. breakdown of how audience uses space • dance space • seated space • approximation of subgroups within audience eg family groups, peer groups, groups identifiable by clothing or behaviour (to be labelled as such on diagram)
iv. `private' areas • backstage where public has no or restricted access • areas where technical support located (indicate if some interaction between this area and audience) 8
2.2 Diagram of stage
Festival: Venue: Formal or informal performance: Name of performer/ensemble: Day & time of performance:
i. positioning of performer(s) on stage • number & arrangement of performers • instruments & their positioning on stage • any changes of performers' physical location • any changes re who is foregrounded either through stage talk or through performance • any changes of the positioning of instruments 9
2.3 Participant Observation: Performers
Festival: Venue: Formal or informal performance: Name of performer/ensemble: Instruments used: Day & time of performance:
Recorded observations The observations made about the performance on stage will help in analysing issues such as
• how stage talk may help create a sense of identity between performer & audience • how stage talk may help create a sense of identity for the performer(s) • how the performance is framed eg references to particular lifestyles or political affiliations • what sorts of musical themes recur in music and or songs • what sorts of issues or phrases recur in stage talk • how instrumental performances are framed or contextualised in the setting of a festival • how performances are contextualised as part of an historical movement (either musical or social/political) • what sort of social ties are created through performance between the performer and the audience
2.3.1 Prior to performance 1. Is this the only performer/ensemble at this particular event? 2. Is this a well-known, seasoned performer/ensemble or is this relatively early in the career of the performer? 3. If part of a larger program, what other acts are also part of the event? 4. If part of a larger program, what position of the program is this performance placed? 5. How has this particular event been promoted? 6. If part of a larger program, is there a compare of the event? 7. How is this particular performer/ensemble introduced to the audience? 8. Do the performers wear identifying clothes or other distinctive features? Describe. 9. Are any props brought onto the stage for this performance?
10
2.3.2 Schedule for Participant Observation: Performers observation music/song music/song music/song music/song music/song 1 2 3 4 5
1. Is the music/song introduced?
2. Is a ritual form of introduction used? (ie common to the music/song style or genre)'.
3. If so, what?
4. Does the performer introduce music or song by expressing a particular emotion?
5. If so, what?
6. Does the performer explain the reason behind the music's composition?
7. If so, what is said?
8. Are other performers or the originators of the work discussed?
9. If so, who & how? 10. Are there references to particular lifestyles or locales?
11. If so, who, where or what?
12. Are there references to particular groups (historical or contemporary)?
' For example, `hillbilly' music of the 1960s included comedy skits which was an integral part of the performance. Beatle, J., 1993, `Self-involvement in musical performance: stage talk and interpretive control at a bluegrass festival', Ethnomusicology, 37(1); 64-65. Another formulistic activity discussed by Bealle is outlined as `applause - applause appreciation - song/music introduction - song/music performed'. This performance convention helps frame the individual songs/music into the overall performance. What is said between individual works can be analysed for its attempts to create an identity as performer or as part
of social interaction with the audience.
11
observation music/song music/song music/song music/song music/song 1 2 3 4 5
13. If so, who or what?
14. Do the performers talk or joke amongst themselves? Describe this.
15. Who in the group interacts with the audience the most?
16. Are other members of the ensemble introduced to the audience?
When does this happen? • for particular songs/music - which ones? • Or towards the end of the performance?
17. Are there changes to who is highlighted during the performance?
18. If so, describe this
19. What is said between music/song?
20. Does this change for particular songs?
21. Do any themes or stage discussion recur during performance?
22. If so describe.
23. Are other performances referred to during performance?
24. If so, what (eg other festivals, other festivals at which performer will be, other concerts, up-coming tours, availability of
12
observation music/song music/song music/song music/song music/song 1 2 3 4 5 recordings)
25. Does the performer request participation from the audience?
26. If so, what (eg join in chorus, dance)
27. Is backstage or offstage activity visible to the audience? 2
2 ie is there a division between `public' performance and `private' space where the performers ready themselves to perform? 13
2.3.3 Recording of observations about the music performed genre, style instrumentation structure of instruments technique of player eg may show influences of particular ethnic styles, schools etc number of performers & their instrument (including vocal) transcriptions of music musical elements eg rhythm, instrumentation, melody, scales & their relationships to one another, timbre, harmony/polyphony, tonality/tonal centres, melodic contours form: relationship between sections & total structure of piece thematic material identification of divisions in piece eg motifs, phrases manner of performance eg non Western vocal techniques, use of improvisation 14
2.4 Participant observation: audience
Festival: Venue: Formal or informal performance: Name of performer/ensemble: Instruments used: Day & time of performance:
Recorded observations 1. What occurs in the audience? As with the observations made about the performers, observation of audience behaviour will help later
analysis of issues such as • how talk between audience and performers may help create a sense of shared identity • how the performance is framed eg references to particular lifestyles or political affiliations • what sorts of audience behaviour acknowledge particular issues or narratives related by the performers • whether the framing of performance (historical, social, political) made by performers or organisers of the festival are accepted or contested by the audience and how this is achieved or not
• what sort of social ties are created through performance between the performer and the audience • how audience behaviour may create a sense of identity 15
2.4.1 Schedule for participant observation: audience
250+ <10 10-100 100-250 1. size of audience
teenagers adults 20-40 adults 40+ 2. age groups children male approx number male male female female female distinctive behaviour family groups peer groups distinctive clothing 3. subgroups what ages approx
4. ethnic groups - outline
BEHAVIOUR OF AUDIENCE
5. interaction with performers • calling out requests
• which particular subgroups call out?
• calling out/ cheers
• which particular subgroups do this? • clapping at end of song/music? • clapping during song/music? • whistles at end of song/music • salutes or other physical signs during song/music - describe action & when occurs
• do audience members move onto the stage? • What do they do on stage? • play instrument • join in singing • dance • call out to audience
6. interactions with other audience members i. dancing • initiated by performers • initiated by audience members • which sub group of audience initiates dance? 16
■ are dances set dances initiated by performers?
■ are dancers set dances initiated by audience
• approx what number of audience members dance? ii. audience interaction • is there a mixing of different groups of audience members?
• which subgroups interact with others more?
7. Does the size of the audience change over the course of the performance? Describe this. 17
Appendix 3: Letter of introduction3
Name of subject Address Date
Dear
I am a PhD student from the department of geography at the University of Melbourne. I am researching the topic of how local collective identity is expressed in and through music festivals in Australia.
I am interested in how a community creates and promotes its sense of identity through music. My project will focus on the music festival - how it is put together and promoted, who is involved in the organisation of the festival, who performs, who attends and some idea about how these various different people experience the festival and its music.
There are two ways that I will collect data for my research: i. attending the festival and being part of the audience. This will also include taking photographs and video recordings. ii. interviewing a number of those involved in the festival (organisers, performers, audience members)
Would you be able to suggest some contacts that I may approach to participate in my research. The questionnaire will take approximately 15 minutes. I would like to interview those involved in the festival organisation, members of local council and festival performers.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thank you for your time. Michelle Duffy
Department of Geography University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3052 ph (03) 9344 7815 fax (03) 9344 4972 email: [email protected]
3 Printed on University of Melbourne letterhead, as prescribed by the University of Melbourne Ethics Committee. 18
Appendix 4: Written information to be given to the subject'
I am a PhD student from the department of geography at the University of Melbourne. I am researching the topic of how local collective identity is expressed in and through music festivals in Australia.
I am interested in how a community creates and promotes its sense of identity through music. My project will focus on the music festival - how it is put together and promoted, who is involved in the organisation of the festival, who performs, who attends and some idea about how these various different people experience the festival and its music.
There are two ways that I will collect data for my research: i. attending the festival and being part of the audience. This will also include taking photographs and video recordings. ii. interviewing a number of those involved in the festival (organisers, performers, audience members)
I would like to invite you to participate in my research by answering some questions about this music festival. The questionnaire will take approximately 15 minutes.
If you would like to read over your response, I will send a copy of the transcript to you. Your responses may be altered. Please then return the transcript, signed and dated, to the address below.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thank you for your time. Michelle Duffy
Department of Geography University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3052 ph (03) 9344 7815 fax (03) 9344 4972 email: [email protected]
4 Printed on University of Melbourne letterhead, as prescribed by the University of Melbourne Ethics Committee. 19
Appendix 5: Release forms
5.1 Release Form: questionnaire
Name of participant (optional):
To Michelle Duffy
1. I consent to taking part in the interview process 2. I acknowledge that: i. the intended use of information given by me has been explained to me am free to withdraw from the project at any time and to ii. I have been informed that I withdraw any unprocessed data previously supplied
iii. I may provide information anonymously if I choose
3. I consent for you to use, or the use of anyone you authorise, the information provided by me for purposes of illustration and publication in research only
(name of festival) Interview held at the (date) on
Date / place
Signature 20
5.2 Release Form: photographs
To Michelle Duffy
I hereby consent to you to use, or the use of anyone you authorise, of my name and/or picture, or photograph of me, for the purpose of illustration and publication in research only.
Date / place
Signature
or
I hereby consent to the use of my picture or photograph for purposes of illustration and publication in research only, but require that: i. my name not be used ii. my facial features be disguised
Date / place
Signature 21
5.3 Release form: audio recordings
To Michelle Duffy
I hereby consent to you to use, or the use of anyone you authorise, audio recordings made at the (name of festival) on (date) for the purpose of illustration and publication in research only.
Date / place
Signature 22
5.4 Release form: video recordings
To Michelle Duffy
I hereby consent to you to use, or the use of anyone you authorise, video recordings made at the (name of festival) on (date) for the purpose of illustration and publication in research only.
Date / place
Signature 23
Appendix 6: Brunswick Music Festival
Appendix 6.1 Interviews: Sydney Road Street Party 1998
Interviews carried out near Sydney Rd/Dawson St intersection on March 1 1998.
6.1.1 single man age 42 You don't have to give me any information about you [personal] details if you don't want to.
Right.
You're just here to here as, eh, to see performers?
Ah no, I'm with the school (stall?).
You're with a school?
Yes.
And just you're approximate age.
Ah, forty-two.
Ok. What is, your ethnic background?
Ah, English.
Ok. And your first language is English, yeah?
Yeah
Do you speak other languages?
Ah, yes, French.
French. And you normally speak English in your everyday life?
Yeah.
Ok. How did you hear about this festival, I mean through the school?
I live in the area, know all about it, been here for years, so...
Ok. How often do you attend this festival?
Every year.
Do you come by yourself with family, with friends?
With friends. 24
Do you attend other music festivals?
Not regularly, no.
Ok. What attracts you to this festival?
Oh, [it's] local, and, sometimes the music, sometimes other things.
Ok. What sort of events do you normally attend? Oh, some music performances, and the Sydney Rd Street Party, and, ... those are the main things I
suppose.
Yeah. So do you come to see particular performances [yes] that you see advertised?
Yes. Oh well, yes, yes.
Any in particular that you'd like to tell me about?
I, well, I think the only one I'm going to see this year is Katy Moffatt.
Oh right. Ok. How would you describe the sort of music performed here?
I think it's a real mix of things. I mean, there's most types here, at different times. Do you want me to
do a boring list? [laughs] All right. What do you think of any acts that you hadn't planned to see? Do you enjoy, are you
interested in them? Well, it's a bit mixed, I mean one or two grab me but not necessarily all of them.
Ok. Do you attend similar music performances when you are not at the festival, would you go and
see..?
Ah, occasionally, yeah.
And what does attending the festival mean to you?
Oh local celebration, yep.
What do you think the festival means to the local community?
Oh, I think it sort of brings people out & shows off all the different things going on in the local area. I
mean it's more the street party I suppose than the music festival as such.
Ok. You've been to the festival in previous years have you noticed changes around, like street scaping,
or... Oh some, and there's obviously a lot more stalls this year than in previous years.
Do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Yes, yeah, by having stalls here, and people coming out to it and so on. 25
Ok, well thanks very much for that.
That's Ok.
6.1.2 woman approx 30 with young girl approx 10-12
I'd just like to know what your ethnic background is.
My ethnic? Cook Island
And what's your first language?
Cook Island
Ok. And you speak other languages?
Oh just Oma kapa mani (spelling?)
And English?
And English, yes
How did you learn about this festival?
The local paper.
Ok And have you attended the festival [yes] before?
How often?
Oh this would be about our third year.
Right. Do you attend this festival with family, with friends?
Pardon?
Who do you attend the festival with?
Oh, with family.
Ok. And what attracts you to the festival?
Everything! [laughs]
Ok. What sort of events do you like to go and see?
Mainly the cultural performances...
Do you want to see particular performers, or..?
All sorts.
Yeah ?
Yeah 26
What about performers that you haven't come to see, maybe something a little bit different, would they interest you as well?
If it catches my eye, yeah.
How would you describe the sort of music performed?
What do you mean by that?
Oh.., is it diverse, are there just certain music types, that you hear, and do you think it reflects what
Brunswick is about?
Oh, it is pretty much (difficult to hear)
Ok, do you attend similar music performances that you do here, outside the festival?
No, not really.
Ok. What do you think this festival means for the local community?
What was that again?
What do you think this festival means for the local community?
Well, You take everyone to the, to the Brunswick area, I guess....
Ok. Have you noticed changes since you first started coming to this festival — the way they've planned
the festival...?
No, it's pretty well much the same
And do you think the local community is pretty supportive of the festival?
I think so. Yeah.
In what way?
I mean there's a lot of like, multicultural in the Brunswick area and from what I saw they were all here
and I think everyone's supportive of each other.
Ok, well that's it. Thank you very much for that.
No worries.
6.1.3 man with dog
Just the first question, what is your ethnic background?
Oh, Australian.
Ok. Your first language ... ?
English. 27
English? Ok. Do you speak any other languages?
No
Ok. How did you hear about this festival?
We live locally.
Ok. How often do you attend the festival?
Um ... once every two years.
Ok. Who do attend the festival with, apart from your dog?
Just us - yeah -that's right [laughs]
Do you attend other music festivals?
No, no.
Ok. What attracts you to this festival?
It's just local.
Ok. What sort of events would you attend here?
Um...
Just the street party, or...
The, no, no, just the occasional musical ... that's a bit out of the ordinary. Yeah ...
Olç do you come to see a particular performer then or you happy to try different ...
In the past we've come to see particular performers yes, yeah.
And what sort of music would they play?
Generally it's, oh yeah, well generally folk I suppose you'd describe it as.
Ok. Do you attend similar performances of folk music outside the festival or...?
No, no.
Ok. What do you think the festival means to the local community?
Um ... Well it sort of establishes an identity for Brunswick itself. It's a, it's sort of highlights the unique
features of Brunswick.
And what do you think they are?
Well I suppose it has a varied cultural background and it's been very underrated as a central location —
access to main centres of Melbourne — so once its name gets around for something, whether it's a folk
festival, or music festival or you know, some identity, people come to recognise its convenience then.
That's all. 28
Ok. Have you noticed any changes in Brunswick, such as parks or street scaping that you think is due
to the festival?
No.
Ok. Do you think the local community is supportive of the festival?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah, in what way?
Oh, in that they don't protest against it, basically. [OK] And so apathy is generally you know, that it
means that it's OK.
Well thank you very much.
That's all right.
6.1.4 woman approx 30-40
The first one is what is your ethnic background?
Argentina from Latin America.
Oh right. And your first language then?
Is Spanish.
Do you speak other languages?
Italian and English.
And what do you normally speak in your everyday life?
Spanish — and English of course!
How did you hear about this festival? Ah we come every year, my friend lives around the corner [oh right] we like it because it's very daggy!
[laughs] I live in St Kilda and the festival in St Kilda is a big production and so this is nice [laughs].
So that attracts you to this festival?
Yes.
Ok
Yes, the daggiest the better! [laughs]
What sort of events do you attend at the festival, just the street party or do you go to other concerts?
We, we just walk around and just talk to listen, to see something that we like. We hardly ever look at
the program.
Yeah, Ok. How would you describe then the music that you do happen to come across? 29
Ah very, very nice, very unusual. I see, we just got here this year, so I don't know, but last year, we got those middle aged ladies, Piamontese(?) ladies, or from somewhere in Italy and they were fantastic the voices were very nice, but they were very funny and their skirts (?) were fabulous. I could see all my old aunties ... [laughs]. But we also like some of the (unintelligible) music
Do you attend similar performances when you are not at the festival? Would you go and see —
Yes I would yeah. Yeah
Right. What do you think the festival means for the local community here?
I think it's a day off, you know, they talk to each other, they have a chance to advertise what they're doing ...
As you've been here before, have you seen anything change over the time?
No, no. Not much. Oh well, one year was the Chinese puppets exhibition that was fantastic. But I don't know what this year [has] yet.
0k; and have you, do you think the local community is supportive of the festival, and if so how?
I don't the community that well, but the ones who want to be supportive obviously are, you know and
the ones who are not interested, then they're not interested.
Ok. Thanks.
6.1.5 woman approx 50
Right the first question is what is your ethnic background?
Australian
And your first language then?
English.
And do you speak other languages?
Ah, a little French and a little Italian
Ok. How did you learn about this festival?
I live in Brunswick.
Do you attend this festival often, then?
No, this is the first time.
Oh OK then. And do you come on your own or do you attend —
No, with a friend. We're handing out stuff. 30
Oh Ok. About some Aboriginal videos we're showing about the struggle for the Aborigines for the land.
Oh right. And what attracts you to the festival?
To do this! [laughs]
Are you going to see any performances?
Ah, well I don't know a lot about them. No, no ...
So just what you come across?
Well, I — yes — I'll have a look ...
Ok.
Is that all?
No, nearly all. What do you think of the music?
I'm a bit old for that sort of thing.
Ok. What do you think the festival means for the local community?
Well, I've, I've learnt a lot about what's on here, you know ... what's available in Brunswick. So I think
it's good for advertising all the different activities ..
Ok, thank you.
6.1.6 woman approx 30
What is your ethnic background?
I'm Australian
And you first language then?
English
And do you speak any other languages?
No
How did you hear about this festival?
I live here. [laughs] I live one street back.
Oh right. Do you often attend this festival then?
No this is actually my first time.
Ok then. How did you find out about it then?
I saw a sign on a window. 31
Do you attend other music festivals?
Um ... yeah I always go to the a capella festival.
Oh Ok then. What attracts you to this festival?
Well I don't know —I'm just here! I've never been before — I just wanted to see what the Sydney Road festival was like ... seeing as I've moved back to Brunswick
Do you plan to attend any of the performances?
I think so, although it's always a bit folky for my liking. I'm into jazz really. It's a different sub(?)
Oh Ok. So how would you describe this, what, you'd say it's folk ... anything else?
[Nods]
Ok. What do you think this festival means for the local community?
I think it's really good... Seems to be really good.
In attracting people, or -
Yeah, I mean it's, it seems really a pretty successful festival so ...I like to (?) really
You haven't been before have you?
No
No, Ok do you think that the local community is supportive of the festival?
I think so ... I don't, I don't really know to tell — you the truth. I mean I know, certainly around this
corner, where we are, it seems to be well supported. You've got the bloody, you know, council
buildings right there and they've got to support it really, don't they?
Ok well, that's it.
6.1.7 man & woman approx 40-50. Woman responded
What is your ethnic background?
Australian
And your first language then?
English
Do you speak any other languages?
No
And how did you hear about this festival?
My son has a stall here today. 32
Oh Ok. Have you attended the festival before?
No
Ok and who are you attending the festival with?
My husband
OK Have you attended other music festivals?
Um...now that I come to think of it, we came here to one a few years ago that was on at the town hall I guess that it might have been part of this one.
It could have been.
[turns to her husband] have we attended other music festivals? [husband shrugs] can't think at the moment ...
Ok, are you going to attend any events of the festival?
No, we're just sort of coming to have a look and ...
Ok. Um how would you describe the sort of music you've heard so far?
Very loud [laughs].
What do you think the festival means for the local community?
I think it's very important to sort of ... get them all together and out and having fun.
Ok. Do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Well if this is an indication, I'd say yes.
0k. And that's it. Thank you.
6.1.8 male late 30s musician in group of 3, 2 women & 1 man
What's your ethnic background?
Australian
And you first language?
Aust - English
Do you speak other languages?
Not really, know.
Ok. And how did you hear about this festival?
Through friends [one woman responds, 'John McAuslan, because your staff] True! Friends. Yeah
Do you often attend this festival? 33
Only when I'm working here.[laughs]
Who do you attend this festival with, then?
Who, who I? ...
Family or friends?
Oh yes, family.
Do you attend other music festivals?
Yes I do.
Which ones?
Which ever ones I'm working at. [laughs]
Ok. What sort of music festivals are they then? What sort of genre?
Similar sort of genre to this but not multi-pop-cultural!
Ok. What attracts you to this festival?
[Woman responds again, 'money!'] Yeah [laughs]
I hope you realise I'm recording all this! [laughs]
Are there specific performances you see when you hear that you choose to see? (!!!!!)
That I choose to see? Um, yes good music performances and good dance performances
Ok. Have any that you don't plan to see that attract you, that you think are good?
That I'm not ... that I don't plan to see that I'm attracted to see but I'm not going to go and see anyway?!
Yeah! No! Are there any that you've come across that you hadn't expected to see, just going by, ..
Ah... the theatre -
The theatre?
The theatre thing there...
The puppets? The tightrope?
Yeah, no, the theatre down there, there's some theatre. The singing and stuff.
Ok...
Pinocchio!
Pinocchio? Ok Oh the little kid?
Yeah, the big nose! [laughs]
How would you describe the sort of music performed at this festival?
Multicultural. 34
Ok
Apart from the grungy stuff that there making — the noisy one down there!
What... - I'm sorry.
Yes, go right ahead
What do you think this festival means for the local community?
Opportunity for them to come out and walk up and down the street and eat [laughs]. Eat food!
If you've been— Is that it? Sorry
Yes.
If you've been to this festival previously -
Yes.
Have you noticed changes to the way...
Yes it's a bit longer [woman responds, 'it's better, it's much better] It's better and better, yes. It's getting better.
In what way?
Ah there's more people ...
More acts?
Stages aren't opposite each other so you can hear better. That's a, that's a relevant thing I think.
Ok. And do you feel the local community supports the festival?
It looks like they do.
6.1.8 woman mid 30s in group of 3, 2 women & 1 man
What's your ethnic background?
English
And what is your first language?
English
Do you speak other languages?
Oh well, high-school French, German!
How did you hear about this festival?
Through the program that came in the mail. And my partner, that's working here.
And how often have you attended this festival? 35
All of them.
Who do attend this festival with? your partner?
My partner and his sister, today. Sometimes on my own, my dog, sometimes my dog.
Do you attend other music festivals?
Yes I do.
Which ones?
Most of the folk music festivals, yeah.
What attracts you to this festival?
The fact that it's local and that it's representative of the community so it's a bit, it's a bit different from folk festivals where you've actually got paid artists. This one's sort of more representative of what
Sydney Road represents to the people that live here.
Ok. What sort of events have you attended or do you intend to go at this festival?
The dance and the fashion parade because, you know, I though that was kind of odd given that it's a music festival! But [laughs] I thought that would be really interesting. The unusual that — you don't mean just today, you mean during the duration?
Yeah
Yeah, I think the overseas acts, too, you know, like the Irish fiddle player, stuff that you can't normally see here would be good as well.
Are there specific acts or performers that you've come to see today?
Not really, not specific.
Ok and have you come across anything that, you know, you didn't plan to see but you thought —
Yeah! Somebody with a tape recorder asking questions! [laughs] I didn't expect to see the samba dancing either. That's sort of unusual
And so you attend similar music performances when you're not at a festival?
Yeah, yeah I do
What do you think this festival means for the local community?
I think it's great, I, I think it actually identifies, allows people to identify as a community, while still
recognising the ethnicity that, that, you know, people have behind them. And I also think it's really
good for traders because it gives them a chance to advertise their wares to people that may not be aware
that they have, they have that kind of shop around here or they have those kind of products. 36
And if you've attended the festival before, have you noticed changes?
Yes. Yeah, very much so.
What sort of changes?
Well they've opened up more of Sydney Road. They've got the traders involved. Even though that was my recommendation and they said they couldn't do that, but they have done it! Which is really, really good. So there's more involvement which makes it a bigger festival, people more attracted to come here as a result.
So you feel that the local community supports the festival?
Well, not, I don't think they've support it as much as they could, but I think that it's gaining support, and then after this year, which is obviously quite a success, I think it will be even bigger next year
6.1.10 woman mid 30s in group of 3, 2 women & 1 man
What's your ethnic background?
Australian
First language?
English
Do you speak other languages?
No
How did you hear about this festival?
Through Stephan and Sally.
And have you attended this festival before?
No I haven't
Ok. Do you intend to go to any other performances here at the festival?
Ah yes.
Which ones?
Today? Yeah? The Greek, we're going to go back up here and have a look at the Greek one and then just whatever else I happen to see as I'm walking around [laughs] basically.
Ok. How would you describe the sort of music that's been performed here today?
Great. Excellent, really enjoyable, a variety of tastes catered for, I think, from things like (?) loud as
I've just heard up other, or, just whatever, cultural yeah. 37
Ok. Do you attend similar performances when you're not at this particular festival?
I haven't done, no, not like this
Ok. Would it influence you to go and see other things?
Definitely
What do you think the festival means for the local community?
A feeling of togetherness, support for each other and, ah yeah, community spirit. Basically.
Ok. You haven't been here before, have you?
Not, no.
So I can't ask you that question! Do you think that the local community supports the festival?
Do I think it does? Well, from what I gather it seems to.
Yeah?
Yeah
Ok thank you.
6.1.11 young girl about 15, with her mother
What's your ethnic background?
Oh?
Just where you come from.
Oh, I was born in Australia
Ok and your first language?
Australian —English
And do you speak any other languages?
Not really, no.
Ok then. Have you been to this festival before?
Yep.
How did you hear about it?
Well we used to live somewhere down, somewhere off Glenlyon Road so we just walked up one day and it was there.
Ok and how often have you attended this festival?
Every year. 38
Every year?
Yep
And who do you normally come with?
My mum
Ok. Do you attend other music festivals?
No.
What do you like about this festival?
I don't know, ah ... just walking around ..
Looking at different things, yeah?
Yeah
Ok what sort of events have you seen today? Have you seen any of the concerts?
Not really
No? Ok. How would you describe the sort of music that's performed around here?
I think there's cultural music and there's the basic ... everyday music ... that you hear.
Do you attend, have you been to other music performances that you've seen here, like, not in the festival, but been to a concert that has similar sorts of music played?
Ah not really
Ok. What do you think the festival does for the local community?
I think it helps everybody to socialise with everybody else
Ok. And as you've been attending a couple of years, have you noticed any changes with the festival?
Besides that fact that the stalls move around?! [laughs] not really
Ok. And do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Yeah
Yeah? In what way?
They show up!
Ok well thanks. 39
6.1.12 woman approx 30-40
The first question is, what is your ethnic background?
I'm from Turkey
And your first language?
Its (?Serbcek?)
And do you speak other languages?
No, just English [chuckles]
And what do you normally speak in your everyday life?
English, mainly.
Ok. And how did you hear about this festival?
Oh, I didn't really hear about it, I just came and I saw, because I'm from Adelaide, and I yeah .. So I didn't know about it, I just, yeah — accident, yes!
So this is the first time you've attended the festival?
Yes, yes, accident!
Ok. Do you go to other music festivals, not necessarily here?
Yeah, I mean if I have time I love to, I do like music and I do like hearing different cultural musics,
yeah, I do, yeah.
Ok. What do you find attractive about this festival?
Well different people, different music, different food — you know different things that people sell,
from all different countries. Which is excellent and I'm proud and yeah!
Ok, have you seen any of the bands performing today?
Before? No
You've only just got here?
Yeah
Ok. What, how would you describe the sort of music that's performed here?
I think it's great. I mean some of them I think some and northern end sort of like — I was just listening
to Argentine group. I think they've sort of planned it not, varied music with sort of modern style, I think
they, I don't know, I mean, there's some music that's lovely.
Yeah?
Yeah, it brings a different country [OK] if you can understand what I said! 40
Yeah I do. What do you think the festival means for the local community?
I think it's great, I mean, bringing all the cultures in one place and, I mean, letting each other know what they're all about. Not exactly what they're all about, but I mean, showing what they have in their cultures and sharing things, sharing the food and music and, I mean, sharing I think, yeah! Its colour, it's excellent
Do you think the local community then supports the festival?
Well, I, definitely! Yeah, definitely
Ok.
6.1.13 woman approx 30s
The first question is what is your ethnic background?
Greek Cypriot
And your first language?
English
And do you speak other languages?
Greek
Ok and what language do you normally speak in everyday life?
English
Ok. How did you hear about this festival?
I live locally and I know it's on every year
Ok. And how often have you attended the festival?
Oh, every year since it's been going
Oh Ok then. Who do you normally attend with, do you come by yourself or with friends and family?
I've come by myself, but I usually meet people here in the afternoon
Yeah? Ok. What attracts you to the festival?
The multiculturalism. Different foods and all, just, every people get together and every year that I've
come there's never been any trouble at all, like violence or fights or anything. Just people mix and have
a good time, eating, drinking, partying!
Ok. Have you come to see specific performers?
No 41
Just what you come across?
I just listened to the youth bands and just read up on all the little side things that they have about all the different [interests] like diabetes and MS. It's the only chance you really — well, that I really get to grab leaflets! [laughs]
Do you attend similar music — would you go and see similar music to what you see here in your usual leisure?
No, not really, not really
And what do you think the festival means for the local community?
Well I think it gives them a chance to show people what's in their area and it's good for business, too.
Because a lot of the smaller coffee shops and that don't get noticed until days like today. And I think
Brunswick and Coburg people are really proud of their cities, so, yeah.
Have you noticed any changes to the festival since you first started coming?
Oh, it's a lot bigger, it goes further down and its getting a lot more people from the eastern suburbs. So people must be telling their friends at work and they're coming which is really good
So do you feel that the local community supports the festival?
Oh yes, very much, like all the neighbours in my flats, I've told them — they're all coming! So, yeah and you'll see that even late at night like families that go out today, they'll come about six o'clock for
the last couple of hours.
6.2 Interviews: Brunswick Music Festival Concert series 1998
6.2.1 Frank Yamma and Shane Howard concert
Held at the Brunswick Town Hall, March 20 1998, 8pm
6.2.1.1 woman 40-50 attending with female partner
Do you mind being recorded?
Not at all
And so are your parents are Irish ... Celtic as well?
My father was English and my mother was of Irish descent
And your first language?
Is English. 42
Do you speak any other languages?
No I don't.
Who did you attend this performance with?
With Mary Murphy, a friend of mine.
And what attracted you to this performance?
I know Shane Howard as a man that sings about politics and equality. And also Frank Yamma, who's a
Pitjanjara man. He's singing [about] his own identity and his own culture, so I think it mixes up very brilliantly with the western culture.
How would you describe the sort of music performed here?
Very folkish, very folkish
And you realise that this is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Yes.
And have you attended other music performances that are part of this festival?
Yes I have. Judy Small, and the Three Shielas.
Do you attend any of the workshops or dances?
No.
Are there particular performances that you choose to see hear?
Yes, I would. I would chose to listen to Shane and I would chose to listen to Judy Small and I'd also,
I've got one of those (???) the Port Fairy Folk Festival.
Do you attend other music festivals?
Yes, yes I would, in parks and gardens.
What do you think having this particular performance here as part of the festival means?
Mm! Well, I think it just translates [transmits?] a very, very old freedom of folk music. I think
Brunswick takes the [international performers?] out and brings [them] to us very affordable price. And
we as folk musicians hear about life, listening to stories of cultures and music, whether it be
Aboriginal, American or Australian, that we get those opportunities for twelve dollars a night, here, and
I love this Brunswick Festival.
What do you think the performance means then for the local community?
Well — I'm disappointed to see that most of our audience here tonight is Celtic. I'd love to see Muslim
men and women, I'd love to see Arabic cultures, I'd love to see Turkish cultures — given that
43
Brunswick is the capital of those cultures. And, and they're not here, so I'm a bit disappointed about
that.
Do you think then that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Yes it is. I think the local community is [unclear]. Both the festival and the town hall is open [unclear].
6.2.1.2 woman 40-50 attending with female partner
What is your ethnic background?
Ah ... mixed, Italian, Irish, English.
And where were your parents born?
Ah, both here [in Australia].
And your first language then?
English.
Do you speak any other languages?
No.
And who did you attend this performance with?
Mary.
What attracted you to this performance?
It's music that belongs to our country [rest of tape very unclear because of background noise from
people in concert foyer].
6.2.1.3 two males, both 30-40
The first question is, what is your ethnic background?
[male 1] What are the options?
Anything you like
[male 2] Um, English, Irish, German, Scottish — typical, typical, yeah typical white Australian. I think
Graham's about the same.
[male 1] Oh, I'm part Italian, part Australian
Ok So where were your parents born then?
[both 1, 2] Australia. Victoria in Victoria
And what is your first language? 44
[1] English
[2] Can two people speak at once, or?
Yeah, yeah, I'll transcribe it later. It's Ok
[1] English
[2] English
Ok. Do you speak other languages?
[2] Yes. French.
[1] Swedish.
And did you attend this performance together or you just happened to meet here?
[1] Ah no, we both, we're friends, so —
[2] Yep. We arranged to meet here.
Ok. What attracted you to this performance?
[2] We're old mates of Shane Howard.
[1] We've stuck with Shane.
Oh Ok. How would you describe the sort of music performed?
[1] Music performed here?
Just tonight.
[2] Folk stroke acoustic.
[1] Yeah, or folk or acoustic is the general category.
And you know that this is part of the Brunswick Festival?
[1] Yes.
Have you attended other performances?
[1] No.
[2] In previous years I have.
Ok Are there performers you particularly want to hear?
[1] Yes.
[2] yes (both laugh).
[1] There's a bloke called Peter Russo who lives in Brunswick He's [unclear] performer. Actually he's
here. He's standing over there.
Oh Ok. 45
[2] He was there a minute ago — he's not a figment of our imagination!
[1] I've actually got some of his numbers on my CD that I'll give to Shane.
Oh, you've got a CD! Do you attend other music festivals?
[1] I don't. Graham does
[2] Yes, yes.
Which ones?
[2] Well I played at Port Fairy last year.
Oh Ok. [bell sounds to return to our seats]. Will we walk over that way while I keep asking you questions? What do you think having this performance to attend means?
[1] Oh it's very significant becaise there's a diminishing number of acoustic type performances in
Australia. Used to be more around Melbourne, so I think it's very valuable.
Ok.
[2] Yes I agree! How are we going, you just got a few more?
Yes, two more. What do you think this performance means for the local community?
[1] Um, not a huge amount 'cos there's not many of them here (laughs).
[2] I think it helps to unite in a cohesive sort of a way.
Ok, so do you think that the local community is supportive of the festival generally?
[2] Yes.
[1] Well I haven't seen enough to judge. But tonight I think they are.
6.2.2 Key Carmody and the House Band concert
Held at the Brunswick Town Hall, March 22 1998
6.2.2.1 woman around 30
The first question is what is your ethnic background?
Mmm... Irish Celtic.
Ok . And where were your parents born?
Australia.
And your first language?
English. 46
Do you speak any other languages?
A little bit of Spanish, but not much.
All right, so you usually speak English?
Yes.
Who did you attend this performance with?
Ah a friend of mine.
And what attracted you to this performance?
Oh, I'm an old fan of Key's.
How would you describe the sort of music performed at this event?
Folk.
And you know that this is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Yes.
Did you attend the street party?
No, not this year but I usually do.
Ok. Do you attend other performances as part of the Brunswick Festival?
I have, yeah.
Which ones have you seen?
I saw, last weekend I saw two, I saw Vicka and Linda Bull and The Three Shielas.
Oh right. What did you think of them?
Good, yeah good.
Do you attend other sorts of events, like the workshops, or anything like that?
No, not usually.
Ok. Are there performers in the festival that you particularly want to hear?
Um ... well, I've seen the ones that I particularly want to see.
Ok.
Definitely.
Ok. Do you attend other music festivals?
Yep.
Which ones? 47
Well this year I was supposed to go to the Apollo Bay one, but I didn't quite get to it, but I usually go to
Port Fairy.
Oh right, and how long have you been going to the Port Fairy one?
About five years.
Oh right. Did you go this year?
No, missed out on tickets.
Yeah, tickets were sold out early.
Yeah.
Do you attend similar music performances — like folk genre — outside the festival?
Yeah, sometimes.
Any in particular that you remember?
No, just depends what's on.
Ok. What do you think having this performance to attend means?
You mean, why ...
Yeah, what do you think having Key Carmody performing at this festival may mean?
Oh well, they seem to have, they've got a particular, like a commitment to having a range of people. So
they make sure, they've people, indigenous people, who perform, ethnic backgrounds other than Irish-
Celtic and [unclear] different.
What do you think it would mean for the local community?
Oh well, I mean for some members of the local community they get to perform. The Brunswick
community choir here, so and it also, it's also the sort of thing that, that people can just drop in and
attend but also [unclear] other people to [unclear].
Ok. Do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Oh yeah.
In what way?
Oh well, I'm sure they attend, they go to the street parties. And it depends, I think a proportion of, a
particular proportion of the community but it's a sort of symbol, it's symbolic of what Brunswick's
about in a way.
What do you mean by symbolic? 48
Well, it's kind of like a festival that goes along with the same sort of politics almost as you'd expect the
Brunswick City Council — it's kind of left wing and a little bit kind of old fashioned left wing, a little bit hippy, you know — that sort of stuff.
Ok . Well thanks very much.
6.2.2.2 man approx early 20s (his friend also was interviewed later 6.2.2.7)
The first question is what is your ethnic background?
White Celtic, um nil parents — well, one parent is from Ireland and the other is from England —
English-Irish background, so —
0k. And your first language then?
English.
Do you speak any other languages?
No.
And who did you attend this performance with?
Say it again, sorry.
Who did you attend this performance with?
Ah, friend.
Ok and what attracted you to this performance?
Ah, just, well I suppose the singers, the singers themselves, the singer-songwriters that are actually
playing.
And you've seen them before?
I've seen Key Carmody before. I've seen the other guys have played before as well.
How would you describe the sort of music performed then at this particular performance?
Just, ah just tonight or —
Just tonight.
Well, How would I describe it? I find Key Carmody, he's a very interesting man. And I would go to
his, come and listen to his music and listen to him as well. As a performer he's quite an interesting
bloke. We got here late, so we only saw three songs, but basically, even so he's a very funny man.
Ok. And you know this is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Yes. 49
Have you attended any of the other performances?
No.
Did you go to the street party?
No, didn't.
Ok then. Will you attend any other performances of the music festival?
Unlikely.
Ok. Do you attend other music festivals?
Ah, yes we do, yeah.
Which ones?
Oh, not sure I was at the, with the Wik rally today and other than that we see I suppose a lot of pub, lot of music in the pubs.
Any particular sort of style or —
Usually a range. We see, like bands from overseas acts and we see, I suppose Australian folk rock.
Ok. What do you think this performance may mean for the local community? Like having Key Carmody
coming here and perform?
I suppose they get the experience of indigenous Australia's [unclear] songwriters they produce, like
Key Carmody. He's probably the perfect example Australia's got on offer.
0k. Do you think the local community is then supportive of the festival?
Oh, I think they would, I suppose anybody could judge by attending.
6.2.2.3 man, early 40 (with his wife)
The first question is, what is your ethnic background?
Born in Australia, but Scottish background.
O/c, and your first language?
English.
Do you speak any other languages?
No, my mother had some Gaelic, but that's about it.
And that's gone has it?
It's probably why I'm here — in a distant sort of way.
Yeah? Ok. And who did you attend this performance with? 50
Wife.
What attracted you to this performance?
The band.
The House Ban4 or?
Yeah.
Yeah? You've heard them before then?
Yep.
How would you describe the sort of music they perform?
Traditional Scottish - Irish [unclear] type people, brings out the Scottish type I suppose!
And you know that this part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Yes.
Have you attended any other performances that are part of the festival?
This year? Yeah.
Which ones?
Saw Andy Irvine way back, a few weeks back, but last week Katy Moffat.
Oh right - what was she like?
Oh fantastic!
Yeah?
I think we're seeing Alisdair Fraser next week.
Oh right. Do you go to any of the workshops or any of those sorts of events?
No. Do you go to similar performances that aren't part of the music festival?
As many as we can, when we get a baby sitter! We saw the mass [unclear] the other night at the
[unclear].
Oh right. Have you attended other music festivals?
Um, not really, I mean, we go to a lot of things around Melbourne, and we went to the country event.
What do you think having this sort of performance available means to the community or people coming
to it?
I imagine it's great. I mean it's great for the standard draw for the Melbourne community 'cos [it will]
draw them up from Port Fairy. Well we're not really local. But we come from Williamstown, which is 51 fairly community orientated, so I know what it means to them to hold their little things so I think, I
think this would be fantastic. And I imagine that this would be a bit broader than the local community
though. Just with the kind of acts that come in.
Yeah, just talking to people around here —
Yeah.
What do you, do you feel that the local community is supportive of this festival?
It's hard, it's hard for us to say. I mean, we've been coming for quite a few years and I suppose there's
people we recognise that keep coming back. And I know one or two of them are locals, but to be
honest, I wouldn't have any idea what the proportions were.
Yep. That's fine.
6.2.2.4 woman approx 40+
The first question is, what is your ethnic background?
Ah, I'm English, so what would that be?
English?!
English (laughs)
And your first language?
Ah is English.
Do you speak other languages?
Yes. I speak French, German very badly now and I learnt a bit of Italian last year.
Oh right, but you use English in your every day —
Yep.
Ok. And did you attend tonight's performance with any one?
Ah yes, I'm with a friend.
Ok. What attracted you to this performance?
Ah, I've seen Key Carmody before and I've enjoyed his music. I saw the House Band at Port Fairy —
and they were fantastic — and I'd already booked, actually, before I went to Port Fairy, so, yep, I'd
been to, this is about my third ah Brunswick Music Festival concert.
Oh right. For this season? What else have you seen?
I've seen Andy Stewart and Mick Thomas, and Shane Howard on Friday night. 52
How would you describe the sort of music performed here tonight?
Ah, well ethnic obviously, well on both counts it's ethnic — 'cos it's Celtic and it's Aboriginal — so I'd consider they'd both be ethnic.
Ok. Can I just ask you what you mean by ethnic then?
Well ... probably belonging to a country. But, that's how I perceive it anyway.
Ok. No that's fine, just so I understand what you mean. Will you attend other performances that are going on at the moment. I know you've attended two...
Yeah, I'm going to Rory Mcleod next Saturday night.
Oh right. Do you attend any of the workshops or dances that are going on?
Ah, not at Brunswick, I haven't, no, but did at Port Fairy.
So you've attended Port Fairy, do you attend other music festivals?
Ah, I went to Apollo Bay last year. Oh right. Ok. Do you attend similar music performances outside the festival structure, like you just go
and see — No, probably more theatre, I'd probably go to theatre. But I'd go to the occasional concert. I don't like
really big venues so I don't, like, you know, the Melbourne [unclear] or — well I have been to the
tennis centre and seen people there. I like the concert hall. I've been to people, I've seen people there
and at Dallas Brooks so, I've seen people there.
Oh Ok. What does attending this performance mean to you?
Um ...
I know that's tough-
No — we were actually talking about this outside just now, and we sort of felt that we were really
privileged to be able to come and listen to people like that, that have really got something to say and
the music's fantastic.
Ok. What do you think a performance like this may mean for the local community?
Ah, depends on how many of the local community are here. I'd say there probably are quite a few,
because I'd say they'd probably support their, their festival very well. I don't know, I hope that it sort of
brings them to a greater understanding of all different, different cultural backgrounds because the
festival is made up of all sorts of different cultural happenings. You've got someone like Kavisha 53
Mazzella who's doing great stuff. Yeah, I just hope it would bring people together and make people talk about it and then make other people come.
Thank you.
6.2.2.5 woman ?ages
First of all your ethnic background?
English.
Your English. And your parents were born?
My parents were born?
Yes
In England (laughs).
Ok. And your first language then is?
English, obviously.
And do you speak other languages?
A bit of French.
A bit of French. But the language you would speak every day is English?
Yes.
Ok. Who did you attend this performance with tonight — family or friends?
Who? People! Friends! (laughs).
Friends. And what attracted you to this performance?
Some one gave me a ticket! (laughs) It was the beer!
Oh really?
No that's fine (laughs).
Ok. And how would you describe the sort of music performed at this event? How would you, I mean
what sort of music would you imagine it —
Folk.
And eh,
[male: I was just interrupting the interview! (Laughs)]
5 Interview conducted by Rachel Hughes 54
That's ok. And you know, did you know that this was part of the Brunswick Music Festival before you came?
Yep
Ok. And did you, did you attend the Sydney Road Street Party?
Yes.
You did? You did as well — as part of the festival? And what other events of the festival may you attend?
[voice in background: Rory McLeod, next Saturday] Rory McLeod.
Are there workshops or any thing else going on that interests you?
I don't actually know about — basically I'm not going to much here because most of the performers
here are also on at the National Festival in Canberra at Easter and I'm going to that.
Oh right. The National Folk Festival?
Yes.
Are there performers that you particularly wanted to hear? You mentioned Rory, Rory Mcleod.
And the House Band
The House Band tonight?
Yes.
Ok.
And a few others but they'll be at the National Festival.
And why those people, those performers particularly?
Because I like their music!
It's music that you know and enjoy?
The music and energy of the performers.
Ok. The next question is, do you attend other music festivals? And if yes, which ones, so the National
Folk Festival —
That's the [major?] one.
Uh huh. Which other ones?
We usually go, we always go to the National Festival and places like Maldon and Kyneton and
...which other ones? Occasionally I've gone further a-field like Glenn Inness. 55
Ok. And do you attend similar music performances when you're at home? I mean, when you're living in
Melbourne?
Yes when we're —
Not so much festivals —
What, concerts?
Yes.
Yes, yeah.
Ok. And I guess the next couple of questions are about community. What do you think it means for a
community to have a festival, say Brunswick community?
I think it's great. I think a feeling of togetherness and especially that, that street party. That was terrific!
[Rachel: yeah] The feeling was just fantastic. It gives every one a sense of belonging and having fun
together. Getting out and doing it!
And do you feel that the local community is supportive of the festival?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Well they are, aren't they, in general. Because there's a couple of local sponsors and a
lot of restaurants they have special deals and things, yeah. I think they probably get a lot out of it, too.
In terms of ... more people?
Yeah.
In the area? More business for them. I guess if, if the place builds up a bit of character, like Smith Street and
Brunswick Street who've got the same sort of atmosphere now as used to only happen in Lygon Street.
People go there because, because of the atmosphere of that particular part of town. And the same could
happen here if that sort of thing takes off. Yeah, yeah.
Ok. All right, that's great, thanks a lot.
6.2.2.6 male early 20s6
Are you a similar background, or do you, all right, so this first question was about your ethnic
background.
I'm Australian.
Uh huh. And your parents were born?
6 Interview conducted by Rachel Hughes 56
In Australia, yeah.
Uh huh. Ok. And your first language ... is English?
Greek (?) No! Sorry?
Your first language?
Oh, language, English, yeah. All I speak, no others.
No [other] language?
No.
Ok. And who did you attend the performance with?
I basically came by myself.
Right. Ok. And what attracted you to this performance?
Well, I know someone you see, and he had a ticket and he couldn't use it.
Right.
So I acquired it!
Right. Ok, so it the, it was possible for you to go to. It was, there was the possible concept for you to go
to, so it was the one that one that —
Yeah!
— the one that the ticket was for?
Yeah. Yeah. And I believe that the House Band are quite good. So ...
So, it suited you to come?
Yeah.
Ok. And how would you describe the sort of music tonight?
Um.. what in quality, or?
Yeah, a quality, or ...what kind of what type?
Oh well, I suppose it's um folk-acoustic.
Yep.
Really.
Yep.
Um yeah, a little bit like that.
That's both Key and—
I don't, I don't know about the House Band. I haven't seen them before. 57
Right.
I think they're folky, aren't they? I was ...
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah. I've never seen them before either, so. And do you know that this event, this event is part of the
Brunswick Music Festival?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're aware of that?
Certainly.
And did you attend the Sydney Road Street Party that was on?
No.
No. You weren't there? Ok What other events of the festival might you attend?
The dance next Saturday.
Ok
Yeah. Harvest Moon, one of the best dance bands in Australia.
Ok They're playing at the dance?
Yes.
And where's the dance happening?
St Ambrose Hall, just around the corner. Excellent, excellent band!
Right.
[Put me in?] energy of 'I want to dance'!
Right. Ok.
I do.
Ok So I guess that, that leads onto the next question — what performers did you particularly want to
hear?
Yeah well, this, well you don't only go there to hear [unclear] but the dance, you go to dance, too. You
know.
Ok So it's, so it's the whole, it's the whole —
The whole package, yeah. If it was another band, I would still go, but I wouldn't be looking forward to
it quite so much. 58
Right. Ok. And do you attend other music festivals?
I'm going to the National. It's a very good festival.
I've been once!
In Canberra. Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's excellent! I sometimes go to Nariel ...
Right.
Ah, and Maldon. There a few others.
So the Victorian ... ?
Intimate ones [unclear]. Yeah.
Ok.
I suppose the ones who put a lot more into it.
Right.
If you know what I mean.
So like, with the National Folk Festival you go for different reasons?
Always a good festival. I see a lot of my friends, good performers, yeah. It's, I don't know, it's just an
enjoyable festival.
Ok. And do you attend similar music performances when you are at home, when not —
Not attending this? Oh sure.
Ok. But, in Melbourne, would you go to concerts?
Yeah, occasionally, but as I say, it's not as many as I should.
Ok. Yep.
Yeah.
And what does, what does attending this performance mean to you?
Well, just a... I don't know. What does this mean?
What does it mean?
Considering I got the ticket off a friend because he couldn't use it, I suppose it means I saved a friend
wasting a ticket!
Right. (laughs) Anything more that is part of the experience that you —
Sorry? 59
The experience of coming tonight?
Sorry?
The experience of coming tonight?
Um...
It's ... musical enjoyment ... ?
Um. Visual [unclear]. Probably not, no [unclear]
Uh huh.
Noise, noise. Yeah. That [unclear].
Yeah, yep. And what do you think having this performance to attend means? What do you think it means to actually have this going on?
What, the festival?
And, and this, this performance tonight.
Oh, it's part of the festival, isn't it? I think the festival's a very good idea. Yeah, but isn't community a
sense of being here, whatever...
Mmm.
Like I come from Broadmeadows and —
You do?
Yeah.
Uh huh.
And up there you don't have festivals like this. And it's, I don't know if they'll work but there no —
they help build the community up, yeah.
Ok. But I guess that leads onto the last two questions, as well. And you sort of said that you think the
performance means a lot to the local community? Would you say that?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well it is an area of character.
Ok
It must. Yeah
So Brunswick in this instance .. ? 60
Yeah. Well look they've also put out records or CDs. If people, which is nice to have that type of backing in sponsorship.
Right.
And um ... so...
So they've done that in this festival, they've done that in the past?
Put out CDs? Yeah.
Do the, do the benefits go to the local —
I don't know.
You don't know? It would be interesting to find out.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, well they might go back, off to the performer.
Yeah?
I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And the last question is, do you feel that the local community is supportive of
the festival?
Um, well they must be —
In Brunswick? Brunswick people? I would think so. Yes. I, I have a sister in Brunswick, I don't know about this year
but in other years she's come along to the festival, yeah.
So you've been in past years, and it's felt like, it's got a lot of support?
I would think it has, yeah. Well I don't think the council would hold it if it didn't.
No, that's true
Mmm.
There's obviously some backing behind it.
Yep, yeah.
That's great! 61
6.2.2.7 man approx early 20s (accompanied man interviewed in 6.2.2.2)
Ok. The first question's about ethnicity. What is your ethnic background?
Mostly Irish background.
Uh huh. And your parents were born?
In Australia.
In Australia?
Yeah, yeah.
And your first language then is —
English.
English. Do you speak any other languages?
Not fluently, no.
Ok so the main one you speak in every day life is English?
English.
Ok. Who did you attend the performance tonight with?
This fella!
So, friend?
Yes.
Not brothers?
No.
Ok.
No way related!
And what attracted you to tonight's performance?
Ah, just to see Key Carmody.
Right.
Really.
Yep, Ok. And how would you describe the sort of music performed at this event?
This event?
Yeah, what, what type of music?
Only act I've seen is Key Carmody, and you want a description of type of music?
Yeah that sort of thing. 62
Yeah, I suppose he's sort of folk, sort of a pop-rock music.
Yep.
[unclear] music. And indigenous to the [unclear]
Ok Great! And do you know that the performance is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Yeah, I do.
Ok. And will you attend other performances at the festival?
Ah, I might. Yeah, um, yeah.
And, but you don't know which ones?
Hope so, no I don't, no I don't know much about what's on, other than this tonight, but ah yeah, I may,
I'll see.
And did you attend the Sydney Road Street Party?
No I didn't. Good party?
It was good yeah (laughs).
I missed out then!
Are there performers that you particularly want to hear as part of the festival?
Yeah, I mean, Key Carmody.
Key Carmody. And why him?
I've heard him before. I think he's quite good, his music's good and his songs have a lot of meaning to them. He sends good messages. Also great performer on stage, 'cos he carries on and tells stories
(laughs) and he's funny, so yeah. He's good value.
Yeah. And ah do you attend other music festivals at all?
Yes. Yep. Yeah, we do. Port Fairy this year, oh last five years ah, yeah, we've been to Port Fairy.
Right. Ok Ok, do you attend similar music performances at home? When you're living in Melbourne —
Yeah, yeah, I say I would. Not as many. More music performances would be pub, pub-band sort of
situation.
Old yep.
But I have attended similar performances in this sort of set up.
Before?
Yep.
Yep, Ok And what does attending the performance mean to you? 63 laughs) I don't know [his friend: he'll sleep well!] Just, I don't know, just recreation, going out to listen to some music, basically.
Yep. So enjoyment?
Yeah, basic entertainment value.
And what do you think having the, the performance to attend means?
I suppose it's a social thing. It brings people together. I've noticed that, I was at the 'stick with Wik'
concert this morning and what a similar sort of good people here as well.
Yeah, I was there too -
And I suppose a community feel. Yeah there's a bit of, I suppose good [unclear] in the community, so I
suppose it creates a situation for the people to meet.
Yep.
Socialise.
Ok. So what do you think it means for the local community here?
Brunswick?
Yeah, to have this perf - to have this festival going?
I suppose it provides a people in the community the opportunity to see acts, [that] they probably
wouldn't usually see.
Yep. And also provides, I suppose some sort of income for the local community with people coming, you
know, travelling from other parts of Melbourne — or wherever — to, you know, to participate or come
and see the event, really.
Yep.
So yeah, that's about it
Ok. And the last question is, do you, do you feel that the community is supportive of the festival?
I suppose yeah, hard [unclear] in a way (laughs). If they're not supportive, so yeah. As far as I can tell,
they're supportive of the festival.
Ok. Great. 64
6.2.3 Music Chittari concert
Held at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, March 26 1998
6.2.3.1 woman approx late 20s-early 30s
Ok, the first question is, what is your ethnic background?
I'm a Filipine.
Ok. And your parents were born in the Philippines?
Yeah, yes.
And your first language?
Tagalo (?spelling).
Tagalo? And do you speak other languages?
Um, a little bit of English (laughs).
Ok. And what language, or languages do you normally speak in your every day life?
Tagalo.
Ok. And did you attend this performance with anyone?
Yeah, with my husband.
Husband. And what attracted you to this performance?
Well, first of all I like guitar, and some curiosity about different types of music in guitar.
In guitar?
Nice guitar.
Ok. So how would you describe the sort of music performed here tonight?
What, sorry?
In the guitar music, do you, do think it's a particular type of guitar music, or is it varied or —
Well, I like music in guitar, classical is alright, but not too deep, 'cos sometimes I can't [unclear] stand
(laughs). But you know, sweet music, classical in, not too, not too, not contemporised [unclear].
Ok, ok. Do you know this performance is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Actually I just heard it from my husband.
Oh ok then. So did you go to the Sydney Road Street party?
No.
No? Are you going to any other concerts that are part of the Brunswick Music Festival? 65
Well usually when there's a festival like in the Melbourne Music festival and all that, I, I like to attend those kinds of festivals, music festival, any kind of instrument. But particularly the guitar because my husband's exposed me [unclear] to guitar.
Right.
When, when I married him, I become exposed to the guitar as well. I heard a lot of different sounds using guitar instrument.
Right, so that's why it's your favourite?
Yeah.
Ok. So do you attend, you attend the music, the Melbourne Music Festival, are there —
The Apollo Music Festival.
Yeah? If, if I have time to come out and, and heard about the festival, I you know, I don't have any
commitments I usually, we usually go in the family.
Ok. What does attending this performance mean to you?
Performance? For me performance means a special, a prepared piece, masterpiece.
Masterpiece, yeah?
And well that means that they, the program was, was planned right and, well planned and prepared and
with a good, with a good and grand performance. (laughs) I don't know what, that's how I understand
it!
Ok. What do you think this performance tonight means for the local community?
Well it will encourage for the young people, it will encourage the young, the youth to, you know, to
indulge more on their talents. And for old people they enjoying the sounds. But yeah, it's something
like a if having the performance is different from what you seen before, it's a good experience you
know.
Ok. Do you feel that the local community is supportive of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Oh yes, every festival should be supported, I think, by every community, you know. Because that's
because in, in, especially in Australia we are all very [unclear]. Sometimes you have to have some
outlet, like music and because all of us can have some, yeah, there is some music concerts being held in
expensive, where you have to buy expensive tickets and all that, but actually in just in community 66 itself, you know, you can discover that there is some talent and good performers can be that can be seen or heard at the festival.
Uh huh.
That's why I believe that all the festivals should be supported.
Ok. And do you live locally, are you from Brunswick?
No, I live in Noble Park (laughs).
Oh you've come from out that way! Ok. That's it.
6.2.3.2 woman approx late 40s
The first question, what is your ethnic background?
I'm Australian.
And your parents were born here?
My mother was born in South Africa.
Oh right, and your first language?
English.
And do you speak any other languages?
Not very well!
Ok. Who did you attend tonight's performance with?
With my friend.
Ok. What attracted you to this performance?
Well, he said — he's a classical guitar player —
Oh right.
And he said he'd like to go, and so...
Ok. Did you want to light that?
Yeah.
Ok. How would you describe the sort of music performed tonight?
Oh well, what I've seen so far is excellent.
Olç and you know that this is part of the Brunswick Music festival?
Yes.
Have you attended any of the other concerts of the festival? 67
No.
Ok. Did you attend the street party, the Sydney Road Street Party?
No, no.
Ok.
I live near Frankston, so...
That is a bit far! Ok, do you attend other music festivals?
Well, yes there's soon to be one in Frankston. That, the Frankston Guitar Festival, and well, I'll probably go to that.
Ok. Do you play guitar yourself?
Yes.
Oh right, ok. What do you think having this sort of performance means for Brunswick?
Ah, oh ... what it means for Brunswick? Um, I don't know, I suppose, I guess —
It's a bit hard when you live in Frankston!
Yes! Well, the Frankston I mean, I suppose it means it puts it on the map more, so I suppose it means
the same for, for Brunswick, in a, in a cultural sense.
Ok. Do you think that the local community is supportive of this festival?
Well there's not many here tonight! I don't know, but there's not many here tonight at this particular
thing.
Ok. Well that's it.
6.2.3.3 man approx 60s7
What's your ethnic background?
Mmmh?
What's your ethnic background?
German-Jewish-Australian.
Where were your parents born?
Germany.
Germany. What is your first language?
German.
7 Interview conducted by Haydie Gooder 68
Ok. Do you speak other languages?
Yes, English.
English. What language or languages do you speak in your everyday life?
English.
English. Who did you attend this performance with?
Alone.
Alone. What attracted you to this performance?
The flute player.
The flute player. Is that coming up?
Yeah.
Oh right.
And he's a very good guitar player.
Yeah?
[unclear] guitar
Yeah. Did you enjoy that bit?
Yes!
So did I. How would you describe the sort of music performed?
[silence].
Do you know that this performance is part of the Brunswick Music festival?
No.
Will you attend other performances that are part of the Brunswick Streets Festival?
No.
Did you attend the Sydney Road Street party?
No.
What other events of this festival may you attend?
I am not aware of this festival, except for the flute player!
Ok. So it wouldn't tempt you to —
No, it's not about being tempted. I didn't know about it until the flute player told me about it.
Oh ok right. Do you attend other music festivals?
' Slip on part of interviewer. Should be Brunswick Music Festival 69
Yes. I play at music festivals.
Ok. What do you play?
The bassoon.
Wow. What festivals do you normally attend?
The one's I play at!
Ok.
I tend not to go —
In Melbourne? Oh yes. But I tend — I'm not a consumer of other people's products as such, music products. I'm not.
I'm not. I'm a provider of the product that they consume, but I'm not a consumer.
Just tonight?
Tonight? Yes, because of the flute player! Right, yes! Next! Next! (laughs).
What does attending this performance mean to you?
It reassures me about the individuality of the guitar.
Um... And that's really about that the guitar when you hear it well played! Tells you that it is — all mus-
Western instruments are mechanical instruments. There's no such thing as a musical instrument in
European music that's not associated with mechanics. But the guitar, the performer is very close to the
instrument, unlike the piano where the composers actually separated the performer — I'll do that again!
The, I didn't mean the second part. The performer is very close, the musician, to the instrument in the
guitar. It's not so with the piano. And you are much, I am much more taken by the Satie piece played
by guitarists, even if it's an arrangement than if somebody's playing it on the piano for which Satie
wrote it. And it is obviously about the closeness of the performer to the instrument and the, oh the
music. It's very interesting that you pick this up when you're sitting here in a small hall with a small
audience, and very close to the performer and then you suddenly get these ideas which you wouldn't
normally wouldn't have if you listened to the same piece played on a CD.
Yeah.
Next!
Do you think the — you don't know about this festival, so there's no point in asking you if the local
community is supportive of it?! 70
This is going to be great CD! Keep going! Ah Great PhD! Yes!
Do you feel you're part of the local community?
I'm not part of the Brunswick community.
You don't live around here?
No. I live in upper-class Camberwell.
Ok. Which has no music festival! Which is famous for not spending one penny of the rate payers money on
music!
Oh, so you'd like to see music festivals in Camberwell?
Well, I think it's not so much in Camberwell. One wants to see as much musical activity as possible, so
that all the graduates have some chance of playing somewhere even if it's only to ten people. But eh,
because of the ennui [unclear] in the Australian society, particularly for the serious arts, you don't get
this thinking about what should we do so the graduates work and Australia gets a better [unclear].
Doesn't do that doesn't think about, particularly the Liberals Government's.
Right. Thank you
Pleasure!
6.2.3.4 young man approx early 20s9
What is your ethnic background?
Australian.
Where were your parents born?
Australia.
What is your first language?
English.
Any other languages?
No.
So you speak English in your everyday life?
Yes.
Who did you attend this performance with?
9 Interview conducted by Haydie Gooder 71
Friends.
What attracted you to this performance?
Here for my guitar teacher.
This guy here?
Yes.
Oh right. How would describe the sort of music performed?
It's very good! Except the only problem is you can hear the traffic.
Mmm. Do you know that this performance is part of the Brunswick Music Festival?
Probably not.
Did you attend the Sydney Road Street Party?
No.
What other events of this festival may you attend? Like workshops ..
I went to the, I'd go to the Michael Fix one.
Um, whey's that?
Oh, I've heard him before and I like some of their songs.
That's a good reason. Do you attend other music festivals?
Yes.
Which ones? Which ones? I'll say, the, what's it called? The Buskers [unclear] festival. And the, what' that town next
to Geelong? You know where they have that folk festival?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah that one.
Ok.
Queenscliff!
Queenscliff, yeah. Do you attend similar music performances outside the music festival?
Yes.
What does attending this performance mean to you?
What does it mean to me?
I guess like why you've come — 72
Well because he said you've got to come and because of the report I've got to do and because I like this sort of music.
Yeah. Do you feel that the local community is supportive of this festival?
Yes.
How, in what way do you think they're supportive?
[unclear] and I think the people out there [unclear], so.
Do you feel that you're part of the community?
I am sort of close.
Yeah?Yeah, so you do?
Yes.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Appendix 6.3: Interviews: festival organisers
6.3.1 Andrew Manning, Moreland City Council Arts Officer
Held at Moreland Council offices, 10 Dawson St, Brunswick, May 6 1998.
[Manning] What I wanted to do was just to give you some information of relevance to your work. I've
been with Moreland Council for nearly two years now, so I don't have a great deal of history in terms
of the music festival but its been going since 1989. So you'll have to pardon me if I'm unable to answer
some of the historical stuff, because most of what I know about its history is anecdotal. There is some
documentation but primarily it is anecdotal. Are you a Brunswick resident?
[Duffy] No, I was at one stage. I have spoken to John McAuslan. I'm interested, too, in how it has
actually moved from a park [the Brunswick and Clifton Parks] to actually closing off Sydney Road for
the street party. I'm interested in how they are using space in Brunswick.
When I started work with this council it was following the amalgamations of the smaller councils.
There were certain issues that the Moreland Council then had to deal with, such as roads and rates and
child care, all those important things. So the issues of arts and culture did not have as great an impact
as, say, the closure of a child-care centre, the impact is not as great to the community. I would argue 73 that arts and culture does have such an impact. But there are a lot of people out there who say that it doesn't, so there are certain issues around that had to be dealt with first. When I came on I said one of the key things I wanted to do was conduct an examination of the Moreland council's involvement in festivals and events, what it is that this council wants to contribute to this community. So last year we undertook a study, I have a copy of that study here, Festivals Moreland.
Was this study part of a questionnaire that was handed out at places such as the library?
Yes. The study was conducted by Pamela MacGarvin. Pam has a long history in event management,
from the Melbourne City Council. Prior to conducting the study, we established a festivals and
advisory panel which was made up of community representatives. I noticed one of your questions is
about council involvement and so on. So we set up an advisory panel with specific terms of reference,
it was to look at council's response to community-based events, bearing in mind that there are about
fourteen different community festivals represented here, as well as council's own events. Of course the
Sydney Road street party & Brunswick Festival per se are important parts of that role. There were
initially twelve community representatives, which was extended to fourteen at one stage. There was
council representation by internal officers and representatives drawn from right throughout the
municipality, reflecting a range of cultural backgrounds, gender, age, all those sorts of things, so that
we had a real mix of people. The committee hasn't met since November of last year. There are some
questions about its ongoing role in terms of the work that it has done to date and the terms of reference
given to the committee. These are a very strong group of people with strong views and diverse needs
and its proven to be quite a nightmare, for want of a better word. With regard to your question on
funding, the festivals are funded by Moreland Council. We get rate-based money and we also obtain
funds from other sources, such as Arts Victoria, Festivals Australia, Vic Health, Australia Council, that
sort of thing. It's our responsibility to get that money. So the Brunswick Music Festival is a council
event, people may have different understandings of that relationship but at the end of the day, council
owns the event and controls the monies. And as we all live in a political climate where we have
compulsory competitive tendering, which no doubt John has told you about, it was incumbent upon us
to make those kind of adjustments. The government had already told us that this was necessary, so in
the middle of last year the announcement was made that offers of tender were sought. This is the actual 74
specification for the music festival. [Andrew hands me tender package] So a lot of what your questions are going to ask me are actually contained in that document.
Can I just ask is the music festival a separate event from the street party?
No, not as far as this council is concerned.
It is interesting because I've interviewed people and it seems in their minds that these are separate. A lot of people who go to the street party don't actually go to the concert events. And the people who go to the concerts go because they know the performers or have a special interest in something like the guitar. So it seems to be separate in the people's perceptions -
Yes. The research work that we did that led to the festivals study and so forth, really showed us that the
two events, although historically growing out of separate events, are supportive of one another, and
that's why the specification is for those two events. The council, if you like, recognises this connection
and this is illustrated in their festival programming and in the specification. But we see the street party
operating on a couple of levels. The street party grew out of the former mayor's day. The old
Brunswick Mayor's Day used to be down in Clifton Park, I think. Interest had waned in the concept and
not a lot of people turned up. There was an interest about what was happening in Sydney Road,
reclaiming the space, the national highway and let's reclaim our environment, and we said that we'll
take the resources of the mayor's day, the concept of the mayor's day, as an inclusive community event
and have the street party. That's primarily where the street party came from. The focus is in the civic
hub, which is the Dawson-Glenlyon-Sydney Road intersection, but there's pressures on us all the time
to expand the street party even more. From traders, community groups, what ever. The street party
started with two stages and a few groups, now we've got six stages and one hundred and twenty
community organisations. That's a lot. At a planning perspective, the street party is set up as a
community day but we also recognise that what we're trying to achieve at the music festival in many
ways reflects what the street party is about. It's about promoting community identity, community
participation, and exposure to different cultures. So the street party then forms our free event. And it's
the one that hurts financially. But in terms of a municipality that is celebrating its diversity, the street 75 party is what this council's really looking for. In terms of the music festival, the type of performance you see in the street party is then taken that next step up in terms of artistic integrity, excellence and so forth. It's actually trying to showcase the best aspects of those different cultures that are here, by providing opportunities to present their culture. So do you see the links we're trying to make with those two events? They're not separate and I think that once I tell you where we're going with this sort of stuff, some of the issues you've identified at this particular stage — which we are aware of — will be addressed.
I was interested too in the actual time period of the festival. The programmed events are quite spread
out and although this has its advantages, other festivals have the advantage that the entire festival is
contained. Some people don't realise that the concerts and things like the workshops are actually part
of the Brunswick festival.
Well this program is the first program that looks like it all hangs together in many respects. There's
been some significant changes over the last few years. And I brought this [the program] down in case
you didn't have one. I've yet to see a festival program that — I don't know what the 'it' factor is! But in
some respects I think we're heading down the right path. Clearly the street party is part of a wider
festival program. I think it's actual physical presentation we need to convey to our residents in a
different way. The limit we've got is limited space, the cost of producing these things & trying to get as
much information out as possible. I mean conservatively we could take out an entire page with a
banner. Seventy-five thousand copies of this program were printed up and there's sixty thousand
households where a program, we hope, was delivered to each. That was what we tried to do.
Was it also put in the local paper?
No, we don't distribute it in the local paper. I mean it would just cost us too much money.
I thought that one year you had the street party program in the paper.
No. I've asked John about that. Last year's Coburg traders event was placed in the local papers. 76
I just thought that I'd seen the layout of the street party in the local paper.
Well I think that council may have but I've asked him [John] about it. The other piece of information, before we go to the guts of your questions, relates primarily to the community aspect. Now that we have had the festivals review, we've got a document here in terms of the specifications of the tender, which goes very much to describing what the council wants to achieve in the festivals. The actual community input to the festival, which I think is what you're alluding to here, is an issue that has not been an easy one to address, I'll be very frank, and its one that's been around for quite a few years, well before I was on the scene. You need to have a management model for the organisation of the festival, one that can incorporate how our residents respond to the events and where this influence can be directed to actual development of the festival's presentation. In ninety-nine percent of other events and organisations they usually have a committee management that has a voluntary basis but led by a
[unclear] association. This committee will have a range of agreements with different sponsors. For example, Moomba and its association with the Melbourne City Council and, from our point of view, the Maribyrnong Festival. The structure of the Maribyrnong Festival committee is quite relevant to us.
Having said that, out of all that work, all that research, all those sorts of things, a paper has been developed by council for the setting up of an independent management group, a community-based
management group, for festivals and events in Moreland. I want to give you a copy of that council
report, because I think it's relevant to a number of questions that you want to ask me today. So we're
actually talking about how does the community get involved with the festival. There have been
amalgamations, there's insularity, there's commercial aspects, there's all these sorts of things. Now
coming up at the end of the tunnel, we're starting to say, and recognising, that if we actually want to put
in place the very things that we're talking about, then missing is organisational structure. There has
been a second paper, written by me, that actually describes the recommended implementations and I'm
not at liberty to discuss that with you at this stage, because it hasn't been presented to council. So it
doesn't have any status. That [Festivals Moreland] is what does have status.
When will this be presented?
Probably, in the next four to six weeks.
Would the committee be based with the council? 77
No it's independent, although council will play a very strong role in facilitating the establishment of this group and its development. But conceivably what we're proposing in Festivals Moreland is that the committee be independent, that they have a clear terms of reference and scope and support from council to develop this festivals event. And like I say the clear models that I think are of relevance to this discussion are Moomba and also the Maribyrnong festival.
Would you like to start on the questions then?
What is the structure of Moreland Council? The committee structure — as I've said, we've got the
festival panel, which has been provided with the Festivals document, I don't want to rehash that. Where
do I fit into this structure? Ok, I'm determined as what's called a fourth-level council officer. If you like
structures we have the CEO,10 God! We then have the directors of five different departments.11 And we
have managers and I'm on the next rung down. My manager is a fellow by the name of Tim Bourne and
he's the manager for cultural development. His other areas of responsibility are libraries and
information services. So I'm actually aligned with the libraries. My role - you haven't asked it here, but
I think you need to be aware of my role, I am a staff of one. So I have no staff, compared to say
Darebin which has a staff of four. Each council has their own way of resourcing these things. I'm
responsible for contract management, contract development, the liaison to festivals and events, and also
the municipal arts gallery. I'm responsible for a range of cultural and arts initiatives, the public art
program, there's a gallery festival, the Mechanic's Institute theatre. Anything that tends to have an 'arts'
label to it.
Is the Brickworks a possible site for performance?
The Brickworks is a strange one because, there's a lot of public discussion that seems to go on about
that site. As I understand it, the site is owned by a private developer. Now with respect to the council,
there are heritage aspects to it, so they can't pull certain things down and so forth. But the council
actually doesn't own anything on that site. So I get confused when people start talking about, well,
what's the council going to do there, are they going to build this or that, well council doesn't actually
1° Peter Johnstone, according to the Moreland City Council Directory (1997). 78 own it. What they are doing as I understand it is that they're actually influencing what happens there by the developer. So they're working with the developer about what's going to happen on this site, will there be a heritage tour, or that sort of thing. I don't know. But council doesn't own it.
OK, it just comes up a lot, with leaflets going around
It's a great site. Have you been down there?
Well I've walked past but I haven't actually been in.
All right, so I'm a fourth-level person. I've been here since July 1996. What is it about Brunswick that makes it a suitable focus for arts and cultural events? I would actually want to rephrase that; it is what is it about Moreland that makes it suitable.
Well that's the thing. A lot of people that I've talked to don't see this festival as part of the Moreland city council. They actually identify Brunswick as —
Well if you want to start talking about demographics and stuff like that, but I have to talk as a council member from a Moreland perspective. So what makes it suitable for our focus? If we concentrate first of all on the cultural aspect, we've got one of the most - it seems like a real cliché — but none the less, culturally diverse populations. A hundred and thirty communities are represented here. It's amazing.
When you look at Maribyrnong and they're going on about the amazing western suburbs, the
demographics show I think it's about sixty-five, sixty-seven different communities. So Moreland has
this incredibly rich cultural representation from throughout the world, and it's growing daily. We had
the highest intake of refugees of any municipality in Australia, people from Somalia, Iraq, Iran and to
some extent now the refugees and migrants from Asian countries, but it's not as strong as say in
Springvale or out West. So when you start to have that as your population base, and you start to
examine what is it different about these cultures; how do they express their lives and so forth.
Invariably what it comes down to is they like to enjoy themselves, they like to put on and display what
it is that they find significant about their lives, their culture, their heritage and all that sort of thing. So
with that many different cultural groups there are bound to be demands for expression at some point.
" According to the information in the Moreland Community directory the director of social development is Adrian Robb. 79
That's what makes Moreland different, that's why it makes it a place where organisations have their
celebrations. We have fourteen annually, besides council's. I'm sure there are more that go on that we
don't know about.
So it's primarily the population's diversity?
Yes. In terms of the arts area, the wonderful ABS statistics that show because of the historically lower
cost of accommodation and a strong politics, dominated by socialist politics, there's been a shift in the
last decade or so, of people, of artists, moving into this area. Because of those factors; lower costs,
supportive environment, and so forth. And with this, you build up a population of people involved in
the arts area, ranging from visual and performing artists, musos, through to arts management people.
Information has shown us that these sorts of people are moving in the area; consultants, graphic
designers, arts people. That's another interesting one, in terms of cultural expression, for a lot of art is
part and parcel of their lives, it's craft work. Sort of venues used? Anything, everything! From town
halls, scout halls, the streets, markets, anything. In terms of our events we try to use the civic buildings
and also we use the street, for the street party.
So that tends to be concentrated around this area around the Sydney Road-Glenlyon Road
intersection?
Yes. When you look at the review that was done on the festivals and events there's all that stuff about
do we reinvent events to try and make a new identity for this council and stuff like that. Do we
Morelandise?! What do we recognise as the communities of interest and then actually taking them on
board beyond their traditional audiences. If you look at Maribyrnong they scrapped the recognition of
different people, the Yarraville people, and so forth and said 'we're going to Maribynongise everything.'
I mean that's a decision they made and I'm not here to debate whether that's right or wrong. The
decision that came through on the research and consultations on the city of Moreland was that the
people living here appreciated what it is that's different about our communities of interest, so we know
that Coburg's different to Brunswick, we know Brunswick's different to Glenroy. The message was
don't deconstruct the good things that are there, but make us a part of it, let us know what is happening. 80
So if you ask John where did all these community groups come from for this year's street party, he'll tell you - they all roll up. We still have a strong group of representation from Brunswick but more and more people outside of Brunswick want to be involved. Funding! OK, I can only tell you what funding we had in terms of the specification. The specification states that all up there is a cost of $256000 for all events including management, structure, everything. That cost includes having to pay for some of council's own services, it is a post-Kennett construct we have. It means we have to pay for our road closures, pay for our rubbish bin removalists, and that all comes out of that cost. It' no longer, can you do this for us on Saturday or Sunday? Now we actually have to pay for it. And that's what's reflected in that cost. So you know you might talk to other festival organisors and they'll say 'Oh Gosh that's a lot of money!' You might talk to council members and they'll say that is a lot of money! But it's only because we've had to identify all the costs associated with events. And when you start including things like that people will say, 'yeah we didn't think about those sort of things.' It actually reflects a real cost.
The specification will tell you that council's direct contribution is around $140 000. The remaining funds are generated from other funding sources and also from the box office takings. So it's strongly supported by council, but it's not a free event in the sense that we have to generate funds from other sources. Has funding changed by council? I can't answer that and it is information that I haven't been able to track down. How is council involved? Where to start?! Well, obviously it's supportive in terms of establishing my position. If there wasn't that commitment from council my responsibilities would be
X Y Z instead of B M F! One of the key areas in my position is supporting the festival and that's a commitment from council in terms of providing this position. It is supported very strongly by our councillors, through consultations with various groups, through funding and so forth, and this demonstrates the value and importance of events such as this. Not only in terms of social and cultural terms but also in economic terms as well. We employ local people, they're all local artists, and this gives them opportunities. So when you start to translate that to those other issues you then start to see
that they're very important to the local community.
With regards to the local artists and musicians, how much control do you have over the program once
you've tended it out to John? Do you have much say over it or is that in the specification? 81
We employ John as the festival director. The festival director is responsible for the program. We provide a clear framework of what we want to see included in the program. So we want to see is local representation, local relevance, local involvement, local employment. But we also recognise that for our local community to benefit it is more than just local local local! The difficulty is that to actually benefit is that one, yes, they need to be given the opportunity to be up on stage and show what they can do, but they also need to learn from other people, to see what people from different countries and cultures are doing from which they can learn. It's a two-way thing. In terms of the final program, it is a negotiated position but you've got to keep in mind at the end of the day if the festival director doesn't deliver on his box office, then we've got a problem. So he must have a degree of capacity and freedom to be able to say, well I need to target this performer because I know I can guarantee box office. I mean
I don't have a problem with the good box office performances like Vika & Linda Bull, in the
Brunswick Town Hall, because they absolutely meet the objectives of what this council wants to achieve with the festival. Does that answer it well enough?
Yes, it does.
I missed one question, didn't I, promotion, festival promotion. Well I actually said well isn't that the same as question twelve, about assistance in promotion? Its' the same question. Well, promotion. Part of the specification states that John has to promote the event to the municipality and also promote the
festival program. How he does that is part of his submission to this council, which I can't give you because that's a commercial confidence. The organised distribution of that program involves promotion
through all our households, and we give that information to our publicity department. And then we
promote it wherever we get an opportunity, such as through community radio, whatever. Is that
enough?
Which community radios?
Oh North-west, council's on that every fortnight, 3CR, PBS, that kind of network. What sort of
interaction between the local council and the festival committee? Well, the festival advisory panel was
set up by council, it is a committee of council. And this committee includes council representation. 82
There are three councillors on the committee,12 so there is a strong representation and a strong interest.
It's not like we send along a token councillor. It is important to them. What sort of support do you see?
Well, one, we get a strong audience, and you can see the numbers are growing each year. On the day, it is John's job to run the street party and make sure it runs well. My job is to, if something goes wrong I try to sort it out or whatever, but I actually wander around and get my own sort of anecdotal assessment and survey. A lot of people walk, use bicycles to get there, which means they're coming locally, or they use public transport. So its pretty clear that the majority of people coming to the events are local residents.
I came across someone from Adelaide who just happened to come across it. People just happen across
I'm not saying that they're all locals.
No, but a lot seem to just come across the street party.
OK. Because it's in March, or February-March, in terms of promotion it's a real horrid time. And it's the same every year for John because there are so many other events that are actually able to dominate the press. You've got the grand prix, all those sort of things going on. And then for God's sake we had the bloody Comedy Festival half way through March start doing its thing! So there was a great deal of competition. Support from the local community is through the audience but also active participation, and I and John get calls throughout the year, asking how do we become involved with the festival? You know, how do I get involved with the street party, or, I'm a performer or an artist and I want to do something during festival time, what do I do? So that's not just in March, that's something that happens throughout the year. What do you think it means to the local community? Primarily, what we want, what we set out to do and what I think the events have provoked a response to, is that desire, that dream, to have an opportunity to interact and express the important parts of ones' own culture. It is important for people, a way of telling people that how you think and live is different to the way, say,
Greek people and Lebanese people live. The intrinsic characteristic of all these people who want to be involved in the festival is a love of their heritage and the development of their heritage and a desire to express it. And they see the Brunswick festival as an opportunity to get that message out.
12 There were three councillors (Andrew Rowe, Stella Kariofyllidis and Anthony Helou) listed in the Agenda for the meeting 83
That seems to be working, because a lot of people were extremely positive and wanted to see all the different cultures displayed.
I think that's very important. What benefits? I think we've spoken about social benefits, cultural benefits, it brings personal benefits, personal satisfaction that you're able to do something. It brings, as we said, economic benefits. I just want to clarify with you — the festivals and events come under the section of council that's called the department of social development. Now that's a very key aspect of what we want to do with this festival. With other councils, festivals and events fall under their economic development strategy. Now that's a decision those councils make. In terms of economics festivals and events are important, but the over-riding factor for us is its ability to raise social justice issues.
Has that always been in that area?
No it hasn't. From some of the history that I've been able to access the responsibility has moved about the organisation until it's found its current home — and it has been in the area of economic development. The project came out of the community arts office. So it's moved around the organisation until then probably because of council's amalgamated state and council had other issues to deal with.
That's really interesting
You can look into how other councils support their events. Yarra has an arts strategy development now.
So, benefits! Obviously, and in terms of arts development, the festival provides a range of benefits, as spelled out in the specification. A set of objectives states what we want to achieve; the promotion of
music from indigenous cultures, traditional acoustic music, styles and so forth. It's a bit of a broad
umbrella, but this brings benefits to the actual artists themselves because we want to provide an
environment where they can explore their artistic development comfortably, and not be consumed with
worrying about where the next dollar is coming. Yes it is a program, money's always a problem and we
try to provide the artists with an environment where they experiment and interact with their audience
held on Monday December 15, 1997 (DSD123). 84 and their community. They're actually playing or exploring their own voices and playing styles and seeing what works. So that's an important part of the festival. What other affiliations, connections or groups do you know are associated? Well historically there's been all sorts of associations, relationships, developments and so forth. But we're trying to get different businesses involved in some way, different social groups involved and different ethnic social groups as well.
What businesses that you are targeting in particular?
Well, at the moment its all about tying in with the festival so you do have to be selective in a sense.
There've been various campaigns over the years. There was a restaurant guide, you know, have a felafel
here and get a discount on your tickets to a concert. So there've been a range of things that we've tried.
What John was trying to do, with our support, was try other venues that present live music to actually get them to become a part of the umbrella program. Then we could actually develop a sense of vibrancy about Sydney Road during the festival season, so that restaurants would stay open, but it was
difficult.
I noticed that it seemed once the concert was over it was dead around Sydney Road. You'd come out
and there was nothing.
You couldn't get that facial expression on tape but I agree. Well you know that's part of trying to
educate people about what are the benefits of an issue such as this. And that there are direct economic
benefits to be had for businesses. They don't always recognise it, some are very good and some are not.
It was just disappointing there was no place where the audience could get together afterwards.
That's right. So by having other venues that put music on — like Bridie's or the Rainbow, Ritmo now
has opened up, Latin American, even good old Colin at the Retreat is thinking about — it's actually
getting a different section of people involved in music from different sectors. So it is conceivable when
the festival is over, there might be another band playing at the Rainbow or somewhere like that and an
audience becomes established. It's all about that evolution, how you get involved, the stimulus and all 85 that sort of thing. It doesn't happen overnight. How do these groups help the festival? They provide other programming for the festival. It brings people into the area, from outside the municipality and also within it, it gives support to art programs and provides employment. What is promoted as the main feature of the festival? I think that we've already discussed that. What we're trying to present is an inclusive range of celebration. That's about the main feature. Describe the audience you're targeting.
Everyone! It's a council event, it's a community event. It's the residents. I'm not saying that flippantly.
But I do recognise that the festival program and its concept has wider attractions. The festival plays an important role in terms of other artistic activity on tour, supports other festival activities that happen around that time. So we're not totally insular and isolated.
I'm interested because of the responses I've been getting between people who go to the street party and people who go to the concerts. It seems like a different audience.
I think that for me to try and qualify that is difficult particularly in the short time frame. Just in the time that I've been here, I know it has a great deal of support from the sectors of the community that identify and are involved in the arts. The sections of the community who would be described as intelligent, a leaning to the left in politics, so yeah, it's been able to engender a lot of support from people within this community. But it's difficult to say, Moreland is a happy place, we can tell by the ten percent increase in smiles on people's faces.
The other sort of thing I was thinking about is perhaps the use of buildings or structuring.
That's what we're trying to do in many respects. It's gone through cycles in terms in history of the festival's development. You know, there's one program from the old city of Brunswick days, which is an absolute fantastic knock-out! You just look at it and go God where did it go? It's jut part of evolution and change and all that sort of thing. But I think now the festival is on an interesting path, in terms of its future. It's ten years old, so its got to have some merit if it has gone on this long. Has there been objections made to local council about the festival? Please tell me about this. Objections! Bloody
McAuslan didn't ring me back! He told me I could get a gig! Like any of these things you're never going to please all people all the time. 86
Actually, I was interested in the blocking of Sydney Road. It is done on a Sunday so trade is going to be
less but I was wondering if there have been complaints from people who want to travel through Sydney
Road.
Well, I mean traffic diversion has always been a problem and there's been different attempts to deal
with it. Last year's event was a real nightmare because the different parts of council were not talking to
each other and so we had the Arabic festival on the same day as the street party. And there was no way
the Arabs were going to alter their day! I mean that caused chaos. There was no Arabic festival in
Clifton Park this year. But look, a lot of people use the ring road, the freeways, local residents know it's
coming on we letter drop them, inform them well in advance, they know that there is a council street
party about that time of year, and only happens once a year. At Christ Church, with Father Robarts, the
parishioners were annoyed because they couldn't get to church that Sunday morning, so we tried to sort
them out, help them out. The fish shop down the road, well, old Michael! It's well known we have the
street party every year and the traffic management has been able to deal with it [unclear] with our
engineers. Objections? Lack of notification about when the opportunity is open to be involved in the
festival event. And as I say to people, we always advertise in the local papers. That's the best we can
do. If they don't get a local paper that's not my fault. They need to talk to their local paper about it. And
we don't keep records of who wants to get this form or who wants to get that form, it would just be an
administrative nightmare for us. Other objections from a more planning level I suppose have been
those issues that you brought up earlier about, well, I'm in Glenroy and the Brunswick festival has no
relevance to me. And we've sort to address those issues and we used forums like the festival panel and
consultation with our community in surveys and open-ness and all those sorts of things. Now one of the
things that came out of the work we did there was that some people, particularly those under the former
city of Broadmeadows, actually identified with the Broady Spring festival. And that's fine, you know if
you identify with an event go for it. We're not here to stop and say you're Moreland now! You've got to
stay here or we'll lock the gates and not give you a passport! We don't work like that. If people in
Glenroy wanted to conduct an event I'm sure that this council would say, sit down and let's talk about
it. I know from my own interactions with the city of Hume people that we will try and provide them
with some support, if possible. You know, you can go to the Darebin festival, the Moonee Valley 87
Festival! In terms of objections, yes, when things were Morelandised we did have to look at the issue of what appeared to be a concentration of resources in the southern part of the municipality. But by engaging in processes such as dialogue, consultation and so forth we're heading down the track of addressing those issues, why are they here, what's their purpose and so forth.
6.3.2 John McAuslan, Brunswick Music Festival director
Notes taken from interview held in coffee shop, Sydney Road, April 15 1997
Street party is a chance to show local talent, trade.
Mostly local or local communities involved, also contacts through cultural groups.
John used to be funded as musical director by Australia Council & Arts Victoria.
Office become network centre for those wanting info re publishing, how & where to record, etc. Office was unofficial network for all of this.
Structure of office changed. Contracts made with Moreland council. Kennet government introduced
CCT (compulsory competitive tendering). Statute brought in so that by end of 1997 financial year 50-
60% council services to be tendered out.
Australia Council no longer funds John's position because does not fund private companies. Prior to this, Australia Council & Arts Victoria funded 50/50. But John no longer an individual but a company.
Contract: John has to guarantee an income, therefore decreased community/local content, because have
to ensure income. But ways around this such as pairing of less well-known with better known acts.
Council not yet tendered out festival because haven't decided what they want re structuring of festival.
Council funds street party, also Australia Council & Arts Victoria (ie separate from festival as a
whole). 88
Contract: different aspects re running of festival outlined eg percentage devoted to concession
■ payments etc. Some things outlined restrains John's running of festival. Company itself gets no benefits
from good festivals ie profits given to Moreland council. But John's responsibility if things go wrong.
Street party: not much community input apart from John's connections ie knowing about an act via
someone he knows.
Iramoo Zone: actual designated space around front area of Mechanics Institute. Has been in the last two
festivals. Unsure if this is to continue because of politics & budget constraints.
Always has been strong Koori representation, since first festival in 1989. For John this is because
Koori at forefront of Australian acoustic community.
All program decisions re John: based on whether it is good art or not.
Every year program different; last year two big acts, one from Chile, one Crete. Depends on what acts
come along.
Poetry: spoken word always included. Some musicians think would be better to have less poetry &
therefore include more music, but poetry important in Brunswick. A number of poets live in
Brunswick. Always been part of festival, also always local poets.
John thought that next year maybe place poets in music concerts as guest spots. Also get pub poetry
going.
Festival - umbrella for a number of acts etc in Brunswick:
i. Brunswick Women's Theatre
ii. CERES
These included in program notes, free. If tending, this would have to be looked at, as source of money
(eg size of ad etc)
Crow: symbol of Wurundjeri tribe, used in contemporary way in program. 89
John has input into program design.
This is an emphasis on Sydney Rd:
Corporate plan of about three years ago identified particular area of Sydney Rd as arts precinct (around
Town Hall and up to about Albert St). Area includes artists' studio, pottery studio, Joi café (with permanent art on display).
Council's brief was to utilise this area. This has grown through influence of Sydney Rd development committee who want to increase to include more traders.
Street party has number of concerns:
i. around 55 community groups - bring info, wares & foods - festival provides stalls etc
ii. performances, street theatre etc
iii. local crafts
iv. restaurants
street party started as a community day in a park in 1991(?) — no one came!
John & Brunswick community arts officer (Peter Leman ) identified area around Dawson Street near
baths. Following year suggested Sydney Rd / Dawson St intersection, then blocking off of Sydney Rd
itself. This was very successful.
Sydney Rd street party different to other festivals. According to John, street is not like Brunswick St
where everyone uses it as an excuse to drink too much. Rather it's very much a local thing. Most people
travelled by foot or bike, therefore local people. People realise it's a good community event.
However already suggestions being made to hold it again in a park — but then not a street party! Also
many councils have community days in parks eg Darebin (held on same day as Sydney Rd)
Support from local businesses very strong.
A sense of narrative is tied into festival:
i. idea inherent in traditional Koori song
ii. European ballads = entertainment before TV
Aspect of the storyteller woven into festival — but is there anyway 90 first Koori festival held at CERES
Koori Arts Collective 2 people involved: i. Maxine Biggs - performance arts co-ordinator ii. Michelle Smith - visual arts co-ordinator
economics, gender, politics etc always strong part of traditional song, varies according to performer, eg Judy Small, James Keelaghan, Tiddas
Storytelling not really planned but there by nature of traditional song.
Lecture series started in 1996.
Maxine co-ordinates this. Problems: i. Koori & Islanders don't have same attitude to planning as Anglo, so changes often eg Council
for Reconciliation was to speak at this year's festival but didn't happen, even though included
on program
ii. Asking for statements by artists but they see themselves as speaking through their art, don't
want to talk about it
People from Swinburne & Monash Unis present at lecture series so series getting noticed.
In Anglo culture very little interface between Anglo & Koori cultures therefore this provides a
space/opportunity.
Identity exhibition: a Koori thing. Michelle came up with this after looking at art offered for festival. It
was not a conscious decision but a theme worked out upon reflection.
Important for Koori to develop identity not as a victim. Native title - land is central issue to identity.
Other areas/groups re Brunswick music:
i. CERES - Kathy Nixon - she also started Brunswick Women's Choir. This group an important
aspect of community music in Brunswick
ii. Brunswick Women's Theatre - new show starting Thurs 17 April 91 iii. In May, performance 'Little City' will be in Town Hall, a show written by Brunswick locals -
features choir & 10 musicians iv. Gorgeous Productions also has a show in May for 2 weeks
Brunswick no longer in a sense 'Brunswick,' rather is a part of Moreland, along with Coburg &
Broadmeadows, but people still identify with Brunswick not Moreland.
Councillors pressured to expand festival into Coburg & Broadmeadows but these according to John are quite different areas re identity. Conflict: argument used is that there still is a sense of Brunswick & a distinct Brunswick culture.
However, Brunswick is getting more expensive with regards to property values, so a move further north. This, means music/culture is spreading (in particular to Coburg).
Another comparable region is Northcote-Thombury-Nth Fitzroy. A bulk of audience/market for
Brunswick festival comes from this area.
Re booking - system info re audience composition. 1997 first time audience from Kensington, Moonee
Ponds & Ascot Vale (& a little bit of Essendon). 'first time we crossed the creek!' Therefore will advertise in this area next year re festival.
Advertise in some music magazines & The Age. Also some radio stations eg 3PBS, 3CR (also RRR although less this year as some believed this audience not part of festival target audience) 92
6.4 Interviews: performers
6.4.1 Anne Harkin, member of the group Short Circuit
Group performed at the Sydney Road Street Party, March 1 1998.
Interview held in Harkin's home, June 25 1998, 2.30pm
I'm interested in how long the group has been performing.
OK. Short Circuit has been together for about a year. Before that I had a Middle Eastern band, Ta'esh
Fa'esh, and the other drummer from that band I've been playing with for about four years. We've been playing together in various outfits. So from Ta'esh Fa'esh to Short Circuit. Its Arabic for 'let's party.'
I'm interested, too, there seems to be a mix in Short Circuit between Arabic and African.
Yeah, we do about fifty percent West African and fifty percent Middle Eastern.
And are all of you Australian?
Yeah. The band you saw, a new drummer has joined since you saw it, she was actually born in
England. But we're all born in Australia of mainly Anglo-Celtic background. One girl's Celtic-Italian.
And you all basically have an interest in this sort of music?
Yeah and dance. We just find it exciting.
And the dances and music are traditional?
The music is very traditional. We do authentic rhythms from those countries using the authentic
instruments. We make our own arrangements. And the dances are contemporary interpretation, it's not
traditional dance. They contain some traditional elements but its contemporary interpretation.
And the costumes as well, are quite spectacular. 93
Yeah, we go for the fluorescent fabrics. It's kind of the end of the twentieth century look. We do techno nights and dance parties and under the UV lights they look fantastic.
So that's again a performance, you don't get people up dancing with you?
Yeah, sometimes. Like, yeah, it's often towards the end of a bracket. Or we're specifically employed to
play for a private party then you get people up dancing early.
Do you perform at other festivals?
Yeah. We've performed at Port Fairy this year, Geelong Waterfront Festival, Queenscliff Music
Festival, International Women's Day, we do all sorts of things really. Some concerts for CERES, down
at Brunswick. At universities, that sort of thing, like lunch time concerts.
Do you think there's a common sort of festival setting that you're asked to perform at?
Well this particular band covers a huge range of venues, including techno nights, forest raves,
traditional Muslim weddings. But the traditional Muslim weddings we don't do with the dances. We
just do it with the three drummers because they have separate men's and women's receptions so they
can't have any men playing for them, but they like to dance. So we play some Arabic rhythms and they
normally get up and dance. And we don't wear the fluorescent costumes but Saudi Arabian big long
gellabeyahs13 with lots of gold spangles and stuff. So yeah, it's a pretty flexible kind of band. It's not
just folk festivals that we do. It's kind of contemporary Australian really in that its combining different
cultures in a new way.
You got quite a crowd at the Brunswick festival.
Yeah, that was a good reception. Someone was filming that — actually from ABC TV. It's going to be
part of a documentary on about September.
13 Spelling of foreign words provided by Anne Harkin 94
What is the documentary?
Oh, about folk music in Australia. I think it's going to be called Folk Ways. I don't know the details yet, she said she'd ring me back. Yeah I've been in other films. There's another one that's going to be screened on SBS later this year, it's just been finished. It's called Beating the Drum, about multiculturalism. The first film I was in was called Red Light in Full Flight — about Arabic dance or bellydance in Melbourne. It was screened a couple of years ago on SBS.
There was an article in The Age about drumming.
Although this is kind of a misleading title because it's not just about drumming. It's beating the drum as in making announcements. Or speaking up for your cause or whatever. The topic of the film is really about cultural appropriation or misappropriation. And she's asking a lot of people their opinions about
using the music and dance of a culture that isn't yours. And what right have you got, and are you allowed to change it and if so, to what degree, and do have to consult the original owners.
What sort of answers did you give?
Well, I got a very short bit in the actual finished product. But there was a question that was in the film,
something about well I think it was OK to use other peoples' culture as long as you keep in mind the
way they intended it to be used. And you do it to the best of your ability, don't do it sloppily, you know,
reach a good standard.
So when you are performing, what are you trying to get across to the audience?
A joie de vivre, I think. Like, just to let them feel something. And in our music it's a kind of happiness
really. It's music to make you want to dance.
What does it mean to perform in a festival like the Brunswick Festival?
Well it's great because I live in Brunswick, so it's nice to put something back into your community and
to form some sort of link with people, because from that people see you when you go shopping down 95 the street and stuff. And it's just makes more links within the community so you're not just living in an anonymous twentieth century suburb but you actually know who people are, to some extent.
So a personal thing, being seen by people who come and talk to you?
It just makes — I like to live in a community, I mean I don't like the extreme of small country towns where every one knows every one's business and you can't move without word getting around about who you were with and what time it was and what you were wearing, that sort of thing. But on the hand, I don't like that big city anonymity. It's like somewhere in between, you've got some feeling of belonging and recognition.
Do you think Brunswick is a good place to be doing that?
I think Brunswick is an excellent place to be doing that. It's a great place to live. It's very rich in its cultures. I lived in Tokyo and it used to drive me mad. One culture! One language, one way of being, one way of thinking. I used to really miss the different kinds of faces and clothes and food and just the richness that you've got in Brunswick.
You perform at different venues and things. Do you have a typical audience?
Probably twenty to thirty year olds, or eighteen to thirty year olds would be a typical audience. Like people who are into percussion which tends to be eighteen to thirty year olds. Which makes me a generation older! Most of my band's half my age. And when you do dance parties and universities they're pretty young, early twenties. So yeah, eighteen to thirty would be our typical audience.
Do you have people from the Arabic or West African cultures discussing with you your performance?
Occasionally. Like my band has played at, do you know The Stage Bar? They have once a month a
Middle Eastern dance party that they put on for belly dancers with an Arabic band. And we played there once and the Arabic band came and told us we were good, which was a big compliment. Yeah and when we played in Sydney Road, Arabic people came up. 96
So it's quite a positive feedback you get?
Yeah. They're delighted to see their own music. Because what do you get from the radio unless you search out 3EA? And you're not going to get a lot of Arabic music.
How did you originally get interested in this sort of music?
Through living in Paris and mixing with Arabic and North African people. Through getting into drumming and watching people dance to drumming in Paris.
And so you were the originator of the two groups here?
Yeah, yeah. I sort of got into the music there, and then I did a bit of belly dance. And then I came back here and got some Middle Eastern drums and looked for a teacher.
And the drums themselves, what sort of drums do you use?
The Middle Eastern drums?
All the instruments you use.
You want a list of all of them? The main Middle Eastern drum is called doumbek, I've got three kinds now. I've got traditional ones which are ceramic and animal skin, I've got modern ones which are aluminium and plastic skin, or I've a got another modern one which is ceramic with a synthetic skin.
And I've got that little mini djembe over there that you can use in the same fashion, which is wood with an animal skin. I've got Middle Eastern tambourines which are called req. They've got either a wooden frame with an animal skin or aluminium frame with a plastic head. Finger bells, zills, frame drums - all different sizes - daholla which is a bass drum, mazhar which is a giant tambourine, that's about it for the Middle Eastern.
When you perform how do you choose which particular instrument you are going to use? 97
Depends on whether I've got a microphone, some of my drums are quite soft. So if I need volume, I won't use the smaller, the soft ones, if I haven't got a mike. Depends on the piece, if it's a delicate piece
I'll use a ceramic bodied one, because it's got a nice delicate sound. If it has to be loud then one of the more modern aluminium ones. It depends on the piece and the venue and whether you've got a mike.
If you'd ask me which are the best festivals to play at and what makes a successful festival, I'd say when there is a feeling of community generated. And the organisers are aware of that and make an effort to make it inclusive. There are some festivals where there isn't an area for people just to mingle and interact. There's only concert venues where you sit and watch the performers and the audience doesn't get to meet each other. But there are other festivals, like the National Festival, that provides places where people can meet and mingle and mix. The chai tent is a bit of an institution at a lot of festivals. And festivals that don't have a chai tent I think are really missing something important. But I think the fact that drumming has become important to young people predominantly, is causing festival organisers a bit of a headache because it's a noisy instrument and the sound carries and effects other people. They really haven't figured out a way to accommodate this. So it gets people's backs up and so they do things like not have a chai tent in order to not have drumming.
Do you think then the structure of the Brunswick Festival then is good from that point of view?
Well, that's a different sort of festival, it's a street festival and it lasts like one day or one afternoon and evening. Whereas a thing like the National Festival or Port Fairy goes for three or four days. And you virtually live there and you don't have to catch public transport, you don't have to deal with your daily routine. You know, pay the bills and do the shopping and all that, it's a real kind of holiday atmosphere.
Yeah, it's got a different character and a different purpose I think.
How would you describe that character?
Well I suppose it's putting on display the best of what there is of the local community for the local community, plus anyone else who is interested to come in for the day.
[Harkin added the following comments to her transcribed interview] The band is called 'Short Circuit' as an allusion to a flash of energy and light. Also because originally it was intended to link our traditional, organic-type drumming to synthetic-techno/electronic-type drumming. This has, in fact, 98 only happened on a few occasions. We mostly don't combine with the synthetic drums/electronic music. I particularly enjoy playing at a street party in my suburb (Brunswick) because it changes the nature of the place where I conduct my daily life. Where I walk to pay bills/ do the shopping/ get to the pool/ CBD etc becomes as well a place infused with memories of people dancing/playing music/sitting in the sunshine chatting/eating/drinking/meeting friends. It adds to the quality of life by adding a new and pleasant dimension to what Sydney Road means to me (and others presumably).
6.5 Interviews: Other
6.5.1 MC14
Long-time Brunswick resident.
Interview held at University of Melbourne, March 9 1999
What I'm interested in is the people who don't get into the music festival and perhaps why they don't get in. So I'm trying to think of ways to look into this.
In some ways I've been a bit separated from all of this because I've been overseas for seven of the last
twelve years. On again, off again. [I've had] more to do with how it was set up with the Brunswick City
Council as another one of these attempts by the new Labour council, then new Labour council, to
promote the suburb — for a suburb that was demographically very different from what it is now. And
in some ways, their emphasis, and their change of emphasis in the festival, promoted in a sense a new
demographic in Brunswick. I think it's been one of the key features for people outside of the suburb
partaking, I mean thinks like (sedas?) — a host of things.
So you are saying that what's being reflected in the festival as multicultural is really not what the
council —
It's not so what the council — it's in part the council. Now there's almost a marginalisation, there has
been, even though there've been members of the ethnic community, even as mayor, there's a
marginalisation in the decision making process by that clique. So — my father was a councillor. Its' a
"This respondent is references as 'MC' as anonymity was requested. 99 strange — and to some extent it's fair enough, because the others [members of the Hill clique] understand process, administrative process, more than somebody who's come from overseas, their language skills are not up to that. But it also has other effects as well. And one of those was from something that was supposed to reflect the community, it became something [else], through the process of funding, asking for parallel funding from different institutions. Because initially it was all sponsored by the Brunswick council. It's become something that isn't so much a reflection of the community as something that is more a reflection of those people [members of the Hill clique] and their values. It's a strange one. So that in some ways the more accessible aspects of multiculturalism things, like the
Greek bands playing at the Retreat Hotel, are easier to incorporate into that rather than going find your
Turkish bands playing in the wedding scene. [These bands are] very strong at the receptions scene and the rest of it. There's beautiful music playing at the Lebanese band restaurant and because of the decision making and the process of selection, and the process of — I mean at the times it was being set up with a lot more drive towards events paying for themselves as part of funding, with the Australia
Council you had to show return. Which sort of didn't promote a more inclusive approach, of trying to get other people included.
The street party, it's very much about colourful display and really catchy rhythms in the music that are
attracting and bringing the audience in. Between this year and last year you can see that the stages are
set up so that people walk to those sort of catchy things, while the youth stage, which last year was in
front of the church, this year it was down a side street. Just the way they place the different groups I
find quite interesting. It seems to be more about that sort of colourful display of the 'ethnic.'
Well since the amalgamation there's been a conscious policy by the council to preserve that south
Moreland/Brunswick area as more of an arts precinct development area. If that will change — even
though Mike Hill has resigned there's still a few people from that Left there — and there's no real
reason to change that. The factional politics in the ALP means that you have a system of rotation of
mayors and all that so —
So what about the selection process, what do you think they're actually looking for when they're putting
this festival together? 100
At the moment? Well I remember coming back, probably when I came back in 94, I'd been away for 18 months or so, and I was really quite annoyed at that point in time at the lack of, I suppose the lack of things that were on being really reflective of the society. This was in 94 before the last great push of demographic change. Because there has been a fairly substantial one in the last couple of years in
Brunswick. So in a sense you had a far larger Arabic, Turkish, aging Greek and Italian community and they weren't really being represented in what was being put forward. It was a bit more like a variant of the Port Fairy folk festival. Now nobody from that community or even the older ethnic community is going to attend it, so are you staging something that is reflecting the suburb or reflecting the values that you want to impose on the suburb?
I've talked to the director, John McAuslan, and he said that he's in a bind because of competitive compulsory tendering he has to show that he has a[return in] box office. He said that he does often link with Port Fairy because they get big names from overseas and so, because it's around the same time he can bring them across. He agrees that it's much more like a folk festival than a general music festival.
And it seems to me that in some of the concerts I've seen that is the case. And the concerts with a more folk element have a much bigger audience than even concerts such as the guitar festival they held as part of it [the BMF]. I think he's caught in what he has to do.
I'm not blaming anyone for that change. It is still partly through the funding bind. Also partly through the type of music and the type of audience you can get to a certain kind of music. By trying to package everything as sort of mainstream and getting it out there you're either going to have to change the product or really push very hard to get that community there out there. And on the whole it's a lost cause — it's a very difficult thing to do. But that difficulty plus the funding constraints plus a lot of other factors have led to those things becoming more and more peripheral. So that in a sense you get more a feel of those elements in a society when you have the fiestas or whatever on the Victoria Street park. That's completely different. I mean had you gone yesterday there's a yearly Greek thing on in
Coburg near the town hall. That's got a completely different feel, a completely different audience to the street party. I mean the street party's more representative than the festival as a whole. 101
So there's more — a Greek festival, do you think that's more reflective of the demographics of
Moreland? Or are they also catering to the larger Greek population say generally in Melbourne? Do you think a lot of people from outside?
Some people come from outside as well but there's still a huge Greek population in their 50s, 60s, 70s and with a lot of their children still living in Moreland. There would have been — I didn't go this year,
I went last year, but its' an opportunity to see people you haven't seen for a while. And that would, we would have been a couple, 2 or 3 thousand, so what I'm saying is that those people are quite estranged from the [Brunswick] festival itself. And yet initially it was meant, supposedly, to reflect that multicultural element. It's a difficult one.
It is difficult. It seems too — like the PNG group, the people involved in that group don't actually live in Moreland. But then by the same token I spoke to people at the street party and most of them don't live in the area either.
But what do you think in terms of the population there attending events, do most of them live there?
It depended - the street party, yes, most of them were just going out for a Sunday walk. While the concerts it seemed a lot of people were targeting particular concerts. Like the guitar festival. And that sort of linked, too with the Frankston guitar festival so similar performers and people were aware that that was on.
And I think a lot of people who go to Port Fairy and the rest. You know Ibe had friends who do that stuff and say well, have you got a copy of the festival program — we'll see who's here.
In some ways the street party is trying to be about the locality while the concerts are nor necessarily about that at all.
But by the same token even in terms of the street party —I didn't go this year, Ibe been to the last two or three — I sort of seem to find more and more, not non-residents necessarily, but again its' seems to 102 be a different mix —and this is just a gut feeling — to the everyday Sydney Road people who congregate there. Because its' a fairly aging population and I didn't see as much of that. I don't know.
What I found interesting was that a lot of people didn't know about it, they were just taking a walk
because it was a nice day - they'd forgotten all about it, so - it's interesting to me because it is on the
main road - no trams, the local church is unhappy because there's no where to park. So it's interesting
that with such a major block that a lot of people in many ways are unaware of it.
But then again, you know St Ambrose there has a completely different cliental! Christ church is a
church that's always been in Brunswick but it hasn't always been a part of Brunswick. Its' strange
because of that. Also if you compare it to something like the Carlton festa, well for along time, not so
much these days but even so, the old Italian mafia — and I mean that in the nicest possible way! —
runs the Carlton traders association and the rest of it, have a pretty firm grip on certain aspects of the
festa that were — where you'd see a lot of the older Italians in the suburb, their children almost
congregating, you know, and I think that's probably one of the factors of why they run it. And they run
it as something for them and it's very open to the outside, obviously, being on Lygon Street, but
something that is reflective of their culture. Whereas the Brunswick one wasn't run by the local traders
association, it wasn't run by them, it was run by a certain political clique that were reflecting more of
their own values than Brunswick. I've nothing against Michael I'm very supportive of Michael, I'm just
pointing this out.
Well that's changed in some ways because right in the beginning it used to be in a park and it's grown
from that. Do you think that earlier time was more reflective of what people in the area wanted to do?
I think there was probably, well it was a little bit less focussed and in that sense it was easier to see a
lot more people. But despite the very strong multicultural policy and translating documents, despite all
of that, that sort of outreach is very, very difficult. And unless you get their representatives strongly
involved - what's tended to happen is that there's been a segregation even there of people like the mayor
the ex-mayor. They've felt estranged from both the political and the cultural process at times. 103
It seems the Greek community is a very strong group of people who work together and use the appropriate channels to do things — well that's my perception.
Well, they've been there longer than most. There's a strange thing there, too, because for a while before that it was mainly the traders who ran the council. And that was particularly the older Italians in the area. And they were just as bad in some ways, in fact a lot worse in others, because it was all focussed towards the traders or giving a concession to the Juventis Club etc etc. And the Greeks were always part of the ALP process so perhaps that s why it looks a little bit more organised from that perspective
— they had stronger representation there than perhaps some of the other communities.
I don't know very much about this but there seems to be a strong African community moving into the
area too and I don't know how they operate within this.
Well again strength is a funny thing because it depends not so much on numbers, it depends on the age
range and how recently and how closely bound they are. A more recent group, even though not strong
in numbers, has other strengths. The African community in America is not very large at all, but there's
that element to it. But its' more attractive to the world music/exotic current flavour. We've been through
the Greek and Italian folk things, the politics of the 70s etc etc. It's now time to expand and embrace
other things and it's part of this eclecticism in a sense and practice, it almost seems, in world music,
cuisine etc.
What do you think the street party does - [break in tape]
What is multicultural for you?
I don't actually like the term. I suppose what I'd like — to me it seems that the multicultural is a sort of
display and — it's positive — but it doesn't seem to go beyond this is the music you play or this is the
food you eat. And sure, that gets you interacting, saying yes I can see something of what you're about,
but to me it doesn't seem to go any further than that, towards a better understanding of how people
view the world or how they interact. So sure it gets people out there and seeing different things but
there's more to seeing or hearing different things. 104
Absolutely. In some ways I'm very proud of the Brunswick and then Moreland city councils, pushing social justice issues, pushing a lot of issues that were out there, but by the same token being very politically correct. When it comes to question of needs, it's a very strange one because for instance they spent millions of dollars putting in the new offices and refitting the library and expanding it. And that was in the late 80s and it cost 8 million odd dollars then. My father and a couple of the ethnic people didn't want it, were completely opposed to it because to begin with the amalgamations were already on the cards and it happened and all that construction and all that office space has gone to waste. And secondly the needs of a lot of the elderly people, the aging population there, especially the Greek and
Italian and the Turkish populations — many of them are illiterate or semi-literate. Now spending that amount of money even though its a culturally visible and a good thing it's not really, even though you're going to get videos in Greek and what have you, its not really the best way to engage. Especially not from their perspective perhaps.
I keep thinking it's this display and if you're from that community it could be a little bit offensive - I mean that's what you're seeing as their culture. Its much much more than that.
Well it doesn't even become offensive because they don't engage! There's that element of it
And it's very safe, you're still distanced from it in that display. You don't really have to engage very much if you don't want to.
I think, look this is really, this has fascist overtones — there's a really large gay community in
Brunswick now. Brunswick has in some ways a reputation for being politically tolerant and gay friendly and that's part of it, that movement. I don't know that community there and even though — I think most of the migrant communities would be appalled because of their religious and cultural beliefs. And yet it's all banded together in terms of tolerance etc etc but it's almost a tolerance through non-contact! And I see that element being partly reflected in aspects of the music festival.
I'm interested in the arts section being in the social development portfolio. I thought that was really interesting. And the guy I've spoken to, Andrew Manning, seems really aware of this and does try and 105 do things to help forward that. The other thing I want to ask you is what do you think the festival means for the Moreland council or the Brunswick locality?
The area? The people? The administration?
The people. What do you think it means for them?
I think I truly think that a very large proportion of the Moreland city council area is completely oblivious to it.
That was my impression!
And I mean, especially now, you know how Moreland city council looks on the map, it takes in bits of
Glenroy, Fawkner, etc etc to sort of Reservoir, Preston — that's a very strange area and I think in some ways by being a Moreland thing its less representative now than it had been as a Brunswick thing because the demographic is changing. But it's only changing in the Brunswick -south Coburg area, which is actually quite small given the current boundaries of Moreland.
So if it's a community music festival, do you think then in some ways it is geographically bound? I know that's a hard questions but given that the residents are from such diverse cultures and so on, but if Moreland is such a big area, and the street party and festival is located in such a comparatively small area, it seems to be especially the street party, it's really local people who come across it. It's sort of creating a community within a community.
Absolutely and just sort of tying in with that, the political reality of the expansion of Moreland council was that the Brunswick clique — in that case I'm talking about a clique of not only the Anglo-clique — but because there was a higher representation in Brunswick of branches and political clout, they for a while there they had 12 councillors as ALP/ socialist-left/ centre unity and the other factions, they in
fact dominated Moreland city council. So even, I mean our local person from our branch, Stella, ran in
the first elections and is running again. I mean she's a Brunswick resident but is running out in the 106 general precinct or whatever. So in a sense the power base — its going to get less and less — but it's still based in Brunswick. Even though realistically Bell Street is practically the heart [of Moreland].
So do you think what's performed at the festival could be reflective of Moreland itself or do you think there's another way of going about that or it's not relevant?
Well given what the Brunswick music festival is at the moment, and not what it initially espoused to
be, I don't think it is that relevant. If they wanted to do it in a different way it would take a lot more of
an effort and a lot less of a sort of economically rational, bums-on-seats ticket approach. I mean it can
be done, for instance, the council funds lots of elderly citizens groups and yet that's not the focus of the
festival at all.
Yes. You've got an Arabic festival and things like that going on as well.
And in a sense it's a little bit sad because there is a wealth of music making and musicians in those
communities that don't cross those bounds. And some of them are traditional folk, some of them are
terrible pop fusions — you know you just have to go down Sydney Road to see outside the Turkish
video shops, the Turkish pop stars that come out here, or the Greek pop stars etc.
And that's the other thing, Ritmo Cafe has shut down and Kaleidoscope is moving so even though
they've got these venues they don't seem to be doing that well.
Ritmo was a very funny one. I was very sad that it did close down. It was a strange one because it was
actually run by Latin Americans and it wasn't run as a Bullring club venue at all. And its crowd was a
mixture of alternative types, a lot of Latin American community as well. And I remember going with
some friends, who shall remain nameless! who found it a little bit odd because it wasn't really your
Boite, it wasn't really your Bullring, it wasn't really jazz fusion, but something that was more
representative of something you would have seen perhaps in the 70s or 80s. And I think the perceptions
of the exotic and world music have probably changed somewhat. It would have been nice, the band we
saw that night, this strange Cuban band, which would have gone down really well with the sort of 107
Central American revolutionaries and that sort of feel of the early 80s. But it doesn't sit as well these days, the way that type of music is packaged.
So do you think it's the political message that —
Not alone, no. Most of the Latin dances are not made up by Latin performers. Half of them are College of the Arts students of guitar or brass or sax that play in a range of bands, so that the type of ensemble, the type of venue that's sprung up and the type of public has changed. I mean its no longer your
Chilean Central American communities who want to display that's changed radically to something else.
So what is it about the packaging then? It's not as slick is that what you're saying?
It wasn't slick, no, it was a little bit run down, it was a little bit too much like going to a local baptism or a local — it has that element to it. And you know it was strange feeling.
So going back to what you said earlier about Turkish wedding party bands, would they fit into that rougher sort of sound — and maybe that would be more representative of who was actually in the community? Is the festival too slick, so it's not able to incorporate these sort of —
I don't know what it is frankly. I think you've got, with Muslim cultures to begin with, a difficulty in getting those people to partake in the wider community because of cultural constraints. I think a lot of the music that's performed there, as a lot of the music that's performed — one of the only music stores down in Brunswick is Peter Volaris' you know opposite the bookstore Well Read? Have you ever seen
Peter Volaris? Well his band's a classical Greek wedding band. The Lads or something they're called
— I don't know — Peter Volaris and the Lads! They play Greek pop music, they don't play Greek folk music, they don't play the sort of Apodimi Compani and the Retreat Hotel type music, they play what is
Greek pop music on modern instruments, a dance band for a wedding. Now that doesn't really fit into the folk festival type umbrella. It doesn't really fit into the exotic either. It's sort of very difficult to place.
So in a festival that has to make money that can't reflect- 108
Ok maybe you couldn't then, but in the same way this festival is attracting its Port Fairites and the broader Melbourne community, why could it not have attracted the broader Italian community by bringing acts that could reflect that? Why couldn't it attract the broader Greek or Arabic communities by bringing in a Turkish pop star for instance?
Last years' festival they sort of did that. They had a choir from the Abruzzo region, L'Aquila, and going to that the audience were older Italian people. It wasn't packed out -
But that's a strange one too. I remember that happening as a sort of a cultural exchange
Yes it set up a sister city, yes
But that's strange. Instead of bringing that, if they'd brought out a folk dance band all the oldies would have been there - who was it, who came out the year before last? Enzo Muchiano and his dance band, the Sicilian dance band — it was packed with all these oldies. Same sort of thing with the Greeks, you either get the young with the Greek pop stars, that kids will go to, [it has] a huge underground scene — or the older ballad folk singers that come out and they're packed out too. But that's not, I suppose what
I'm trying to say, if you've got a geographically bound area and your public's not coming from there to this festival, I think its a conscious decision to point in one direction and not have — to have your Port
Fairy crowd or whatever — as much if you wanted it to be multicultural why don't you attract — you want it to be multicultural but from a mainstream Anglo perspective. You don't want it to be multicultural and bringing your ethnics in from other suburbs.
Why do you think they're doing that?
I don't know. I don't think its sort of vindictive, conscious or anything, I think you do what you know.
So do you think perhaps they're not aware of the channels within the community, so they're not - AMC
nods] ok.
It's interesting though because of that the whole concept I suppose of how Brunswick is has changed as
well. 109
It's this sort of promotional aspect of Brunswick and then there's what Brunswick actually is, day to day. That would be interesting for people just living there - what sort of stories they're telling in their mind about what their locality is. Thank you. 110
Appendix 7: Top Half Folk Festival interviews
Appendix 7.1 Performers
7.1.1 Michael Fix, Performer, composer
Held at the Mt Isa Folk Club grounds, June 71998 at approximately 12.30 pm
There are three main things I'd like to know. Listening [to this workshop] I've heard a bit about why you're doing what you are, but I'm interested in the sort of sound that you're aiming for when you're performing, what you're looking for.
As far as an overall sound? In kind of an emotional term, I suppose warm is a word that I would use. I try to envelop people in the sound of the guitar and get a real warmth there.
And the sort of techniques you're using to do that? You talked about Chet Atkins, that sort of technique brings this out into your music?
Yeah — and it's also, I suppose, the selection of the repertoire as well, that gives that effect. It's the way that I hit the strings. I'm going for a very warm sound by touch of the fingers and using reverb on my sound which is a really pleasant effect. Which means I can play very simple melodies and the notes float. The reverb creates a sort of floating effect of the notes. I really like that, especially in ballads.
Sometimes I think I'll play a ballad and I think `liquid.' The notes sort of flow like liquid.
And what about your own compositions? Like `Sunrise Over Alice'. Do you often write music about places you've been to?
I end up writing from memories. Those memories might be to do with a place, or an experience, or a person, or an event of some sort. So I've really covered everything from using poetry, as a source of 111 inspiration, to places like central Australia which, on a first visit especially, is quite awe-inspiring.
Some things like the birth of my son, again one of those awe-inspiring moments, inspired some tunes.
So it can be anything. I liken it to putting a soundtrack to a movie, so I have an experience and it has
effected me emotionally or whatever. And then later on when I've got a quiet moment, I sit down and I
think about and remember what it was — it might have been the sun coming up over Alice Springs —
and I run it through my mind like a movie. And then the music is the soundtrack for the memory. I
think very visually and that's how a lot of this stuff comes together.
When you're actually performing, you contextualise what you are about to play through what you say.
Is that a conscious thing you do to try and get the message across to the audience?
Yeah, because with instrumental music where there aren't any lyrics to indicate the emotion or
whatever, I think it's really important to make the audience feel part of the performance. With an
instrumental track, to give them a bit of an idea of where it came from, a bit of background, because I
like people to walk out thinking that they know a little about me. There are things they can relate to or
— just about every one of them can relate to the birth of a child or the first time they saw a spectacular
sunrise, or whatever it is. I've never liked this idea of the performer being above the audience, sort of
like a god who's out of touch with the audience. I like the feeling of knowing a performer. That's what
I like when I go to a concert, I like to feel that I've been led into that person's life and it's revealed that
that person is really just like everybody else. Their talent is the way they express their emotions. I think
that's what John Lennon had. That's what is so magical about his song-writing, it is the `every person'
experience, right through from girlfriend and boyfriend splitting up to already advanced relationship
things. He always put it in like a really basic lay person[`s language], said the things that everyone was
thinking in just a lovely simple way. I try to do that with instrumental music as well. And you know,
it's never, I hope it doesn't get — what's the word I'm looking for? — too overblown, self-indulgent.
So you like that contact with the audience?
Yeah, I like to keep that contact.
I've noticed a couple of performers said they can't see the audience from the stage with all the lights.
Is that a problem? 112
Oh, it is. It would be nice to see the audience. Before I go on I stand at the side of the stage where the
lights aren't in my eyes and look at the audience so I've kind of got an idea where people are sitting and look. Look out there and stare into space. I can't see a thing but unless they've all got up and
moved, I feel I'm looking at someone.
So a workshop is sort of an extension of that for you? Also [a way of] being able to relate to people?
Well, it's come about as a way of passing on things that I've picked up along the way. And when I
think back to, especially when I was in my teenage years, I used to go to guitar clinics and I learned so
much from them. Most of the time the inspiration was - well most of the time they were product sort of
nights. There would be somebody from the Fender guitar factory, or whatever, or a Gibson sales rep,
demonstrating their new products. I was there but I couldn't afford those things anyway, so I was there
just to hear people play the guitar. When I think of what I've learnt it was always from someone older
than me, better than me and I was sitting there like a sponge, absorbing everything I could. I know how
powerful that force is, with the person sitting right in front of you and you can ask questions. I was
usually too shy to ask questions and other people always asked ones I wanted to ask anyway. But I
know how important that contact is. So when I do the workshops, I really throw out a lot of ideas to
people. I'm not there saying this is how you play like me or you should all try to play like me. It's,
here's a bunch of ideas that I use that I've found opened up a lot of possibilities, see if some these stick
with you.
What does it mean for you to be able to perform at a festival like this?
That's — I haven't thought of it in terms of — I mean I love travelling, I love making my living as a
musician. It satisfies both those criteria I suppose. But doing things like this, being in a totally different
environment is really stimulating. Even in just one day, people that I've met, to me that's really
important. And that's what travel is all about anyway and as a musician you're really, really lucky to
combine a love for travel which opens up new experiences and you get paid to do it! 113
You said earlier during the workshop that you experiment on stage, so do you think when you travel to different places that has an influence or is it just something that you'd like to try out that you've been thinking about anyway?
Sometimes. I try and keep my ears open all the time and learn from, not necessarily guitar players, could be anyone, any instrument. It might just be someone who's been on before me, done something that's just caught my attention. I'll just throw that in and see what happens if I use it in a different context. Things like that.
One last question, you played at the Brunswick Music Festival. I'm interested in the difference
[between here and Brunswick]. Because it is quite a different festival to this one — a different location
and a different audience. I wanted to know your impressions of those differences.
I think firstly a festival in a city, particularly Sydney or Melbourne, people are a bit more blasé about
music. It's much harder to reach them. My experiences in travelling are that the further north you go
the more open the audiences are, the more they're happy to show their enjoyment. It's almost like in
the cities it's a bit uncool to show that you're having a good time or something. I don't know what it is.
It's also the fact there is so much entertainment, so much really good quality entertainment in the cities
that maybe people are a little blasé. But come up to Mt Isa and this is a fairly rare and unusual event
and people are happy to show their appreciation. It's much more informal, more relaxed, you know that
if things aren't running to schedule, well it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. There's
something about the outdoor aspect of it as well which is really appealing, which would be a very risky
thing to do in Melbourne, but here you can be out under the stars and it's a fairly balmy evening and all
that kind of stuff. It just adds something else to the atmosphere. 114
7.1.2 Gwen Berry, performer; Arts Development officer Mt Isa council
Telephone interview, Monday June 9 1998
First came to Mt Isa around 15 and half years ago
Had always been involved in music — not necessarily folk music — but guitar playing (basic!) which is accommodated in folk music
Likes the sound of folk music
Folk music is music of the people
Also loves Irish music
When first came to Mt Isa was looking for somewhere to express herself musically
Had two babies at the time, had heard about the folk club and got drawn into it
Not a big fan of country music
Had been to the Spinifex Club a couple of times but enjoyed folk music more
Folk music `touches' her
Involved with folk club for around 15 years
Has position of arts development officer in the Isa city council
Through her musical involvement got this job
Has background in administration & part of position description: had to have experience in some sort
of art form
Gwen has more of a performing arts background than visual arts
Quite often her work moves over into her social life
Gwen also involved in council events & their other connections to various groups in Isa eg country
organisations, visual arts
Has been involved in many events eg fetes, RFDS 115
The work in the folk club has helped her position in council
Re festival: last year they knew it was Isa's 751h anniversary this year
Although not Isa's turn to host the festival, Gwen thought it would be good for Mt Isa — do something
special to celebrate
Also wanted to try & get a reunion of the old bands like Rafferty to play
She, Annette & Kerry got together & applied for a Festivals Australia grant to do this
Kerry contacted Chris Buch & Diarmot Kieley as she had performed with them & knew them quite
well
They got the funding — thought this was brilliant!
The festival was very important for the community — a lot of people in Mt Isa, who were involved in
various groups such as the pottery club, had been involved in the club in the 1970s because the club
was also a social club
The folk club has been a strong part of the culture of Mt Isa over the years
This year's festival, being the 75th anniversary, reunited many people and many of the old folkies
Gwen felt really touched by the festival
She had not been heavily involved in the folk club in the beginning but the festival had a sense of
camaraderie
A lot of reminiscing done by people — it was wonderful — a very special year
Chris, Robyn & Diarmot (from Rafferty band) hadn't seen each other for about 10 years
Gwen doesn't think that the reunion of the members of Rafferty would happen again
Diarmot had told her that he hadn't played the guitar for months & the festival had inspired him to take
it up again 116
Carolyn & Allen Shaw hadn't been involved in the folk club for many years & they also were inspired to get back to playing folk music
Festival demonstrated that the folk club had come around for a new generation
All folk festivals are the same (although Gwen said she hadn't travelled to others but had been involved
in three Top Half festivals in Mt Isa, '91, '95 & '98)
Same people coming along & interacting
Folk music brings people together
Gwen felt that I had chosen a particularly good festival to come to, as it was a moment in history
She doubts Rafferty will reform again, nor Buckleys Chants
Rafferty is the more well-known group in Isa — it was a core group in Isa & a strong part of the culture
of Isa in the 70s
117
7.1.3 Greg Hastings, performer; MC of Isa festival
Talk held in beer garden at Isa Folk Club, Monday June 9 1998
with regards to what Hastings had talked about earlier & his ideas about the Australian sense of
identity: (conversation held Sunday evening after interviewing Delma Barton at her home)
his ideas about identity formation come out of indigenous belief that when you take over someone
else's land you take on their spirit. He noted that Australian sense of identity ie mateship, laconic sense
of humour, etc, is very similar to that of indigenous Australians. Greg talked about 'white Aborigines' -
those Anglo-Australians with sensibilities & sense of responsibilities similar to that of indigenous
Australians
Spoke to Greg about Delma's singing & didj playing. Also a bit about his travels & performing. He
played in Mucky Duck & played at Longford (I saw the band there!). He talked about Woodford
festival - ecologically & musically the way to go according to Greg. Organiser (?Howitz) has a passion
for this event. Greg talked about the tree plating that took place — how everyone is reminded to look
after their trees & Greg said that they do. Also said Woodford good because it opens people up to
different sorts of performances eg might be walking back from a Midnight Oil concert through the
festival village & will hear something that will interest them. Greg said this draws people away from
the packaging of music that is usually presented to us. Said Woodford is an example of what 'people
power' can do
7.1.4 Stevie Paige, performer
Notes taken from interview held in Simpson St, Mt Isa where busking took place, June 4 1998,
approximately 7 pm
Stevie invited to perform at festival
She had played acoustically at a concert while visiting her parents (who live in Isa) and people from the
Isa folk club heard her; they called her and asked her to perform at the festival 118
Stevie studied at the VCA (Victorian College of the Arts) - a classically trained guitarist but found this too restricting - she felt that she was moulded into a narrow avenue of music & music performance
Had wanted to study jazz guitar in her last year of study but couldn't
She decided to complete her degree and then get out & do what she wanted to do with music
She hasn't played at a folk festival before - she said her music is more rock-oriented15
Stevie would have liked to spend more time in Isa - her parents live there (been there for around two to three years) but her new CD is being released in the week of June 8. She's returning to Melbourne on
Tues to be interviewed on FOX FM
Stevie liked Isa - very friendly & she liked the feel of the place
7.1.5 Stevie Paige, guitarist/composer
Interview conducted via email; questions sent October 301998
The Festival
Question 1: Before arriving at the Top Half festival, what did you think it might have been like?
I expected a carnival type of atmosphere, with a lot of activity and an air of anticipation of what was to come.
Question 2: Did this change after arrived? If yes, how?
My expectations did change somewhat after I arrived, everything was a lot more laid back and far more informal than I expected it to be-which was not necessarily a bad thing.
Question 3: How would you characterise the festival and its music?
Other than the obvious, it really is very simple music-designed to be very informal and for the masses to enjoy-which I believe most people did.
15 I also spoke to Stevie's mum who said that although Stevie's music is classified as rock, she can hear the classical composition training in it 119
Question 4: What do you think the festival meant for those involved in the festival (be they performers, audience and organisers)?
For everyone involved I think it was a chance for them to get involved in a major event. It was a great social outing and experience regardless if you were a spectator or performer.
Your performances
Question 1: What is it about performing that attracts you?
Getting an audience involved with the music and the moment-it adds a completely different dimension to just playing the music.
Question 2: How would you describe your music - both with regards to your compositions and in performance?
Hard question to answer-the style itself would be closest to contemporary rock, which is apparently more obvious when I perform live so I am told. I love orchestral music and I like the use of a hard- edged guitar, so I've ended up with a fusion of both I think. Kind of a Mozart meets Melissa type thing.
Question 3: What are you wanting to communicate in your music?
I like to tell stories- some based on personal experience others on what I see around me. Sometimes it is just complete fantasy. From that point I like to let the listener take what ever they want from the song. One thing I have learned is that no two people hear a song exactly the same way.
Question 4: Talking to members of the Isa club, many said that they believed folk music was music by and for the people, so folk music for them is a much wider category than perhaps others would define it. (for eg Barry said that folk was any music that belongs to someone, some nation & would almost classify blues as folk. Annette believes folk is music that comes from the people - it told stories about them & expressed something about them. Both she & Chris Buch thought singer-writers such as Slim
Dusty & Paul Kelly are great folk singers). What do you think about this broader definition of folk?
I think people would like to make folk music a lot broader based than what it really is. If you go by the definition that it is music for the people by the people then any music at all would have the definition of folk music. The compere, Greg Hastings said something along those lines just before I played. He 120 was trying to prepare them for something a bit different from what they had already heard, but that somehow I still fitted into the folk category.
Question 5: You told me that you hadn't played at a folk festival before & that you felt your music is more rock oriented. How did you feel performing in this sort of setting?
As soon as I heard some of the other acts playing I knew that this was not really the right setting for my style of playing. People had come to see bush bands and I hit them with loud rock. I felt a bit like a bull in a China shop, but I must admit I did get a kick out of shocking the pants off people.
Question 6: Related to questions 4 & 5, how do you think your performance was received?
After people got over the initial shock I think it was received quiet well. Considering that a great deal of the audience was of an older generation and I don't think many of them would go to a rock concert by choice. I think given the same circumstances I would just perform with my acoustic guitar and pick out all the soft ballades to play. After all I want to entertain people not necessarily convert them to a new style of music.
Question 7: Performing is a big part of being at the festival, but other things such as your workshop, jam sessions & just talking to others seem equally as important. Could you tell me a little about these experiences?
The workshops and jam sessions were a lot of fun. It gave me a chance to be on the other side of the fence for awhile. It also gave the audience a chance to participate rather than just observe. People seem a lot happier to ask more questions of me in these settings rather than after a performance, I guess because it is a lot less formal.
Question 8: What do you think the festival meant for those who attended?
I think a good time was had by all who attended and I know there were a lot of people who felt a little sad when it was over. So I guess it meant a lot of different things to different people, but certainly everyone there took some great memories away with them.
Question 9: What do you think it meant, if it did, for Mt Isa? 121
Being an outback town, I would imagine that such events would not come around that often. I was a little surprised that it was not even better attended. I think the advertising of the event needed to include the younger people of Mt Isa as well, I personally would have like to see a few more young people in the crowd. So from that point I don't think it did as much for Mt Isa as it could have.
Question 10: Finally (for now!) what did participating at this particular festival mean for you?
I did have a good time at the festival, and since then I have learnt to adapt my style to suit the occasion.
Although I am having to do this less and less as people become more aware of my music and are coming specifically to hear me play. However it was still a great learning experience for me and I would like to get back there one day to perform again.
7.1.6 Chris Buch, performer; founding member of Isa Folk Club
Interview held in Simpson St where busking took place, June 4 1998 at approximately 8.15 pm
Founding member of folk club in Mt Isa
Came out from England with his wife & son, moved to Surfers Paradise 'when it still was!'
Decided to get a guitar because he didn't want his children to watch TV in this wonderful place
It was the time of the folk boom - many people were singing English folk tunes etc
Then came influence of US performers such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan
A lot of Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh people working at the Isa mine, and this was part of their musical heritage
Chris was staying at the workingmen's quarters with 2 or 3 other men
He and Nick Belcham, another Englishman placed an advertisement in the local newspaper, the North
West Star, that they were having a musical evening at their quarters. They didn't expect many to come along & their quarters were small, but around 300 turned up! So he knew he was on to something
Chris had performed in Brisbane prior to being in Isa
Saw/heard about folk club being set up and so phoned to say he was interested 122
The club asked him in & he played the three songs he knew and they said OK, you're playing that
Friday! So he learnt another three songs!
He hadn't had any music lessons before this
At around the same time, folk clubs were starting up in Darwin, Townsville, Alice Springs & Tennant
Creek, so they all got together and set up the Folk Club Federation
Tennant Creek - a small folk club of around twelve people
Chris said that when this town held a festival they never knew who was going to turn up, but people
would come from Isa, Darwin, Alice Springs
Chris said people think that he's an expert in folk music because he set up the club
said he wasn't but lets others think that he is! 16 Said there had been debates about folk music - what it is or isn't
He personally is happy with various types of folk eg so-called Celtic rock, folk rock
Chris talked about the divide between country and folk music
How country was seen by folkies as simple, while country saw folkies as 'wankers'
However both genres sing about the same sort of things and singers will perform country with a folk
style and vice versa
Chris cited Slim Dusty as the greatest folk singer although his presentation is a little simple
Even pop music is the folk music of today
Chris was surprised when he heard Robyn (who became his second wife and was a fellow member of
the band Rafferty) sing traditional English folk songs - what have they to do with Australia?
Chris talked about bush poetry - traditional Australian eg Lawson, Banjo Patterson - this is not far
removed from music ie good poetry and good music to sing it
16 Others during the week had also talked about this, see for example interview with Barry Rodgers & Annette Gordon 123
7.2 festival organisers
7.2.1 Annette Gordon, secretary of the Isa Folk Club & Terry Frost
Held at the Mt Isa Folk Club grounds, June 61998 at approximately 2.30 pm
What I'm interested in is your involvement in the festival, the sort of things you get out of being involved in the festival, what you're aiming to do when you're putting a festival program together, those sort of things. What you think it does for Mt Isa, or for people coming in to the festival—
OK, well, start from the beginning? How I got involved with the Top Half?
Yeah. And the folk club.
And the folk club. Well you see, my involvement with the Top Half Folk Festival has been through Mt
Isa folk club. Because I haven't been away to any other places to see a Top Half. These fellas have
[referring to Terry and Wayne]. So its just, being in the folk club. What took me to the folk club? Well,
I was around at a party one night, and we were just sitting outside, I went with some teacher friends of
mine. I didn't really want to go but they dragged me along. And what happened then? Oh some kid
from school said `Miss Gordon, they're playing guitars in there', because I took my guitar to school. So
I went in and I just started joining in and singing, and they said come to the folk club. So I did and
everyone was really friendly. This is 1988 so this is ten years ago. I remember it was a big thrill
standing up at the microphone and singing away. And I thought `good!,' I wasn't very good! I'm a lot
better now! But it's a bit, I don't know, contagious. You do it once and you think `Oh Yeah!' and
performing is good, great fun. I love it and other than probably when I was a member of a theatrical
society, its only probably the only performance sort of — another thing, especially out west, most of the
art and culture is art and craft kind of thing. I reckon anyway. I went to a conference in Longreach and
most of the representatives were potters or painters or, so it was mostly art and craft. But I like showing
off! Like that girl, Nadia, said in the song writing workshop. It's not showing off, but I like performing.
I get a kick out of it. Being at the folk club, after a while, the more you get up and sing, the less
nervous you get because you get to know all the people as friends around you. And you just don't you
know they're going to be supportive of you. Whatever you do. So you're more confident. And that's 124 another thing they were talking about up there. Once you're confident and relaxed that's you sing better. Even though, a little bit of nervousness is always good. You haven't been performing long?
Terry, have you?
Terry: About three years, if that. Two years.
Annette: And how did you get involved with the folk club?
Terry: I enjoy live music. I just started coming down here. A friend of mine was barman. Actually the first folk club thing I went to was [unclear] in 1990. Went back and I started coming down here, that's when I really got involved with the club. And I got [unclear] and I started coming back three or four years ago. And I'd been playing guitar but I wasn't very good and Barry decided to get me up one night and we did a bit of a duo thing up on stage. And we got Shooey in, and started forming a band. Best feeling I ever had was Charters Towers, May weekend. Massive stage and the sound was brilliant. All round you had the sound [unclear], especially with your harmonising.
Annette: The difference with those kind of festivals though, I was talking to someone about it, I said these fellas —
Terry: Too competitive.
Annette: Yeah, I said these fellas, they went down there all excited and geared up and then they played and the crowd was great and gave them big cheers and people were saying how good you are —
Terry: Other performers were coming up and saying how good we were, that was the real thrill.
Annette: And then they didn't even get in the finals.
Terry: We weren't country enough.
Annette: And this is the main difference between folk festivals and country music. I know, I know I've tried it with —
Terry: I wouldn't even call that a festival. That's a contest. That's a full on contest. That's totally different to this. This is so relaxed. Everyone relaxed having a good time, but that one we went to over there everyone was tense or nervous all the time, because they've got to get up and do their best. While we get up and have fun. 125
So would they continue on after the contest and play or not?
Terry: No. We had one jam session in the whole time and that was because we got rained on very heavily and one of the stage areas was a big bath. And we actually got flooded, the water was plowing through the place. So we're just standing around and we started playing. Next minute these other fellas joined in with us. And that was the only jam session we had. That was the Walmsley brothers from
[unclear]. They ended up winning everything. They were really good. Only young fellas, eighteen, nineteen. Yeah, three brothers.
Annette: There's a music, there's a country music thing in town, Spinifex Country music.
Here?
Annette: Yeah. In Mt Isa. That other thing I said before was not right. But we've tried, the folk club
has tried to co-operate with them on various things. And it hasn't worked, it hasn't worked at all. It
may be, I think, what Frosty's talking about, has got something to do with it. Because it's a different
approach.
Terry: Well, they're competitive. Like they're competing against each other all the time. We're more
relaxed.
Annette: Its. I think this is more a celebration.
Terry: Yeah.
Of being together, or -?
Annette: Yeah. And people meet up with old friends. And I know a couple of people I've met at the
last Top Half here are back here again. And people who have rung me up about things and I've talked
to them on the phone, or I've sent them letters and then they come and we meet and — meeting the
artists we get is great. It's really good to bring really professional artists —
Terry: That's another thing I found at folk festivals is that the guest artists mingle with the people. And
join in and jam with the people. If you go to and you've got Slim Dusty or some one like that they're
not going to join in and play with the riff raff sort of thing. But at these things I found that at Jabiru last 126 year. They had this guest down from Perth and the Friday night, we sat in a big circle and they came and joined in and played and every one joined in with them and it was great.
Annette: It's a celebration more of the music and singing and well, I'll say culture. And by doing that it's community culture and development. That's what happens, that's the process of it all I reckon. But the trouble is these days, we're competing with a lot more media and a lot more cultural intervention
through mass media, I suppose. Do you know what I mean? A lot of our culture is imposed rather than
created and celebrated. I don't know, that's my ideas any way. But I think it's too much TV and too
much movies and its multi, multi, multi million dollar when — how can you put a value on it? I wish
these kinds of jam sessions that happen here sometimes, you just sit back and go `wow!' and it gives
you a good feeling. Yeah, what are some more questions?
What about the music? Like that song you sang last night, `Frances', you've written it yourself?
Yeah.
What sort of things are you conveying? Is it a sense of what's happening here, or people you know that
you're interested in?
Well, how that song started as an idea, in 1987, she came from Boulia, a seven year old she was, and I
think I was teaching grade three or grade four, and she was a couple of years older than what she
should have been, but she was a skinny little kid, not been looked after, you know, a little Murri kid.
And right from the beginning she just was a character. A real character. And really shone and I was
talking to a friend of mine, another teacher and I said `gee, this Frances, she's got some spirit that girl.'
And she just looked at me and she said, `well you know Annette, Frances has got two things going
against her in this life, one that she's a woman, and one that's she's black.' And I thought, yeah that's
very true. It's very true. And so I wrote the song for Frances so that she'd be proud of who she is and
where she comes from, so that's why I wrote it. I love that girl. I wrote it first as a poem and then when
I went away to Brisbane and was away from Mt Isa for a while. And then I went out with some other
teacher friends of mine and Frances comes up and gives them a big hug, and `how you goin'?' and I
just stood back and here she is, like she's seventeen years old or something, and she remembered me,
and I said right away, `Frances, I wrote a poem about you.' `Oh did you?' and for the rest of the night
we just talked and she stuck with me and it was good. So I changed the poem after that into a song and 127 out of that end bit, after that, the multicultural festival, and she's painting pictures, because she's an artist. She paints. So.
So do you write a lot of songs?
No I don't, no.
That's a shame.
Well that's nice of you to say. And that other one, The Spinifex and Stone, that was years in the making that song. I used to, when I went to Townsville, at Uni, I used to come back on the bus all the time.
And when you get to, just outside Concurry, and you get the early morning and you just waking up, and you know you're nearly home, because the, you're hitting the hills. And the colours of the hills in the morning, it's just incredible. And some of the places out bush have got a real spiritual feeling, so that's what I wanted to say, in that song, there's more, you know you can't go bloody digging big holes and big mines every where! Because the land's got a spirit, this land. And by doing that it's just ruining it. You go for a drive out behind the mines, I'll take you for a drive if you like, when you go out this way — we went out this way for a bush dance one night, with the folk club, RFDS17, and it's May
Downs or some station, and RFDS were doing the catering and we were doing bush dance. And I drove out there just on sunset, Oh, the hills are dead. I thought I was on the moon. Oh it was just incredible landscape. Its' just dead. You know how you look out on these hills and they've got trees and they got colour in them. But this is just, this is colour, but its just a dead kind of colour, there's no life. You know, and when there's no life there's no spirit.
The imagery in that song I really liked. The chorus was really —
Waterholes are poisoned? A woman came up to me after the last Top Half when I sang that song and she said, `you know, not all the water holes are poisoned!'
She knows a metaphor when she sees one!
"Royal Flying Doctor Service. 128
Doesn't she. Well that's how the Kalkadoons around here. They were the most fiercest tribe. Fierce, really tall. Did you see that young fella, William? Playing the didjeridu? He's a big man, isn't he? He's grand parents were pretty much full blood Kalkadoons, I think. He's a big bloke. They're really scary. I tell you what, I wouldn't like to face a big Kalkadoon warrior! Gee wiz! And I reckon, why they were like that is because this country's so harsh. And so your environment shapes you. So, it shaped me. I lived in Brisbane there was a time there when I didn't come home for a year. And I was just crying out to come home. So I don't, I think I'll leave here one day but I think I'll always come back. Something about these hills. Like people say about Mt Isa, Oh it's a stinky old mine, but I don't think of it like that. I think of the country around here on the hills and stuff. You talked about music. I'm not talking about music!
But that's fine. But I want to know what it is that people are putting into what they're doing. I mean there's always some reason why they're involved in something. And when you talk to people they start bringing what's important out. And I think that goes into what you're doing in music. 4
The folk club's a really - I don't know how to say it. What we do is all for free. I have a friend who's a artist, she's a community artist, community cultural development worker in Brisbane, and she's said, you do all that for free! She can't understand the hours we put in. these fellas! It started months ago, and especially this week. And they painted the banner! See that's what music — there's a good story with that too. That, see it's all intermingling of cultures here. The Shack was drawn by a local cartoonist, Brett Curry, Bazza got him to do the cartoon of the club. We paid him fifty dollars so now
it's ours! And so that was done. And the vine around the outside is symbolic of our vine over the beer
garden. `Cos I just think that adds such a great atmosphere. It's a beautiful place out there. And Frances
painted a couple of those paintings in there, too. And I wanted Frances to help me with the banner, but
she was out bush doing some course. So but I had good help in Shooey. The first night I came, Shooey
was the only one. I was thinking here, I thought a few people might turn up to help me, so what could I
do that would be a nice pattern for the background and what colours should I use. And so everyone
could just do it at the same time. So I thought it would be circles, start big at the bottom and get smaller
at the back. And Shooey was the only one who came. And he walks in and says, 'Ah! Circles mate,
eh!' It was something like that. So we got into it and I convinced him that it was going to work. And 129 we got into it and we started joining them up, just putting every where, willy nilly. We talked about what colour, there's a streak of grey through it, that was a big talking point, about what colour we should use. Then we were here until twelve o'clock that night. I went home from work at five o'clock, been working all day, straight here, no tea, no nothing, straight into it. I might stop and go up to Big
Rooster, get something to eat, come back and right into it. And that was like five nights in a row. Just didn't stop.
The colours at the back, is that the sunset?
Yeah. That's the sky, the sun's going down. There's little animals in the sky, you can't see them from
here. There little hidden animals. We had the kids here. The kids even, Shooey's little girl, I was doing
the vine. And she said, are you painting this? Yeah. It was, and then she's paintéd in, is that good?
yeah. Shooey when he started painting, was so nervous! His hands were shaking to get every little
circle so right! And there's there's the night and he relaxed! [to Wayne] I'm telling stories about you
here! And we relaxed and we talked about it more and we just, and we were really pleased with the
result.
It's very striking. So with the festivals, I know this one helps celebrate the 751ht [anniversary] of Mt Isa
and so has that theme, but does each festival here have a theme? And if it does, how do you go about
thinking of one?
No, we don't usually have a theme. The last one was the 25th Top Half. No, this is, probably the theme
for this one, `back to the Isa', started with Kerry, Kerry's idea to reunite these bands. Because to get
funding from Festivals Australia we had to think of a project within the festival that it could fund.
Because they don't fund the festival itself, they don't want you to be reliant on their funds. So it was,
the council's doing a lot for the 75`h. So we thought, Oh well, we'll go for it. We had ten thousand
dollars and with that money we've been able to advertise really well. And I think that showed last night
with the amount of people that came up. It was a very small night, last Top Half. Oh we've had ads, oh
but this is another thing I've been doing, running around with ads! Having trouble with radio stations.
This girl from HI FM/4LM she just sent me these ads, and I said oh no they're not good enough. And 130 she said, sorry we got our trainee to do that. And I'd gone to the trouble of putting all the information, so I wrote them! I said I want these then! And she looked at them, she changed a little thing here and
there, and said Oh that's fine. We paid eight hundred dollars for that! I can talk for ages!
I'm happy for you to talk for ages!
So yeah what were we talking about? Themes. So that was a great idea and it's brought a lot of people
back. Robyn Buch hasn't been back to Mt Isa in ten years. And neither has Dermot. Very local
identities. I was talking, see this is a feeling you get in smaller communities — it wouldn't happen in
cities and stuff. I was sitting telling a friend of mine who was in the post office about how I'd be
getting Diermot Kieley back and this woman that Mum was serving her ears pop up and she says, Oh
did you just say Dermot Kieley? So yeah, I can tell you about this. So I'd been giving her the things
and telling her, up dating her in what's happening. And other people were just, they know me from the
folk club and they ask how's the Top Half going? So there's a community feeling in these places, but
some people wouldn't agree.
Why wouldn't they?
Oh well, people, some people tend to concentrate on the negatives. Rather than say well this is good
and this is good and this is good and yeah, that's not so good, but it's OK. The worst trouble in Mt Isa,
I reckon, the social problem, is drinking alcohol. And the youths having heaps of trouble. But that's the
same every where I suppose, but in smaller communities I just, I don't know, it's a community thing
that you — I went to Kmart the other day, and it must have been every second person I walked into just
stopped and wanted to have a chat. And that's a hassle some times. But sometimes you think, you're
walking out there and you think, that's nice, you know, people want to stop and talk to you. And every
one's not so much in a hurry.
Do you get many teenagers or young adults coming along and being part of the folk club?
Well, we had this Rifle Creek festival we were talking about, we had a Clayton's Rifle Creek! Because
all the facilities got washed away in the flood. So we had a Clayton's Rifle Creek out at Kalkadoon 131
Park. We didn't call it a folk festival, we called it a music festival. And we got all these young bands.
Well, you know I'm sitting back there saying `Oh my God!' this music!
Heavy metal?!
Heavy, heavy! You want to get somebody, who does a good impression of this fellow? He just got up there and he was groaning and making all these sounds in the microphone! And our sound man's going, it can't go up any louder! But you've got to respect that, because that's part of their culture so you respect it and you invite them in. And yeah, so that was all right. That was all right. So hopefully the Rifle Creek thing will stay. Hopefully we might even find another place out bush with similar facilities so people can camp, a camping festival. You get atmosphere that way.
Yeah, because you're all together.
Yeah. And see at small festivals like this every face is familiar, by the end of the weekend, every face.
And not like the big ones, like Maleny and Woodford and stuff.
Have you been to Maleny?
Yeah, I have. I loved it. It's great. The people are really friendly there and there's a good atmosphere.
And there's good things about both.
It's interesting, in Melbourne there's some one at work who goes there a lot and her sister goes there.
She makes, beautiful fairy dolls. But she says you get a lot of ferals going now.
Ferals, yeah! They're an incredible race of people, aren't they? Incredible subculture. I could talk about
ferals! They're all, a lot of them were raised middle class. Middle class children, who's parents are
professional people, who just opted right out. Just gone feral! That's a good name for them! It's very
appropriate. The first time I went to the Maleny folk festival, I heard that and I never heard that before.
What's all these people talking about ferals? 132
You have urban ferais in Melbourne.
Urban ferais! My god, that's another one I didn't know about!
Exactly the same as out here, but they live in the city. They live in warehouses or whatever they could find.
What do you call these, bush ferais?
No, just ferais
I think I'd rather that lifestyle than city life. City life is so dehumanising after a while. Seem to spend my life in the car, driving here and driving there. Yeah, I went to Brisbane and I joined the choir, the combined union choir. And the people I met there are still my friends, two or three of them are still real good mates. Good friends. And I didn't meet any one in Brisbane through my work or through, I played golf a few times - I'm a golfer — tat I would want to stay friends with over a long period of time.
But the people from the choir, there's Flo and Stan and my other friend, Lib, especially my friend
Libby, she's all this community cultural stuff. I'm actually secretary of the Queensland Community
Arts Network.
What does that mean?
Well not much! They send me to meetings every few months. And I take the minutes of the meeting.
But it's a community cultural development organisation that runs training things, has a library, what
else do they do? They auspice grants for people and they initiate projects as well. Community art
projects. So that's really interesting and the vision statement, there's a new, been a bit of a turn over,
and their vision statement says that what they're about is social change.
What do they mean by social change?
Well, Yeah! I asked them about this, because - and I said to them, you know, you've got to understand
what you're saying when you say social change. Because these, all these, this organisation is funded
through the arts office, Queensland, and the Australia Council which Federal government, and I said,
look, that's fine to say social change but really there comes a point when you going to have to bite the
hand that feeds you. Because you not going to do any social change unless you change the government, 133 really. I mean you can make little things like this, it's great. But if they're really about social change what kind of social change are they about? So I think that's a bit broad.
And that's coming from a Liberal[ government], I always wonder what they're up to any way.
Well, what did my friend call them? I was talking to him the other day. I'll be giving something away
here!
What I do is send this back to you, so if you don't want something recorded you can let me know.
No, that's all right, I don't care! He calls them bourgeois socialists. So I suppose that's what they are.
They're really, they're genuine people who, but they don't really understand that the bit about
revolution and all that sort of stuff.
And people have to be allowed to think for themselves.
They do. Absolutely.
Rather than coming along and saying this is how you're going to do it. People just have to jostle and
work it out.
But see that's how I started off with the, why I went to Brisbane in the first place, to get a bit more
politically active. And I got really disappointed in just the general attitude of people and just, you
know, they talk slogans and they don't really understand what's underneath it all. And when you really
try and get to it, they just don't have the answers. And just, the stupid games you have to play when
you're in politics. It's terrible. So then I found, I'd always loved singing and music and everything and
anything arty-farty! So I got involved with the choir and then with other, the community arts network I
joined and I realised there's a lot of people in this who have got the same ideas I have but there's just
not all the political rubbish that goes with it. So yeah, I'm still, I think by doing this kind thing, I'm
helping to work towards my ideals.
Yeah? And what are your ideals? 134
My ideals, oh God! A society where everyone is, regardless of race, creed, culture, is treated equal.
Difference is recognised and attributed — you know what I mean — and tolerance, and where culture, where culture — this is my ideal — is every one has the idea that they, that culture is part of their lives.
It's not something that comes from without. That's what I reckon, I think that's what's missing, that's what's, you know, I hear my Mum talk all the time, she says, `oh the old days!' You know? And I think as society develops we're getting more and more removed from people, from each other and from our own culture. Because so much is imposed. And people don't understand the basic, you know, Murri culture is really interesting. Their songs and their dances — it's such a contradiction for them to get up and dance in front of people and stuff because that's not why they do it. And they don't sing to, so every one says Oh aren't they good, you know? They do it because that's the general run of things.
They come to this place and then this place is this ceremony and this is what happens. And its just interwoven, it cannot be, and I think all our lives, if they were like that, they would be a lot richer and fuller.
I suppose in some ways that's what a jam session is.
Yes. Absolutely!
It's just another way of expressing how you are all together.
You know, it's culture.
I think too that's what I really like, of what I've seen so far, is there seems to not be such a difference
between who is on the stage and who is in the audience. There seems to be a really nice interaction
going on. I don't know if it's different between a blackboard concert and say a more strict concert. I
haven't seen that yet.
Yeah, that's tonight. We've been pretty relaxed so far.
But it's quite nice to see people from the audience will just get up and play.
Yeah.
And I liked how you called out is there any one out there who can play a tambourine. You know people
would come up, it was good.
Yeah, see I like this too. Because the kids here will get up and sing with me. And Bazza too, Bazza gets
the kids up. Tonight we're all getting up and singing Poor Ned. They sang Poor Ned last night standing 135 around here. That's one of our favourite songs. But it's really true, because what Ned Kelly stood for and is, a lot of these blokes. I like these songs that they like. They're union songs and they're – it's —
Solidarity?
Yeah. That's why when I first started singing at the folk club and that's all I sang was, and they'd say and here's Annette with more protest songs!
Oh you've branched out, then!
It's a nice way to get across. Like that song, songs from way back, you know Down By the River. I love
Joan Baez.
I want to ask about the sorts of songs that you pick out, like the Linda and Vika Bull song that you've
sung a couple of times. What are you looking for when you pick out these songs?
Songs touch me here. They move me. I remember, not many songs do that to me straight away, but this
one I heard on the radio in my car, I was going some where. Gosh I liked it! I didn't even know who
sang it. I waited for it at the end but they didn't say it. So I sort of looked around for a few days or
weeks or whatever and finally found out, heard it again, and finally out who sang it. And Kerry had
their CD, she taped it for me. We went to, Kerry and I had an interesting time – no, no! I'm getting off
the track again!
No, you can tell me.
We went to, I stopped teaching, and I wanted to be a full time artist, so one of my first jobs was me and
Kerry went out to Mackinlay. Tiny little, not even a town, only a pub and church or something. And all
the long distance education kids came in and we did music stuff! All weekend. And there was another
group – we had one group - and they were doing drama stuff. It was brilliant. And we played that song
the whole way there and the whole way back, the tape! Every time we came to that song I had to push
back and rewind it again. So that song. That's why I pick out songs. But songs that say something. I 136 reckon its really hard to get up and sing your own songs because you really showing a part of your soul.
Yeah, you're really exposing yourself.
You are, you're really exposing yourself and you're exposing others too. My mum gets embarrassed!
She says, why don't you just sing songs that every one knows? I said, no, I'm really impressed by people who are generous in their — I don't know, that conference in Longridge [unclear Longreach?] this Murri fella got up and told us all this stuff and showed us all these pictures and that kind of generosity, that sharing of culture, really impresses me. I really, I don't know, I reckon it should happen more often and then we wouldn't be so ignorant of each other, you know? If people were more generous and giving and sharing. And then straight after that Murri fella got up, this publican from
Longridge got up, and everyone knew him as Paul SeaSea the local publican. He got up and he sprouted all this Mauri lingo and it just got you right there, because he was moved by Dave Nevilles's sharing. He could, he recognised another cultural man, I reckon, he recognised the generosity of what he was saying. He got up and he sprouted all this Mauri lingo and even though you didn't understand what the hell he was talking about you just, sat back in your seat. And then this Mauri fellow gave gifts to the organisors. He brought out this patu (?spelling) — I don't know — and he said this I give to my son, and that really impresses me, people who can get up in front of a whole big crowd like that. That's people who are proud of their culture. And they don't mind sharing, but even though you're proud, you have to have that generosity in you to be able to share it like that. That really impresses me, so I try to do it. I don't think I'm as generous as some people. But in my songs, you know, that's what I do, well that's what I hope to do. What's the point of writing a song that means nothing to you, right? I couldn't. I just couldn't. My friend she writes songs for shows. I suppose the shows have all got a social comment so they're all worthwhile. But this no way in the world I could ever write a bloody commercial jingle! I just wouldn't have — another thing I can't do, too, is sing kareoke! I'm hopeless! I learnt this at a school fete and they said all right Annette you can run a kareoke thing. You're a singer.
My God, I could not do it! I think because it's just so plastic.
Even songs that you would normally pick out or is it just because of what they are? 137
Well they didn't have very good songs to sing, I must admit. But even if I did really like the song, it's just standing up there with the microphone and the words underneath, it just takes away something when you sing, that you give them [the audience]. And it's just, what they call it? It's plastic singing, or something, I don't know what it is about kareoke.
I suppose it's a bit like that competition thing you were talking about with the country music festival.
It's there to sort of show you how good you are rather than or whatever, rather than just expressing yourself.
Yeah, yeah.
A closed sort of thing, you're not engaging with other people.
No, honesty, you know. I respect honesty in people. I don't, I really try and say what I think and think what I say. And it gets me in trouble some times! You like to know where you stand with people, you know. If some one's annoying you, you just got to say it! Like these fellas who annoy me all the time. I said just go away! And then they get the message. I don't know how to be subtle — Oh I probably do, I don't know. It's a skill I should learn. Especially. I'd like to be on the council one day —
The city council?
Yeah. See how that goes.
What do you think you'd do there?
I would make sure they had an arts and cultural program second to none! Or try anyway. Because it
just adds value to people's lives. What did people do before they had TV and before they had any kind
of outside entertainment imposed? They made it themselves.
Do you find many, it seems to me that there are a lot members of the folk club here, at the folk festival.
Would that be right?
Members of the folk club? Yeah. Just about all the members are working as hard as they can.
Are there people outside the folk club that come along to this? 138
Yeah, yeah for sure. There's a lot of people I've never seen in my life before. Just turn up here. And you wonder how they found out about it. One couple we got to the last Top Half, it was just before the big lockout. Was I telling you about that? It was only a week or so after that they went back to work.
And so one of Peter's ideas was to send out all these posters to all these little pubs and little communities all around. So we did all that. And I asked some people how they heard about the festival and they said we saw a poster at the Mackinlay pub. So that was really interesting, but the best way is to get people talking about it.
Do you find that radio is really helpful?
No I don't think so. No I don't know. Radios is so, thirty seconds — and a lot of people just have the
radio in the background. And unless someone has the right connotations and hits the right chords in
their head they're not going to pay much attention. I think radio is not a very powerful medium any
more.
Do you have any ads on TV?
Yes, we did. Yes a few. The cassette should be up there some where. If you want to have a look at it.
Write that on your list of things to do!
7.2.2 Barry Rodgers, president of the Mt Isa Folk Club
Held at the Mt Isa Folk Club, June 41998 at approximately 12.30 pm
The sorts of things I want to know are how a folk festival can create a sense of community and a sense
of identity through that music. I'm interested in how the festival here in Mt Isa and who's been involved
and what your involvement is, and what sort of acts are your looking for when you're putting the
festival together.
What we're looking for is a festival using mainly folk music playing. It won't be total folk music,
mainly folk music. And this one in particular is more for the old folkies of Mt Isa who really help put
the Top Half Festival together twenty-eight years ago. With people from Darwin and ... yes that was a
long-winded question that one! What we want to do is have a, we want it to be a successful festival -
you know, if we make a bit of money off it that's great - but mainly we want people to enjoy the 139 festival and just have a good time. And it's family orientated as you see by our prices and things, its you know, it's 'come along and have a good time.' No great expense.
Do you get a lot of the local people from Mt Isa coming along or do you get mostly the people who travel to the different festivals coming along or a mixture of both?
We'll get a mixture. We will get a mixture because we've got the television ads and radio ads and the support with the North West Star, the local paper. We should have a big mob of the local people here really. Especially Saturday night, I think.
I noticed one of the articles around therels talked about different ethnic groups, the ethnic council that was involve. Is that still happening now or is it mainly folk as you said? Or was that a different type of festival?
Well. That might be a different type of festival. But Mt Isa is a community made up of something like fifty-four different nations, you know, nationalities. So you've got a lot of people here that are from, well originally there used to be a lot of Irish and Scottish and English and that is why this club probably originated. But now you also have a lot of Filipinos and Fijians and things like that. We've been trying to get them down and involved because that's folk music, too. Any music that belongs to someone, some nation, is folk music. Folk is a pretty broad outlook on music for me now, really. I'd even almost class blues as folk.
And what's your involvement in the club? You're the president?
Yes. I've only been with the club the last few years really, as far as being on the committee and
participating. And mainly because I play music with a band called Leichhardt Silt. We called ourselves
Leichhardt Silt because this club is in the river bed, we're in the middle of the Leichhardt River at the
moment and we just sort of said you know, we just sort of washed in like a couple of cask bladders and
here we are! We'll actually be playing on Saturday night.
"An exhibition of newspaper articles, photos and memorabilia was on display during the festival on the walls of the club room. 140
So do most of the people in the club also perform?
A lot of them do, but not all of them. Not all of them. [to Wayne Shubridge] How many non-playing members would we have mate?
Wayne: Non paying members?!
Barry: No! no! We've got a lot of them!
Wayne: Thousands of them!
Barry: No non playing, as in, won't get up and sing or -
Wayne: Or probably -
Barry: Not too many
Wayne: I'd say we've had more than enough that play now than used to. It's more acting -
Barry: We had the few members that potentially -
Is that going?
Barry: Yeah it is.
Wayne: That's unfair!
Barry: She's trying to let you know so you don't swear or anything!
Wayne: I don't swear!
Barry: We got people in the club, like our vice-president, Kenny, he doesn't get up and play but a very
good musician. Butchy's starting to play guitar, Butchy,
Wayne: the bearded fellow
Barry: The bearded fellow - actually when you're talking to Butchy, just walk up to him some time
over the weekend and say, excuse me Butchy, can I get a photo of you, naked! OK? Just say that.
Because this woman from Melbourne asked him in the beer garden there one night, she come up to him
and said, Could I get a photo of you? And he puts on a little act, like he always does and yep, but I'm
not taking my clothes off! She says Oh no, no, no!
Ok I'll do that!
You'll have to beat him to the punch, but! You'll have to say naked before he comes up with it! 141
Ok. I noticed, too that Gwen is a member of the city council. I thought that w as really interesting that she's involved in both.
Gwen's very handy because she's the Arts Development officer of the local council, which is good.
Keeps our relations with the council very good, like the council helps us out a bit. Ron McCullough our mayor is our patron and he usually chairs our AGM's, he and Tony McGrady, and either of them will chair our AGM. And they both sponsor us. As soon as we're having a festival or something, they're probably the first people who step up and give us a couple of hundred dollars. Which is good.
This is probably going to sound weird, but with the local community, what do you think the key characteristics of Mt Isa are? Seeing you've got so many, you said you fifty different -
The key characteristics? It used to be hard work and drink!
Used to be?
Well it's not as bad as it was. Actually, it was a better town. I came here in '84, I think it was a better
town then. MIM19 looked after its work force a lot better and it was a big happy town and I thought oh!
how long has this been going on?! Every one made good money, the mines treated you well, and were
a very family-orientated company to work for. That's not the way it is now.
What's happened?
Under the cloak of restructuring and cost cutting and all this, it all goes under the thing of world's best
practice. They just, they give all the big bosses an extra couple of hundred thousand a year and try and
trip us off, which they've done. And taken a lot off us. We still don't make bad money, but we lost air
fares and things like that that we used to get.
R So most people who come through here or come to stay here are actually involved with the mine?
19 Mt Isa Mining 142
Yeah and there's, now a-days there's a lot bigger contract work force. Where as before MIM employed every one themselves, but now a-days they employ a lot of contracts, so you'd get lot more floaters.
I noticed on the poster there, that they [MIMI support the festival and you thanked them. Do they give money?
Mmm. They actually gave us five hundred dollars which was good. But when I called the public relations woman, I said, said something - I probably shamed her - because I said something to the effect of you know, `we haven't asked you for money for a couple of years. Mainly because I thought, I
heard you wouldn't give any money, you're too tight or something!' She's gone, `What!' She said,
`That's rubbish,' she said `we're giving out money to people.' But anyway they came up with five
hundred dollars which is good. The Irish Club, which is a club that, some of these old bands that are
coming, that are being reunited, they used to play at the Irish Club like, years ago. And the Irish Club
gave us a thousand dollars and you know, anything else we can do for you sort of thing, which is great.
The Irish Club in Mt Isa is I think the biggest Irish club in the southern hemisphere or something. It
was, it had one of the biggest memberships in the southern hemisphere as far as any club. There's a lot
of people that have passed and gone through, that have become life members and things like this. But
it's probably becoming too big and commercialised. But they're still, well I guess that they're still fairly
community-orientated, like as far as they give you, if you're a member, they give you tables and chairs
for any party you have, you know, you just put fifty dollars deposit on it and you just take it away. It's
great. It only costs you ten dollars to be a member. But with that membership, if you're having a party,
you get free chair and table hire which is good. And the Irish club has a travel service there and you
usually get ten percent on air fares and things like that.
Oh, that is good. And any one can join?
Yep. What else? What else do you want to know about this community?
Well it's the seventy-fifth -
Anniversary of Mt Isa.
And that's why the festival was held here this year? 143
Yeah that's why Terry and I went to Jabiru last year for the Top Half. We were going there anyway, but while we were up there we went to the meeting, the once a year meeting of the Top Half Folk Festival federation. And we asked, we had sent a written application form sort of thing, but we asked if we could have the festival this year because we were celebrating our seventy-fifth birthday of Mt Isa. And they said, yeah, sure, if you're willing to have it, you go ahead!
What was Jabiru like?
Excellent. I've got a video of some of it if you want to have a look.
Yeah. I would like to. I would have liked to have gone to that but it was too early in my working out what I was doing.
You knew it was on? It was great.
Did they have similar bands?
Yeah, they had pretty similar [bands], you'll get some of the same [here]. Well they didn't have Spot the
Dog. They had a very good band from Perth, called The Fling. And they had a fellow called Martin
Tucker from Tasmania, who plays mainly African instruments. Like the, I think it's called the coran it's not Koran but it's almost spelt the same. And its' like a gourd-based stringed instrument that's got a neck, a thin neck, and then the strings sort of come out in a triangular formation, out towards you, like a harp, more like a harp.
So you have it facing in front of you?
Yeah. Beautiful.
And did you actually camp? It seemed to me you drove into the park and then you camped. Is that
right?
Where's that. Here?
At Jabiru, sorry.
Or Jabiru. Well most of the festival at Jabiru was at a school ground which was nice. At the actual
[festival site], they have a grass parade ground. You know and the grass - at Jabiru they're not short of
rain there, it's not Mt Isa - and they've got this beautiful carpet of grass like about yea thick and it went 144 up onto a natural stage. They had the dirt mound and the grass, the stage was actually grass. Which was lovely, but that's the school's parade ground. And that's where the teachers stand, you know, instead of having a big wooden stage or anything, they have this lovely grass mound.
And did they get many people there?
Yeah. They got a fair few. But one afternoon was at the Kowindi and a lot of tourists, a big lot of tourists, like at this time of year in Jabiru there's a lot of tourists. Mainly foreign. They loved it, [that] sort of thing. And a lot of them came. Actually, I ran into a couple of guys from Melbourne, who were flying, flying around Australia. There was six of them and one of them had a pilot's licence, so they just chartered, hired a plane and they were flying in and stopping wherever they felt like it. And they were in Jabiru, and one came up to me in the pub, at the pub the Sports Men's Club on the Saturday, [and said] 'excuse me mate, I might sound like a bit of a dick but what's that thing around your neck?' I said, 'oh, that's our weekend pass.' 'Oh! It's a folk festival!' 'Right.' And these fellows all came that night. They thought it was great.
So with the bands that the Top Half gets, it's not just northern Australian bands?-
Oh, we get them from wherever. The posters that are usually on our wall are down, but one year the guys here, the Mt Isa folk club, got a guy called Dave Essig from Canada and they reckon it was really good, really good build up, because they flew him out and then they got him dropped on the rugby union club over here, by helicopter. And then he just wandered over and, yahoo, you know, here we go.
They reckon it was great. And he was the main act for that one. You get a lot of people who call up and want to perform. If you're having a festival you get people who call up and say, look you know, I've just got a CD out and, or they'll send you a CD and say this is what I do could you, is there any chance, what I want is air fares, accommodation and so many hundred dollars, or, thousand dollars! I tried to get Graham Thomas but he was out of the question. He's playing Concurry in a couple of weeks but he was booked out through New South Wales, and this was a long time ago I tried to do this. So he was booked out pretty early. And I'd talked to Paul Kelly's manager, but he's supposed to be on tour in
America because he was releasing a new album. 145
He was playing around Melbourne just before I left
But he's probably gone now.
That would have been good.
That would have been excellent. Did you see anything of the Woodford Festival?
No.
Outside Brisbane there, it used to the Maleny Festival. That's another festival ... they're stealing festivals! You know it's good festival, but I think it's getting too big and you know, it was Maleny's festival. At the Woodford festival, there was Paul Kelly and Lucky Oceans playing steel guitar for him.
Just the two of them there, it was lovely. I had it on video somewhere, too, I taped the show. It was good. I thought, `Geez if we could get something like that that would be excellent.' Because, you know, it might cost a fair few thousand to do something like that. Although what I've heard is that Paul
Kelly likes playing at festivals anyway. You know it might cost a few thousand but you'd recoup it on
your gate takings.
So do you find there are similar bands performing? I'm quite interested in how it rotates over the place.
I'm just wondering if you, if individual places have different ideas about what they want to have at their
festival, or whether its decided between all of you.
No, it's each centre's. Like this year it's Mt Isa's turn to put the show on, it's not up to anyone else. It's
what we want to try and put on. And hopefully each one's a little bit different. They've got to be for
them to keep interest up, I think. You've got to have someone different and someone better.
I think that's really about all. Then there's just things for the data. I know your name. And your ethnic
identity? What do you say you are?
Probably be a lot of Irish, my name's Rodgers but my mother's name is Patricia McShane. And I know
more about the McShane side of the family than my father's. I think it was my great-great-grandfather
was deported in 1817, I know all the history down that line. But all my aunties and that always sang 146 when I was a kid and that's something too. They sang and danced and carried on. That's probably why I like the music.
My great aunt used to play the comb, she played and we'd all dance to that.
Yeah? Nothing wrong with it!
And so were your parents born overseas or here?
No, born in Australia.
And do you speak any other languages?
No.
Just your age - it can be, I've just go a range here, like 20 to 30, 30 to 40 -
Thirty to forty. Thirty-seven I be!
And your type of employment?
I'm a driller. Driller underground. I work in the mines and I'm a driller and work place trainer.
And you live here in Mt Isa?
Yes.
7.2.3 Ken Glasco, vice president Isa Folk Club
Interview held in the beer tent, Mt Isa Folk Club grounds, June 71998 at approximately 8 pm
What I am interested in is both your involvement in the folk club and in the folk festival. So the sorts of
things I am interested in are what attracts you to this sort of music, what it is that you like about it —
The music itself, or the club?
Both.
I met some people in my office who were involved in the folk club. They were people who came down
to the club. They were members but they weren't active members, they weren't one of the executives.
I'd been playing guitar for about a year, when I came to Mt Isa and through them I came to the club.
From there it's developed and I ended up being asked to be on the executive to stand for a position.
That's how I got into this and the folk festival was something that was actually on the agenda before I
ever got involved with the club. 147
What do you think both the folk club and this festival means for Mt Isa?
I think the main thing is that it's an alternative source for people to come out and enjoy themselves and relax, I think more than anything it's seen as that. I've noticed at the folk club, if somebody `s actually on stage playing a guitar, whether they're any good or not, people sit there and continue to socialise, have a drink, whatever. But soon as the guitar's packed away, people walk out, the place just goes. I don't know if that answers your question. The music seems to set a mood or a theme. Like I said, it doesn't have to be particularly good music. I mean somebody could be up there playing just riffs, you know, just particular pieces of a song that they know, but as long as they're up there, the people seem to sit and listen. Even if they're not really listening, you know intently listening - they still have a conversation while the music happening - but as soon as that guitar is packed everybody just seems to slowly disperse. If nobody's going to get back on the stage, and they know that no body else will get back up, usually within thirty to forty minutes we're closing the bar, going home.
Are there other live venues? I don't know what the other clubs here are like, but do you think it's
actually having a live performer?
I do think having a live performer is effective, and, just to validate that point, I know the people who
run Switches nightclub in town. Now the Irish Club has always had live music, live bands, and
Switches hasn't because they have this big disco downstairs. The local radio station runs a program
where they have a call-in request. If your two requests are played on air you get free tickets to a work
force request party [at Switches]. So what [the owners of Switches have] done is they've hired bands so
that as soon as that work force request party's over, the band will crank up. And they're finding that
they can actually keep their clientele there, otherwise they disperse and go off to the Irish Club, and
come back to Switches at the end of the evening. So that it definitely holds the audience if you have a
band, a live band.
And the folk scene itself in Mt Isa, is that strong? And what sort of music is it? Is it really traditional or
a mixture or — 148
To me folk music is endemic to the area where it's being played. Like if you were in Texas or
Louisiana or Mississippi, blues would be folk music and if you were in Arkansas then you're looking at blue grass. In Mt Isa, [it is] Australian bush ballads. But still it's such a broad question, that it covers such a large genre of music that I think it's — you can't classify it, in my mind. I mean you could say
yes, strictly what you just heard in the background20 is bush, Australian ballads, but to me Paul Kelly's music, which is more modern, is also folk music. It's still considered folk music and he's still very popular in the folk circles. So, again I didn't answer your question, but I can try again!
No, that's fine. I suppose the other thing I'd like to know is do you notice particular songs or pieces
that seem to be popular with the [folk] group [in Mt Isa] and then it changes? Or I mean it's hard for
me to tell, because this is a fifteen year get together [for Rafferty and Buckleys Chants] I don't know
whether —
Are you talking about Bazza's group? Are there particular songs that seem to be more popular?
Yeah. I mean, for you, do they seem to be looking for a particular type of music or —
To me it's more the sound and the actions involved. Like there's a song that Leichhardt's Silt does
that's about going after a whale. The chorus, the repeated chorus is so catchy, you want to get up and
help the captain stab this whale! I do anyway. It's talking about 'take me out to me whale,' you know,
the weak can stay behind and we'll kill this whale and we'll be brave heroes when we come back to
shore. That to me is more of a folk song. And that repeated chorus, everybody can join in and really get
under it. Like today at the Irish Club you noticed when this group, Rafferty, got up there was a couple
of songs they were singing that every body knew the chorus, right. That is good folk music. And you
could see the people were in to it, you know. It really happened. The whole [audience] was involved in
the proceedings.
I know you started learning the guitar recently, is that interest in music fairly recent or have you
always been interested in music? Have you played other instruments?
2° the group Rafferty performing the Irish Washerwoman 149
When I was a young boy I remember sitting on my grandmother's couch and my uncle playing guitar.
He was quite a good guitarist, or at least my recollection of him playing the guitar was that he was a very good player. And I remember him saying to me, 'oh, it's easy! It's really easy.' Anyway I went to school at fourth grade, they didn't offer guitar so I got a saxophone, alto-saxophone, and so I played saxophone until the eleventh grade. So from fourth grade to eleventh grade I played sax. The only reason I quit was because if you played the saxophone you had to be in the marching band. And I just could not, I couldn't stand to march. It was just the bane of my existence and a total embarrassment. So that's the reason I actually quit playing the saxophone. And then on my thirty-second birthday, which was two and a half years ago, I decided I was going to go back and start playing music again. But in the
mean time I'd always been heavily involved in sport. So between that point of quitting I was very
involved in sport while I was playing saxophone, but between that point of stopping playing the
saxophone I'd filled that gap with sport, with judo. And so now when I'm getting older and I don't
bounce as well as I used to, I've decided that there's lots and lots of old guitar players, [but] how many
old judo players do you see?! So older and a bit wiser maybe, I don't know.
So in your own playing, what sort of thing do you hope to be able to do? Is it a particular genre, like
blue grass, or —
I love the blues, Eric Clapton is a demi-god in my eyes. And what Michael Fix does is just
phenomenal. I'm playing classical guitar for one reason, and that's to learn to play the guitar. That's
the only reason I'm playing it. I'm not particularly — I mean there is some very beautiful music, [with
guitarists like] John Williams, Julian Bream, those fellas they can really make the instrument cry, you
know, what ever they want to do with it. And I respect that but it's not really what I'm interested in.
But I chose that path because I want to be proficient at the instrument. I feel like if you go the other
route, which you see most of the folkies do, you know they can strum a dozen chords or more, you
know, or seventy-two chords for that matter, but they can't truly play the instrument. There's a big
difference. So that's the reason I chose classical. It's a lot harder style but that's the reason behind it.
What do you think the festival means for this town? 150
I think this festival, the reason it has gelled probably as well as it has, is because of that seventy-five year [anniversary]. There's not many mines with that kind of mining life, seventy-five years. [Also] there's been such a strong community base in this community, in Mt Isa, and I think that's simply because of the isolation. Everybody more or less has to get along. I have never been in a town that has
[been] more friendly than this one. And so since we have the seventy-fifth [anniversary] we approached, well I shouldn't say `we', the ladies, Kerry and Gwen, approached Festivals Australia to help us put these bands back together and that's where it kind of gelled. Once we got these guys up here, well you can see from the reaction at the Irish Club they were very well-known, a very well respected band in the area. So I think it has brought a sense of community spirit into the town. But I must say I was a bit disappointed tonight because I was expecting more people. But, yeah it's good, I think, like I say, a lot of people were at the Irish Club and they go and they don't have to pay. You know, they get it for free, so. And it's a bit cold tonight.
7.2.4 Jayne Nankivell, member of committee for 1997 Top Half Festival
Telephone interview held August 27 1997
Next year's festival will be at Mt Isa
Contact for history of festival: Bob Barford
Does a lot of folk promotions & art promotions in Alice Springs
Part of band Bloodwood - band has been together for eighteen years
Scotty Balfour also good contact - also in Bloodwood
Top Half Festival - 27th year this year
Started because expensive to travel to southern festivals so it's a gathering of 'top enders'
Used to include Townsville in circuit but pus Northern Territory in same position as before ie money & time
Roving festival because so much distance between towns - so alternates between 'south' & 'north' locations in the Top Half 151
Low budget so rarely international performers involved
Many southern performers want to attend because of the good weather midyear
Otherwise just top enders gathering
Usually one group of guest artists invited to perform
Although most festivals offer free tickets to performers can't do this with top half because funds not available
Core of festival is a folk group, but finding more interstate people attending - this year every state represented in audience
Last year in Katherine - someone from Kangaroo Island went!
Approx 100 weekend tickets sold this year - considered successful (cf southern festivals where this would be considered a small attendance)
Festival started because of isolation but desire to have folk festivals
People coming from south because old style, small, laid back festival
first time Jabiru hosted festival
Jabiru Music club not really folk-based eg Bloodwood from Alice Springs, & The Fling from Western
Australia
Range of different sorts of music
Workshops - several run together unlike previous years because about ten people wanted to put them
on. These are usually workshops for guitar styles, kids, or more general based - this year four
workshops run together eg workshop out at tourist area so opportunity to go on tours
Also info centre at Bullwarie (?spelling) - park headquarters
Types of performers eg:
i. one of local bands write own material, use drums, saxophone
ii. one guy from Tassie solo artist - plays variety of instruments, lots of percussion - studied in
Africa, makes own instruments eg thumb piano, coran (?spelling) 152
iii. couple who do own material, use percussion - held percussion workshop at the billabong workshops & festival attract local & folk people movie shown at this year's festival - an old folkie movie - put on by cinema club
in Katherine: small percent of local people attend festival
Jabiru more supportive especially when local stuff on eg Jayne & co-ordinators taught dancing at local school one morning a week so that all kids in primary school had done some dancing before festival started organisors set up local folk band at school for about one & a half hours in morning, then the Fling did the school dance later this was a good promotion for festival - kids & parents wanted to go also local people gave donations to festival eg local shops
this doesn't always happen in top end towns - Jabiru smaller community (population of around 1500) so
more supportive but also quite wealthy community as well
next year Mt Isa to host festival: looking at theme for festival as town's 751h yr
Mt Isa council asked festival organisers if festival could be held there - council has funds to help
support event
Theme 'back to Mt Isa' - try & attract old folkies from area to go
eg Chris Buch has written many songs about the area
Jayne surprised of where information/articles about the festival has turned up
Club sends out regular newsletter before festival - some articles perhaps based on these
Used to be another festival up north - at Tennant Creek - called the Gold Rush festival
Folded a couple of years ago
Put together as folkie get together - to get exposure for local stuff
Died out because not very many folkies left in Tennant Ck
Distance also a problem 153
Used to be a folk touring circuit - offered $ for bands to perform at small country towns
No network now so performers don't know who to contact re performing so us just travel to Alice
Springs
7.3 Audience
7.3.1 Ian, Pam, Peter, Audrey.
Held at the Mt Isa Folk Club grounds, June 5 1998 at approximately 3.30 pm
What I'm interested in is why you've come to the festival, what it is that attracted you to coming to the
festival, and other festivals that you've attended.
Peter: thousands of reasons!
What are they?
Pam: Well I think one of our main reasons is to meet up with friends again. Because we used to live up
in the Territory, that's where the Top Half Folk Festival started, and we used to all gather every year.
At either Darwin, Katherine, Jump Creek, and Alice Springs occasionally. We'd left the Territory and
moved down to Maryborough. We went back [to the Top Half Festival] for the first time last year, to
the one at Jabiru. When we heard that this one was to be at Mt Isa, we thought great! That's only half
way! We will be there!
Peter: Same for me. I used to live here. In Katherine I met these guys and the chance to meet lots of
other friends, catch up with lots of people. Also happens to be on our way to Darwin which is where
we're going for a holiday as well, which we've been planning for a year, so it all fitted in very nicely.
And the sort of bands are they the sort of ones you've seen before?
Peter: Heard of most of them. • 154
Pam: Yeah, heard of them, though they have different bands each time, you know each [folk] club sort of gets in different people, so you find it interesting. But all your local musicians get to perform, too.
For the musicians it's good; the concerts are excellent because they sing new things and learn new
things - well that's how Ian enjoys. But then the jam sessions after all the organised things, that is the highlight of this festival, because everyone just sits around jamming.
Do any of you play an instrument as well?
Peter: Sort of. I won't be doing anything at this festival. It's a bit of a hobby. I'd rather listen to
someone else.
And what about the movement of the Top Half from place to place? What do you think about that? Is it
good? Is it a good way to meet to other people?
Peter: It's just impossible for one club to run it on every year any way.
Pam: Because the organisation and expense is too great and which is why they [they take it in turns]. I
think the distance is the main factor.
Peter: Yeah. To make it fair on everybody, too. If you had it in one place you'd give up travelling. It's
just the way things are. No need to think about it, is there? It's like the sun comes up in the east. It's the
way it is.
Do you find much difference between the festivals?
Peter: Every town's got its own personality, so has every festival. It's run by different groups of people
and they change every year, too. 155
Pam: Yeah, I think Mt Isa's pretty stable, although some [things] have changed since we first knew it.
But I know with the Territory, a lot of the population [has changed].
And how long have you all been coming to the festival?
Peter:[to Pam] When did you go to your first Top Half?
Pam: We went up to Katherine in '86 and I think. We'd been in town a short time and Doug said we're going down to Tennant Creek, are you coming? And we said yes, and we all took off to Tennant Creek!
We'd only been in Katherine for about three weeks. And that was our very first one. It was the `Gold
Rush' [festival] in Tennant Creek. That was where we met up with everybody and we thought this is great!
Peter: Was that the one where our mate spewed out the bus window?
Pam: That's the one!
Audrey: I wasn't at that one
Peter: I was there!
Audrey: [to Peter] You were at the window?
Peter: No! I think I got roped into helping them hose the bus down! I'm not sure.
Pam: He wasn't used to drinking and he decided to, what was he drinking? Ginger wine?
Peter: Ginger, no he wasn't drinking.... No, it was green ginger wine
Pam: He washed, we washed —
Peter: It was what Ian used to wash —
Pam: to wash it out of his hair!
Ian: Oh, God yeah!
Pam: [to Ian] we were saying that was our first festival.
Ian: talk about bloody acid rain!
Pam: you see the boss - well I should start at the beginning, I suppose. This guy got a bit over the top,
you know he drank too much, too soon. And he wasn't feeling well. So he tried to open the window,
and he — 156
Peter: he didn't have time!
Ian: he only opened it like this far and he went blah! And of course it went straight out over his head and spray-painted the whole back of the inside of the bus.
Pam: and Ian was sitting on the floor in the aisle!
Peter: It turned the back of the bus into a giant atomiser!
Ian: Oh God yeah. And I was sitting there yacking to people and there was this warm stuff splattering all over me. And next thing there was this smell. Well we stopped at Daily Waters and it was straight into the shower, clothes and all! After dousing meself with green ginger wine to kill the smell of it.
Pam: and him! I would have left him there!
Ian: Oh, he was very embarrassed, he really was. He was highly embarrassed, he got given heaps for that for weeks.
Peter: No that was, was that a Top Half? Or was that -
Ian: that was a Gold Rush.
Peter: a Gold Rush, yeah.
Ian: that was a Gold Rush.
Peter: That was really good fun.
Ian: Oh yeah.
Pam: yeah, because they're really relaxing, Tennant Creek, Gold Rush, whatever it was, it was sort of structured but not structured.
Peter: I've never seen another festival with a set of Olympic Games like they have.
Pam, Ian: yeah, yeah.
Peter: they had these Olympic Games, they called them the Olympic Games. There was a prize for everything that you get to keep for the year.
Pam: each club used to participate on the Sunday.
Peter: different persons each year get to make up the events.
Pam: the person, the club that wins has to do the next year.
Ian: like a cricket stump in the ground, and you put your forehead on the cricket stump and you gotta go `round and `round and `round the cricket stump, like twenty times. Then run and pick up a hat and 157 then run over somewhere else and put the hat down somewhere and then go back to the stump. And you get people getting like four or five steps and stopping and vomiting!
Peter: I got a rotten hangover the last morning! Great fun!
Ian: Because you're dizzy, you run at like forty-five degrees from where you want to go. So you see everybody else heading over that way when they should be heading over this way, so you say, right, when my turn comes, I'm aiming over there! And it works out pretty right! Or the blind fold races, where you were blind[folded] and your team mates had to tell you where to go, - left, right, straight ahead, etc, etc - to get around an obstacle course. That was fun, yeah. Every one [had] rotten hangovers and stuff, usually, or they'd be busy curing their hangovers since they woke up, you know! It was an
intended part of the thing!
Audrey: Well the good thing, it's all in one spot. You can just drag [yourself] up and you haven't
disturbed any body else.
Pam, Ian: That's right.
Audrey: I don't think you're going to annoy anybody here. No immediate neighbours. [looking
around camp site at the Isa folk club] What was it like at the other places, like Tennant Creek?
Pam: Katherine, and Jabiru, they, because we haven't got folk clubs here, they've got there own place
for people [to stay]. But we usually hire the old schools and we'd sort of all camp out in the good old
sleep dormitory-style in the big hall. Set up kitchen.
Ian: oh yeah and you'd have the concert, followed by bush dancing `til about two or three o'clock in
the morning and then jam sessions 'til dawn, you know.
Pam: and you'd grab your sleep during the day!
Ian: In between pub sessions and more jam sessions!
So how long have you all been going to folk clubs?
Peter: That was 1986.
Pam: 1986, yes. 158
Ian: yeah that was the best one.
Peter: Oh I'd been to a few before that. I'd been to Youngerbourough and I'd just missed the Top Half in Townsville. That was' 81 or `83, I can't remember which. 1981. There was only ever one Top Half in Townsville.
Pam: Yeah
Peter: I just missed that. And we went to a few, like there was Youngerbourough and —
Audrey: Darwin?
Peter: Oh, that was before I went to Darwin.
Audrey: Oh
Peter: They were pretty good, I was living around that area.
Ian: As I was saying to you before, these Territory festivals are much more friendly and laid-back, than
the big festivals down south 21
Peter: they're showcases. Little festivals are something for every body to get involved with.
Ian: yeah, that's right.
Pam: Any one can sort of make music, you don't have to be [a musician].
Ian: It's not a competitive thing. You know, they don't judge you on how you dress, and all this sort of stuff.
Peter: If you dressed any differently, I'd have to judge you differently!
Pam: If you saw him in a trendy shirt, eh?! It's all, right he didn't bring his sarong this time!
Ian: I was going to! I was going to!
So what got you started going to folk festivals?
Ian: [A] basic interest in making music with friends. That's all. I mean these territory festivals, these
Top Half folk festivals, it is just about meeting together with people you don't see for the rest of the
year and having a good time. That's all it is. There's no, like you get the big country festivals and [to
Peter] you were telling us about the Charters Towers one for instance. You're basically kept back stage
if you were performing and like it's, OK, you've got your turn, you've got your three songs to sing,
OK, out you go. And there's basically people out the front judging you on your dress and presentation
21 Ian is referring to southern Queensland and northern NSW 159 and all that sort of stuff, you know. It's no fun. It's a big nerve-wracking thing. Although, it's funny, I can play to any audience — to drunken footballers, even bikies — doesn't matter, no probs, no sweat. I play at a folk festival, nervous as! Always!
Peter: Because most of the audience are musicians!
Ian: Well, you're playing to your peers. You know that if you screw up, now they're going to know about it!
Pam: Even if they don't hear, they still know. And, yeah, he gets so nervous. I've never seen him so nervous.
Peter: we went to Woodford New Year's Eve, at Maleny, didn't we [to Audrey] and we went to
Woodford once.
Pam: we saw —
Audrey: well I went to Woodford, yeah
Peter: That's right and it, oh look , yeah that's right you didn't —
Audrey: we were dizzy running from one thing to another. There's so much on.
Pam: so much on, yeah
Peter: All showcase stuff, you know, it's like a show.
Pam: you don't feel part of it, do you?
Peter: No, not at all.
Audrey: That's why I like these, because see, I'm not a musician, but I feel I'm just as welcome and I
really feel part of all this as well. You know, it's good, it's a good feeling, it's a good atmosphere.
So do you think that comes from having to travel so far to catch up? Or it's because you see each other
once a year approximately?
Ian: I think —
Pam: I think that might have something to do with it, yeah.
Ian: I think it's because in the Territory and the north here generally [it] is a relatively unpopulated
place with a lot of distance between places. And it's a life style thing, too. I mean people who live in
the north are generally much more laid back. They' re not so involved in making a show about things,
you know. People are more interested in having a good time than competing with people, judging 160
people, or whatever. It's just a good time. And the travelling to and from is part of it, you know? I
mean we've come up from Maryborough, Pete and Aud have come from Toowoomba, and basically
the festival is why we've travelled all this way to be here. I mean, we going home again on Monday!
Peter: you are!
Ian: Yeah, we are. These guys are going to go up to Darwin and that. But —
Pam: And Di, Di rang, a friend, and they caught a bus and came down from Darwin. And yeah, she's
got a week off work and then they're heading back —
Ian: She [Pam] goes to work on Tuesday. It's just a whole different scene here.
Pam: I don't think Di's missed a festival.
Ian: She doesn't play anything or sing or anything.
Pam: She does Morris dancing, but she can't do that now, that's folded, too.
Ian: I think that's part of the thing with living in the Territory especially, you tend to have very
transient populations. People generally live a long way away from their own families, and their own sort of social support networks that they've grown up with. So they tend to go out and make their own fun, make friends, move, go out and become involve in things.
Peter: Mt Isa is the same as the Territory, it's a very transient population. No bloody sewing circles, no knitting clubs for ladies. Women either love it or hate it, and so do the blokes. And if you can go out, they're the easiest towns in the world to socialise in, aren't they? It's part of it. Toowoomba, and I reckon places like that, are some of the most difficult towns to get to know anyone. They've all got their extended families, they all stay in-doors with the doors shut, they won't go out to a pub. The only people you meet in pub bars are idiots and drunks, bar flies and so forth.
Ian: because they've lived there all their lives, they've got their own little sort of social networks and they don't tend to expand [these].
Pam: While if you're any where like this you've always come from some where else.
Ian: Yes.
Audrey: distance doesn't mean anything to you either. 161
Ian: No, well, when Pam and I lived in Katherine, it was nothing to drive down to Tennant Creek, 600
k's, on a Friday night, to go to the Gold Rush. Then drive home Monday with a horrible hangover!
Peter: I used to drive down from Darwin and you used to drive up to Darwin for a bloody weekend,
you know, three hundred and thirty k each way, just wouldn't think anything of it.
Ian: Well, yeah, the four of us went to Alice Springs one year. That's nearly twelve hundred k's in an old Holden ute. Three in the front, one in the back! Twelve hundred k's in the ute!
Audrey: Did you take it in turns to sit in the back?!
Ian: Yeah, we did, yeah. We got to Tennant Creek and the engine was running a bit funny. We opened the bonnet and all inside the engine bay was just painted with oil. It actually cracked [the] number two piston on the old Holden. But we drove it all the way to Alice Springs — it's another six hundred k's from Tennant [Creek] to Alice Springs. We bought ten litres of oil in Alice Springs and that got us another twelve hundred k's home in the old Holden ute, going der-de-der-der-de-der-der-der at a hundred and twenty k's! This cloud of smoke behind! Got a great deal of respect for old cars! Got home and had to buy another engine but, you know, it got us there and back.
Pam: Don't worry about the fuel, it's the oil!
Ian: Yeah, that's right, check the fuel and top the oil up! You'll be right!
Peter: Another thing about folk festivals is the sociability. I don't think I've ever seen any one get into a fight at a folk festival.
Ian: No
Peter: I've seen it at country and western festivals where there's lots of grog, there's people getting blind and rotten all of the place. I guess most of them get legless on hooch. Pretty hard [stuff]
Ian: yeah [both laugh]
Audrey: You're sitting on the ground just enjoying everything, you don't care.
Pam: That's right. It's really relaxing.
Ian: it comes back to that same atmosphere thing, you know, people are here for a good time. They're not here to —
Peter: I don't think anyone's even threatened Campbell the Swaggy with violence, I don't know why. 162
Ian: Surprising.
I used to see him a lot in Melbourne. He used to go to the Bushwackers dances.
Ian: I suppose he's found a life style that suits him.
Just for my data base, I need to know your background, what country you come from if born overseas,
where your parents are born, your type of employment and your postcode.
Pam: I was born in England. So were my parents. I'm now an Australian. I've been here mmm years!
Ian: Since 1958.
Pam: Yes. I was a ten pound migrant. What were the other ones? I'm a support worker for
intellectually disabled people. And my postcode is 4650.
Ian: I was born a kiwi. Naturalised Australian, I've been here twenty somewhat years. I work with
intellectually disabled people, it's a full time job with the government, intellectual disability services.
Parents are New Zealanders obviously. We're from Maryborough, 4650. That's about it.
Peter: I was born in Eske (?). My parents were born in Australia. Work for Telstra. And my postcode
is 4350.
Audrey: I was born and raised in western New South Wales. My mother's Italian, my father is
Australian. I spent a lot of time in Towoomba. And I work in a bank.
7.3.2 Allen Shaw, long-time member of Mt Isa folk club;
curator of club exhibition held over weekend
Held at the Mt Isa Folk Club, June 4 1998 at approximately 1 pm
If you could tell me what you know of the history of the festival.
The festival or the club?
I'd like both.
Both. The festival really followed the formation of the club. Because at the time that the Isa club was
established in 1970, Alice Springs and Darwin [folk clubs] were, I think forming, at similar times. I
was here but I never had any part of that [formation]. Those top end clubs got together and they formed 163 the Top End Federation. The festival was actually owned by the Top Half Folk federation which is [the clubs of] Alice Springs, Isa, Darwin, at one stage it was Townsville, and we have Katherine and Jabiru input into it now. And they rotate [the festival] on an annual basis, [held on the] Queen's birthday weekend. So really the festival that started around the 1970-71 era fell into formation with the clubs of about that time. And then this is the twenty-eight Top Half, so that the 1971, which I think, Chris
[Buch] could fix you with that [information], I think was an Alice Spring event. And it went from there. Isa had its first one in 1974, it was the first time it came here. Then the series of Top Half festivals circulated, so the [Isa festivals were held in] '74, '77 1980, '84, '87, '91, '95 (was it '95? Yes) and then three years later back to Isa again for this one.
So it's roughly every four years?
Third or fourth, depending on what other clubs slip in or out, like Townsville [dropped out] one year, now we've got Katherine or Jabiru, things like that. I think they slipped one in at Katherine. So that, though it's [every] three [years], sometimes it's the fourth. It varies a little. And at each festival [the members of the Top Half Federation] have a meeting on the Sunday morning, the federation delegates come together and then they allocate the festival for the next year. So [the Federation has a roster and] each club runs the festival on behalf of that federation. So they send [the Federation] information, they come to it and they have input from those clubs.
So why did the clubs and the festival begin?
Well in the case of the Isa one, Chris Buch and Nick Belcham, [both] working in the mines at the time, and of course the time. It was the late 60s, the folk boom years, and everyone was into that sort of music. They were both English, you know, an English background in English folk music, and they
came here and said well I'm sure people are interested, could we do something and they had some
casual, informal gatherings and they got swamped [by people]. So then they decided to form the club. I
think at one of the things there were eighty people in the house. [pointing to display] There are some
photos there of pre-club days. And the first club was then formed and Nick Belcham, who's in one of
the photographs up there - 164
Bowling?!
Bowling! Yeah, I'm going to put a smart remark underneath that! - formed the club in 1970, about
June or July 1970, and Nick's number one membership is up in the frame there. I arrived in town in
May of '71. So it was within the first year. I've seen it since then, but I haven't always been an active member. The last few years I've been busy doing other things. So they formed a club and had various venues over the years. A little hall, that got burned down, Wheeler's Hall, was my first major venue.
Then it moved to what's called Opportunity School on the far side of town. And back in town in what's now the Buffalo Club, was the Buffalo Club, but it's expanded since. And then it moved to a series of hotel venues, the Tavern, the Isa and the Argent Hotels, and variously mixed those for a while. Then in the boom years of the late 70s, the club was flush with money. At the Isa Hotel [there] was an underground venue under there, called the K57 Bar, after the name of one of the big shafts of the mine which is now renamed the I62, and the place was just overwhelmed by crowds every fortnight. For the two dollars a head, [as] it was then, the club was still flush with money. So they invested their money in a property. Between 1978-79 through to 1984 they had a party - they paid the full twenty-eight thousand off the initial deposit plus another seventeen thousand, in those years. So a lot of the activities in the early 80s is the folk club doing gigs, bush dances, having concerts and things to raise money to pay off the house. The house then was over in Simpson Street. The actual building is still there but there is someone building a new building behind it. In around 1990 they moved from that site on to this site, on Alma Street, and this building was actually a house moved here by the Rugby Union Club [who
had] put up the beer garden. The site beside us actually belongs to the Lapidary Club and we share the
use of it. The rugby union club eventually built their own new club house, and that's it out the door
there, and at the time they wanted to sell this [one]. Now previously the [folk] club owned their own
property, their own land, but here they're on lease. So they transferred. What happened was that the
Rugby Union Club wanted to sell [this building], but there was no clubs with twenty-eight, well they
wanted thirty-two thousand I think for it, and there were no clubs around with that sort of money. The
folk club said, well, we have a club house that's worth that much. And they were offered twenty-eight
thousand for the premises over there, and the rugby union said it's a deal. So they moved from there to
here and bought it outright. So the club has operated here since 1990 and of course there's a history to
that as well and I hadn't been active, very active, in the club in those years. My [activities with the club 165 were] all pre-1990, but they've had grants from the casino in Townsville. I'm just about to put something up about that. They've had a third festival here now. But the other thing that the club has done in the late 80s-early 90s, is [that they] started a little festival in October, about 30 km out of town, at a dam, and that was the Rifle Creek. After the big floods last year, the venue was actually decimated by the overflow from the dam. So they had what they called a Clayton's Rifle Creek out in a park here!
And there's a poster up on the far wall there, which is the Clayton's Rifle Creek. And they held it here in town at Kalkadoon Park. And that's been a yearly cycle, every October.
So is that a more local festival?
That's just the club's festival, right. The Top half is the united clubs festival which they have to host in order. But Rifle Creek is their own. And prior to that is a couple of quite major festivals based on the
Irish Club which were [held] in '85 and '86. The posters and information about those are on this wall here. So they were probably [started] just a little after the Rifle Creek was started. There again, my input into the club sort of faded from about '88 on. It's only recently that I've been back. I'm not even a registered member at the moment!
What's the advantage of having your own club room other than paying?
I don't think that there's another folk club owns there own club house like this. And we always thought we were a bit unique in that respect. Others often lease a building, I think we're the only one that actually owns a building. You're not dependent on hotels and clubs and things that often say, Oh, we don't want you now, we've got something else and you suddenly lose your venue. [some people come in and ask Allen some questions] So where was I at?
You were talking about the clubs.
Ah yes. They're very dependent on the good will [of the venues]. Then you're also dependent on a total
public thing, you can't, even if we had a club house and a public venue, the club likes to encourage new
performance. Now sometimes that's a very daunting thing to get up in front of a public crowd who 166
expect certain things. It was nice for [more experienced] performers because you've got a great audience and you could really work the crowd, but for new people you frighten them off. So often we used to work between the two, and have a small fortnight thing at the club house and then a more upbeat one at a venue. But it always meant you had somewhere to go to and you could have things, you weren't dependent on the will of someone else. Now you've got somewhere to store your gear, and all those sorts of things. A venue like this is away from houses and everything else, it must be just so much more, you know, it feels like you own it. For all the people, all those years [who] had that in view, a mutual idea of buying a place, to getting it and paying it off and then changing an asset that was a bit awkward to use at times to something that was useable. So really it paid off in the long run they can have a festival [here]. You couldn't at the other [club house]. It is a cross between having a place that you said was your own - that's how I felt about it - and sort of that family/club thing. It was very difficult to get the public to the other club house, it was a bit cliquey, that's how people always saw it, but here your much more public. It's the place where all the clubs have got buildings through here. It's a real mix, much more public. So anyway I still think we're the only club in Australia that owns its own premises outright.
Has the sort of music that's performed changed? I mean I understand that Mt Isa has a moving population -
Yes. I mean the early days, [looking at] the photograph there, it was guitar and stage, and ordinary light and no sound gear. The first sound gear caused a squabble. Chris [Buch] will tell you about that. People will. Now they've got microphones, you know and blah, blah, blah. The boom years, really, that went through to when they made all that money. At that point the local clubs, like the Irish Club and others, grew and [then] videos came in and it totally changed the scene. We started losing crowds. So that big technical thing of having that stuff at home, people changed, their social life changed, we noticed that.
So the big crowds we had dissipated to other things. [This] made us a bit more inward looking perhaps.
It was very hard to compete. So that was a change that effected our club, like a lot of other things. I think perhaps the first folk clubs were very Irish-oriented because that's the origins of our folk [music] and everything else. Perhaps in the 1980s the Australian influence, you know, Australian people were writing a lot of stuff. [Then] that came through and we were doing bush dances, a lot of Australian tradition[al music] and a lot more Australian music came through. You really get a mix of both now. 167
Then in the later years when the club moved here, you get the club being a music club as much as a folk club. They've actually had rock and roll nights, they've had metallic nights out here, [where the folk club] just leased the club, [and these other groups have] used the facilities. Those people actually come here and sit with you but they play a totally different music. We've had jazz nights and things over the years, there's a real mix. So in many ways it's gone from a folk club to a music club. But it still has that folk tradition, it's still in the federation, it still has folk festivals. But you find a lot of people use the facilities now as a music club as much much as a folk club.
And do they become members of the music club?
It's still a folk club, but they often just join because they want to be in it. [Now] when they have jam sessions they often get this huge variety of music because often musicians just like to listen to each other. So that's one of the advantages, but it still has that folk tradition, it's pretty strong. But there are those other influences, you can see it, and they don't discourage those other music influences at all.
Have you noticed people coming back more to live entertainment?
It's never disappeared and if you do a good job of it, you always seem to get a good crowd. It's really up to the people who put things on, that they get good performers and market it well, and get on a venue and entertain people. It doesn't matter what the music is, people will go to have a look. Word gets around, it's that sort of thing.
So do you find the people of Mt Isa are pretty supportive of the club?
They always have been. Yeah and especially some of our civic leaders who've always supported us.
Some of them from way back, who've been in the town since I have and whenever we have something on, they're always there. Only for those [bigger] things. Occasionally you might see their face on a
[club] night, but they always come to our major things. Often you'll have one of them as a patron or something like that. Whenever the people from the folk club do things they always have that good will and people are always willing to help. So that still seems to be there. And I guess it's part of the small 168
town thing, it's very much a big family. It's interesting that a lot of us who were really active in the 80s
who've moved or transferred - which is always a thing you've got here - or just gone on to other things,
and you let the new people come through and that was good, too. So that people who've done it all got
out and it put the reliance of doing something on new people. And they got experience and it was really
important that that was done. And that first [occurred in] '91, because I was a co-ordinator in the '87
festival, and that was when I got out, so my first festival was the '91 and a whole new people, I didn't
know anyone. And they put it on and had a great weekend and I thought [it was] great. They were all
[involved], well they were all a lot younger than us, and they did it. And they thought well, they didn't
have to rely on any of us old mob, and [the festival] was still there. And a whole new generation [was
involved] you know, and they brought their kids who were a lot younger, and it's still happening.
I'm interested, too, in how the festival moves to different places.
Well, that was [due to] that federation of top end clubs. Because we're so far from everything. When
Chris is here, have a yarn to him, because he was actually the man who was one of the steering people who got it together and he'll be here shortly.
I've just got two short questions. I'm interested in the poetry that seems to be quite a big part from what
I've been reading [in your exhibition]. I'm just wondering how that ties in with the music festival.
Well, you'll see even on this current program that there's a poet's breakfast. Places like Winton will
have their festival every year, and the poets' competition is a big part of that. And the bush ballad has always been a big thing. Keith McKendrick, when he was here at the '84 festival, he actually followed
that [poem] the Adelaide students wrote, The Day McArthur Farted, and saved the town from drought.
Have you heard it?
No.
It was written by these Adelaide students who wanted to do a bush ballad, along the vein of a typical
bush ballad, because it's always a tall story and its' always trying to be [humorous] and it's always [set
in] dire circumstances, you know. Now, having been written, it took off in folk clubs and became a 169 very popular piece. It's very funny and beautifully written. Now in the time from the 70s, I think it was written, to '84 Keith went all around Australia tracing people who were reciting it to find out where they got it from and how the words have changed. There's always been this bush ballad thing and that was sort of the first time someone was really studying it on recent things. And when you go back, you know your Banjo Patterson and all others, that secular Australian tradition, it's always been a part of the folk scene. And that's that Australian-ness. I mean it's the old story, the Australian sense of humour comes in to it, the exaggeration of things, you know, the witty one-liners that are in there and the laconic humour and then this out-doing of someone with a tall story is all in there. It's always been part of all the folk festivals I've ever been to, there's always someone who's done stories and yarns and bush ballads and it's still going. The poets' breakfast has become very popular. To me it's just something I've walked in on, I don't have any particular part [to play in] that but it's always there.
The last thing I'd like to know is about the other sorts of festivals that are part of the Top Half. Is there something a little bit different about each one depending where they are?
It's dependent, each club organises it themselves, they can set a theme, but the general outline's much the same. You know, there's workshops, there are main concerts, there's things at the beginning, there's things at the end, there's a farewell, there's all sorts of things. But often there's a thematic thing running through them. Sometimes they're all in one spot, sometimes they're in a town and travel all about. This year it's really Isa's 75`" and so they're using it as a bit of a reunion theme. They actually have allocated funds to bringing back people from far and wide, who were part of early events. There was a lot of Isa input into the '71 in particular, if you go around the posters you can sort of pick things out. I've got them around the corner. I was the co-ordinator for the '84 one, and that was an ethnic theme, and there was a large input from all the various ethnic communities in the city. The '84, we named it To the
Stack and Back' and we used a mining theme. We had Danny Spooner from Melbourne and he did a fabulous miners' workshop. In fact we were trying to get an underground venue for it, but they wouldn't allow that. 1980 was called 'Rebels, Rogues and Heroes' and they had the whole stage up with convict days. One in Darwin was something something about witches, and the Isa crew went and did a thing
[about]witches. So each place tends to pick a theme and it's up to the club what they do and how they do it. It's really their business, they just put on a full weekend. But they also invite people, and if you 170 want to go in concerts or if you're a big and well-known, they'll put you on the main concerts. But they also have their guest artists and they'll try and work them in. It's really up to the club, who's hosting it that year and they vary from place to place. A group from here went to Katherine, or was it Jabiru? and they used a school ground, so it was a really tight, all in one place type of festival and you get to know everybody very well. This year I understand the three lunch-time concerts on Friday, to start [the festival] off, Saturday lunch-time and Sunday lunch-time, they're all in different spots, the rest of it's here. So Friday lunch-time is at the Civic Centre, the side walk café. Saturday is around the corner at the Barkly Hotel. Sunday is at the Irish Club. So they'll have those, the rest of it is here. Other years they've gone out to Warrina Park. There's two occasions, '91 and the one in '87 both had afternoon concerts held twelve, fifteen kilometres out of town.
And they had just a little shuttle bus taking people out?
Yeah, they get shuttle buses and every one takes their cars and all that sort of thing, you know! That was the whole Sunday afternoon of the '87 that I was involved in. And as you see on the newspaper article we had 2 000 people there. And the day was just sent from heaven! It was glorious!
7.3.3 Frederique Glasco
Held in the Mt Isa Folk Club house, June 7 1998 at approximately 11 pm
What attracts you to the folk club and the folk festival?
I like the music, that's the first thing, and I think the people are nice people to be around. It's folk music so most of the time that reflects the area where you live. I'm not from Australia originally so may be that's one of the attractions, I suppose. And as I've met more people around from the folk club, then you start knowing them all [in Mt Isa]. They're really nice people so they're easy to get along
[with] and they give a chance to everybody. Not that I play any instrument or anything like that but it's quite interesting to see what people can do, and to get out, even if they are not perfect and they're not stars, but they don't mind getting up on stage and playing a little bit of something. 171
And what is it about the music that you like?
I don't like all musics, but some of the instruments. [Although] I don't like all the instruments either.
Some of the instruments I like, I like the flute very much. I like the guitar and I was very happy to have
Michael Fix here because there's finally someone who actually plays guitar, do you know what I mean? Really gets everything out of the instrument you can think about getting out of it. And without listening to a disk of somebody and that's why it's great. But are you asking especially about the festival or just from general folk club meetings?
Well, I know that they're separate but I'm interested in both. So I'm interested in what happens at the folk club and then what happens at the festival. And perhaps if there's any relationship between the two, or whether the folk club is a basis for what's happening with the festival, things like that. I suppose I'm interested in the idea of live music, what actually having that music being performed means.
Actually, it's an interesting question because my daughter was asking me if we could buy one of those disks, you know, from [the band] Spot the Dog. I really like them and I asked Ken, do you really want her to buy a disk? And he said, no I don't think so. They are really good, but I was feeling the same way. I didn't really want her to buy a disk but I really like them. I think it's just because you really like them [performing] live, you know, a live concert. I don't know if you would enjoy it as much sitting down in your living room and listening to a disk of them. So I found a difference. I could stand in the cold for hours listening to them but I don't think that I really want a disk to take home [to] listen [to]. I don't know why, but there is something different.
I suppose there's a lot more interaction in a live performance.
Yeah, and maybe just [that they are] right in front of you playing is different than trying to think of them playing [while listening to a disk]. Something like this, I don't know. I don't know what it is but
I'm not going to buy a disk. So there must be a difference. That's what I was thinking to myself, why is it? But Michael Fix, I did buy a disk. And we have a tape, a video tape. So it's not the same thing, I 172 don't know why. I don't know why you like some music but you don't like others. I guess it fits you better, a question of personality or things like that. I'm not much into rap and things like that, I've never been able to get into that sort of thing. I can't relate to that at all. I found a very big difference between the music in the States and the music here. The rhythm. Well, at first [we noticed the rhythm], but now we are much more here. But when we first moved here and we first heard Australian music, the rhythm was different. Faster and just different. I think maybe because America is more influenced by the black, the American black [music] and they've just got it in them. You don't find that anywhere else really. It's just different and it was interesting because of that. Because of comparing the different countries I've been living in and things like that. Have you ever been to the United States?
I've been to Spain. I haven't been to America.
Well the music is different again. Very different. It's funny how the difference in each nation organised a different rhythm, almost. The beat, the beat is different, its much faster here than in the States. Mainly in bush music it's like that, if you call it bush music, you know this, this lager phone? — well this lager phone beat is usually much faster than you would [hear in America], that's the way we felt it when we first arrived. Now it's fine, it fits, you know! But for some reason, it didn't quite, it was just a bit too fast for what I was used to from the States.
One last question, what do you think the festival does for Mt Isa?
It brings some people from other places, some people who are interested in the same type of thing. I don't think it converts anybody, like if I didn't like that type of music then I don't think I'd want to come just to see [these performers]. They're just not going to be interested and would get themselves busy with something else. But yeah, it gets a lot of people who are interested in the same type of thing but would never be able to get together, or wouldn't have any reason to get together otherwise, to all get together and share it. I think it's nice for that. But more for a place like this [because] it is very isolated.
Do you think the folk club does the same sort of thing for the people more around Mt Isa? 173
Yeah, Mt Isa is a very musical town. Very, very musical town. Amazingly musical. Because we lived on the coast [of Queensland] and there was nearly no bands. Here there is, I think, five [bands] going on all the time, working here or there or hired by this and that club, things like this all the time. The people are much more into music. There is many more people who play an instrument, and guitar is a very, very common one. A lot of people have a go, it seems like. Much more than on the coast. Have you found that too?
Yeah, I suppose, too, I've been to folk music down in Melbourne, so I'm used to sort of having lots of people around performing. But Melbourne's quite different anyway because it is a bigger place. You actually have a lot more bands coming through, so I probably don't notice it that way.
Maybe because Mt Isa is isolated it seems like people get involved much more, in things that are happening in town. Like the eisteddfod or things like this, are very, very popular here. It's a big thing.
It lasted for two whole weeks, all day and part of the evening. All the schools, well most of the schools, are getting involved with it. Music, speech, everything. It seems like a lot of people are into it. Then on the coast, there are so many things may be, that, well, you just pass it. In Atherton, we were right about an hour away from Cairns, and the eisteddford there, they didn't have [that sort of participation] in their school, they didn't have the opportunity to be part of the eisteddfod at all. Then here the school is in the eisteddfod at least for five different things as a school group, plus you can put your child into it for this or that or everything. So it seems even if it's very isolated, here you have more opportunity to be involved in things. Which is kind of odd, that was surprising when we just moved. What do think of the festival? [to her son]
[he replies] Tops!
All right.
That's now on record!
A good thing too about this festival is that you can bring family. Unless you have to stay out late then you can have a few problems, but everybody is accepted, you know. It's like a big family, an extension 174 of a big family, of having a reunion almost. Where everybody is interested in the same thing and having a good time. 175
Appendix 8: Festival of Asian Music and Dance interviews
8.1 Performers
8.1.1 Susan Xu, Practioner of traditional and folk Chinese dance
Held in coffee shop in Sydney, 17 September 1999
The first thing I'm interested in are the dances you performed at the festival. Could you tell me a little bit more about -?
So you've seen them?
Yes. I loved the dance, the Tibetan wall paintings - not Tibetan - Buddha -
Ah yes.
If you could just tell me a little more about the movements. They're almost ballet-like -
These movements came from a cave, a Buddha statues and pictures cave. This costume looks like this.
[shows photo of dancers including Susan]. This we did in the first of September in the QVB [Queen
Victoria Building] — they ask us, four ladies, to do this for one hour, some Chinese traditional and folk dances and Vietnamese dances we did it.
So what is the difference between traditional Chinese dance and folk dance?
Folk dance belongs to the folk people the peasants and countryside people. Traditional dance really belongs to the emperor, as part of the art or entertainment culture of professional dance, which is old as the Dynasties of China.
So the dances you performed at the festival, they were more traditional dances? 176
Yes. The peacock dance is a kind of a folk dance. The peacock dance is the south China dance from people of Dai, Dai nationalities, because in China we have 56 nationalities. Nearly each of them have their own kind of dance style.
So how did you choose which dances to perform at the festival? Did you want to give an overview of the different dances in China?
No, I didn't. Five years ago when I first came to Australia, I brought some costumes, like the peacock dance solo. It's popular in China, so a lot of people can do that. I mean, a professional dancer can do that. That's a happy dance
So it's because you had those costumes with you?
Yes. And also this one called Dun Huang, Dun Huang is a place that Buddhism pictures and statue in
Ghanzou province west, northwest of China.
That's probably why I was thinking of Tibet -
That's right.
What do you hope to convey in your dancing then to an audience? Especially here in Australia.
I just want to introduce something, some Chinese traditional dance to Australian people or even to some Asian people born here, dances they might never see. They might see them on TV but not live.
Was the audience at the festival a typical sort of audience that comes to your performances?
I don't know. I think David, they organised that and they just invited some people. I went to several shows, like the Tibetan show, the Japanese show. I noticed only few - really very few Asian people.
Most of them, they're all western people. Maybe they're interested in Asian dance or Asian music.
So where else do you perform your dances? 177
Where else?
What other venues or festivals?
Chinese traditional dance but this year we formed our small group called Mei Lan Zu Ju. Mei Lan Zu
Ju is four kinds of Chinese plant and flower, so it's quite unique. Also they represent the four seasons.
Mei is a winter flower. Lan is like a summer flowery plant. So together it all represents the four seasons. We think it's quite romantic and beautiful, so we just chose this name for our dance group.
So there's four dancers in the group.
Yes, we started with four ladies.
So what did it mean to perform at the festival - what does it mean to you to be able to perform at the
Asian festival?
Really we were chosen, we did not chose. It's like David - I'm not sure who introduced us to each other.
But we loved to do that. We feel we found ourselves again.
The last questions - has coming to Australia changed the way you perform, or the sorts of dances you perform? Or have you wanted to maintain the traditional aspects of your dance from China?
These solos - we do not do any changing, just all the traditional [movements], what our teacher told us.
Also the costumes we all brought from China a long time ago, so all old style.
8.1.2 Tarlochan Singh: tabla player
Held in Tom Mann theatre, Surry Hills, in foyer and in dressing rooms, April 24 1999, 2.30 pm
I suppose first of all, I'd like to know what it means to you to perform at a festival like this.
This festival, especially this one, put on by the Institute [of Asian Music], it's a (vehicle for
performers?) whether they are Indian or Japanese, or whatever. The good thing about it is that we ' 178
(?provide) for them otherwise a lot of them wouldn't have work for instance. So this way, people can come and see and say wow, we've got good players or performers in Australia. It multiplies, you know, gives them a chance. I mean I started with Ashok who's the director, and played with him a lot. So yeah, I always — it means a lot in this festival.
So what sort of audience do you get?
These are, I'd say in all the festivals we get a very knowledgable audience. You know like today what we had22, a lot of people, I'd say the majority of the audience, were following along with what we were doing - and they really knew like what we were doing, it wasn't just like it sounds good and all that.
But they actually knew what was happening, you know? So yeah, it's a very, very good audience.
When you're performing, what are you trying to convey through your music?
Well, when, you see that question is a bit hard to answer in the sense that I'm accompanying. Right? If
I'm doing a solo, that's different. When I'm accompanying, what I am trying to do is basically enhance the music. Not overpower it, not go faster than him, or do this, no. I'm accompanying, I'm trying to make it sound even more beautiful. Already it's beautiful, but accompanying will make it, you know.
So it's something like a dialogue?
Yeah, yes it's like a dialogue. We go - all through the performance it's like a conversation. We're talking with each other. It's a like challenge some times - oh, you did that? I'll, I can do that. This and that.
You can see that on your faces when you're playing —
Yes, yes! When one does something, you know, really extraordinary, which Ashok was doing a lot of the times. You know that sort of really, I don't know what you say — I mean, I appreciate what he is doing, because — [his phone rings, interview continues]. Are you enjoying the festival?
n Singh is referring to the performance from that morning, the Morning Ragas performed with Ashok Roy. 179
Yes, yes, it's quite diverse.
That's the good thing about the festival. It has everyone, everything in it. Not just concentrating on one part, but everyone.
Yeah. Just getting back to questions —
Is that on?
It's on! Now you're collaborating this afternoon23 with two quite different cultural —
Well, I'd say one. Because the south Indian that, the vocal, the Nattuvangam, that my Aunt is going to do, is traditional. But it's south Indian not north Indian.
Right
And then the mridangam is also south Indian — the percussion, that instrument, right. So that is normally done. In India, we do these, these south, north things together. So that's not — the non- traditional item is the darabuka and the African talking drum that Tony is going to play. They're the non, the real non-traditional things.
Will it be a type of improvisation?
Yes. We have you know, starting points or meeting points, in between.
As you did this morning?
Well, no, that was all improvised this morning. I had no idea what he was going to do, I was just playing with him. You see what you do, when the other performer is playing, the (?) is in your head, the reason why. We're both on the same beats, but we're playing something completely different. But it's a feel — you feel that yeah, I'm coming back to the first beat now. And I also know that he's coming back to the first beat, so he'll do something. There, at that certain point he'll do something. So you just anticipate that and play along, and bang! You're on the first beat.
I misunderstood. I thought that would be what you are doing this afternoon.
23 Singh is part of the group Tal Vad, which performed at the 4pm concert on April 24. 180
No, no. This afternoon is more, because it's so hard rhythmically, when you've got four different players, you know, trying to do things, you have to have a lot of set points. Because, for me and the mridangam player, for instance, we will have more problems — even for me we actually have problems.
But normally what happens is when you have different percussionists together the systems are different
— of feeling — the cycle. The mrindangam and I, we feel the cycle the same. But Tony, because he's learnt tabla and he's played quite a lot with Indian music he knows it as well, he can play with it. So but if you play with someone else, and start doing the wrong thing they can get lost in between. You know, so that's why you have the meeting points. So we have starting points and finishing points. The rest in between is all improvised, so I don't know what I'm doing and Tony doesn't know what he's doing.
Until you get there [the meeting point.?
Yeah.
And what inspires you? Is it the other performers? Or is it the audience?
Well, definitely the performers. Definitely. And also the audience. Yep, I mean the more lively the audience the more fun the musician is tending to have. Even in classical music, like this morning, the audience was, when you look at them you can see, you know, they're enjoying it or they are, you know, sort of accompanying with you, you know, in your sort of journey. So I mean it's great, you know, that's inspires you to do more different things, you know. And that's what we're doing.
So actually can see the audience quite clearly?
We want to. We'd like to have the lights up. Not all the way down , so we can see, the people go yeah!
We're having fun — let's do this! You know, so we can see. But it's more complicated.
There were some points where you and Ashok did things that were comical24 and people were laughing
24 See video of Morning Ragas concert 181
Yeah, yeah! Well that was like when we played something together, and I knew where the first beat is and I emphasised it but he didn't. And he went for the next one on purpose. So I went bang! And he goes bang! He just did it on purpose. And then the one after, a couple of times later, he did one where I went earlier and he did it after me. That kind of thing. We were messing around with each other. And that inspires each other to play different things and more complicated things, you know. You sort of get on a roll, like if you're playing a straight sort of thing, a straight eight, and you're just going along and then just before the first beat, maybe on the third beat, you start something and finish it on the first. So, the other guy goes, yeah, I can do that as well. Like a little challenge. And then he does (sound affect of rhythm) something, you know like that. So you challenge each other and it's like inspiring, you know.
So it will be the same with the band, Tal Vad. But in Tal Vad the difference is that we work through cycles, through different rhythms in eight, seven, five, six and then back to eight. That kind of thing.
So it's sort of mapped out?
Yeah.
I was interested, too, in that a lot of people like coming and talking to you after the concert and during the interval.
Yeah, yeah. Because I mean a lot of them, other than knowing you, a lot of them have been to Indian performances before. So they sort of know like it's good, you can talk with you. And they all like to say, you know this was good and just like, you know, I think even I feel when I go and listen to someone you just want to say something to the performers, you know. Because you're really inspired by what you've heard. And you just want to thank them or say that was great or ask them a question.
Yeah, I mean always when we've played, we always have that and it's great, to get feedback from the audience. And a lot of them they've heard you for a some time, so you can ask them, what did you think of you know such thing I did, you know, it's the first time you've done something like that, and you know, they'll say yeah that was good, or no that wasn't good. So feedback always helps. Yeah.
Interview Notes: following are notes taken after I switched recorder off
■ Bobby talked about the different schools of tabla playing eg Lucknow 182
He also talked about Khalil Sudaz, a Turkish sitar playing starting out in the performance circuit.
(I'd seen him at a concert held at the Glen Eira Complex Theatrette, Caulfield. Concert held on Feb
20 1999. Bobby performed with him. Refer to program notes). Bobby wanted to know if Sudaz
had played at the Brunswick Music Festival - check program. He also talked about how difficult it
was for Sudaz because he was still establishing contact. Bobby couldn't help him as much because
he was in Sydney while Sudaz was in Melbourne
■ Bobby discussed the different styles of Sudaz and Ashok Roy - different ways of playing. Sudaz
more melodic
• Talked about Calcutta musicians: often very high standard of playing but music was a hobby.
Many involved in areas such as economics and business. But to look at these people, Bobby
thought you wouldn't know their profession - more informal re clothing & attitudes
8.1.3 Satsuki Odamura: koto; Yumi Umiumare: Butoh dancer
Held in dressing rooms of Tom Mann theatre, Surry Hills, 23 April 1999 around 7pm
How long have you both been performing together?
Satsuki: Since '94.
Yumi: '93?
Satsuki: Yes '93
And how did you come together? Had you seen each other perform and thought that you'd like to get together?
Yumi: No! We didn't even want to see it! [laughs]
Really?
Yumi: Our mutual friend, Anne, who is a [unclear] in Melbourne. She knows her [Satsuki)] and she knows me.
Satsuki: So we met her through Anne. That's how we met.
And she thought that you'd be good together?
Yumi: Oh, originally we didn't! [laughs] Saki thought, oh we're Japanese, downside, she doesn't want to work. And I thought oh traditional ... looks ... oh ... 183
Satsuki: Normally in Australia, even if that person is not professional, well in Japan, that person can say I am professional in Australia. It happens. When I was told a dancer is coming, well a Japanese dancer is coming, I thought, oh god, another bullshit! [laughs]
Yumi: I'm still bullshit, thanks! [laughs]
Old so then after you met, what was your collaboration about? What are you trying to convey to the audience when you perform together?
Yumi: all sort of things. But we now, well I think from my point of view, we reaching similar kind of experiences of the migrant. We both live in Australia, from Japan, so we do use some Japanese metaphor or Japanese material, like, Satski's obviously using a Japanese instrument. And I'm using a little bit influence of Japanese dance. About how we come to Australia or what sort of feeling, why do we live in Australia, so similar kind of interest about our home country, what we feel — so that opens up feelings about nostalgia, or what we're longing for or what we're feeling, where we belong, kind of thing. So it kind of metaphorically becomes sharing that sort of words.
Satsuki: And it also, when you're really outside of your country, you could see your country from a different angle. Different side. You never know when you're in your country, maybe, you couldn't see.
So like a critical distance?
Satsuki: Yes. And maybe Yumi and I now understand both West and Eastern — well our culture so we could see both, you know -
Yumi: we still couldn't see ourselves as a Japanese any more, because we moved to Australia. So we're sort of Australian-Japanese or Japanese-Australian.
Satsuki: Yeah
Yumi: So we both don't feel like Japanese any more. But we don't feel Australian either. So we're sort of between. You know, that would be the Australian and that — it's complex, you know, it's like that.
It's important because when I dance, I want to use things of (?). we share that sort of idea. Satski's thing is more practical, lots of composition compared to mine. Mine is more abstract.
What is your typical audience? Who comes to see you perform? 184
Satsuki: No idea! At this festival? I think the audience at this festival will be very conservative, I think.
[Yumi laughs] I might be wrong. But depending on —
Yumi: When we do the festival outside, families dropping in and have a look and when I'm doing another kind of dance performance, others are coming in. My area, more audience might be more students or people interested in butoh. You know, butoh, [they ask themselves] what's that? So quite open-minded people.
There's two aspects to what you do. I saw a web site about your work [Satsukij and you talked about how you have a lot of Australian compositions for your instrument and also I think you said something like, you are interested in presenting this instrument and this music to people who aren't Japanese and who don't — who aren't aware culturally what the instrument is about. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
Satsuki: Sorry, what did you want me to talk about?
Sorry, Well first you actually have quite a few modern composers for your instrument and quite a few
Australian composers.
Satsuki: Yes
And also the idea, you talked about that you're interested in bringing your instrument to people outside of Japan. Who aren't aware of the instrument, who don't have pre-conceived perceptions about the instrument. I was wondering if you could tell me more about this, what you're hoping —
Satsuki: If you have a different sense of humour, you might, you have a different sense of music. So from that, maybe I thought, you know, I could get to know the different sort of music by asking non-
Japanese composers who don't know, who maybe have no idea about Japan at all. So I would like to get different possibilities or different dimensions of the instrument. Outside Japanese knowledge of the instrument.
25 When rehearsing and sound checks in afternoon. 185
And you've found that composers outside of Japan extend your repertoire or extend your instrument?
Satsuki: Well, yes. What I find is that it is very interesting to play. Because it is obviously very different. I don't know what all these people. But when I play music by non-Japanese people, composers, you know, I feel very different towards my (?instrument)
OK What sort of music will you be playing this evening? Is it more traditional or more contemporary?
Satsuki: Contemporary. Tonight mostly [music] by my teacher.
Yumi: And are you doing one music by an Australian composer?
Satsuki: Two. Actually one is by an English composer. So two pieces by non-Japanese people.
Yumi, you were saying before that you will just be using elements of butoh in your dance tonight. What
I've seen of butoh on video, it seems very confrontational.
Yumi: Mmm. Confronting?
Yeah, it's not what you're used to in dance.
Yumi: Yeah, because of the — they try not to see that superficial beauty, more like angry side of things.
Because sometimes humans try to avoid that side of things, that emotion. In butoh we try to reveal that sort of deep emotion. So make it sometimes a bit upsetting for people, make people think, Ooo, you know — because people come to theatre to see or ballet to see more beauty, you know. We show this.
Butoh was originally called the `dance of darkness' so they tried to focus on that dark side. So I don't focus too much personally on the dark side or provocative side. I was quite interested to explore the other side of Japanese influence, or maybe because Japanese tradition is often, well people think it's about tradition, about being well-mannered, good food and healthy and rich people. Outside
[this]Japan, in the underground we have got a really grungy, strong and quite naughty -
Satsuki: ugly!
Yumi: [laughs] ugly, corrupted — I mean, in a funny way. So I try to be a little bit light, but provocative. Provoke that little bit. Not too much, just a little bit.
And just one last question, what does it mean to perform at this particular festival?
26 Tadao Sawai 186
Yumi: for me it's a great opportunity to come to Sydney. [Satsuki laughs] Different kind of audience.
And nice to be a part of multicultural music, dancing festival. I mean, the music and dance, it's often interesting. And yesterday I saw the beautiful Tibetan — and you say, Oh aren't we lucky because we live in Australia we can see, we can have different races —
Satsuki: I am interested in playing at this festival because I'm interested in how the audience will react about Yumi's dancing. You know, it's not something that they'll expect. They'll possibly expect Yumi to dance the more, you know traditional, Japanese dance.
So you're looking forward to seeing the audience's reaction?
Satsuki: Yeah. Two years ago I performed with [unclear] from Japan, she danced madrigal dances, very traditional dances. I work with her in this festival. Not here, not same occasion, and in a different venue. Was good. Always she wears the kimono —
Yumi: Her movement is not traditional. She opens her legs and stuff —
Satsuki: But still, you know compared to —
Yumi: Yes, compared to mine.
Satsuki: Compared to yours, still similar to traditional Japanese dance. Maybe we'll interview you after the show! [both laugh] When David asked me to perform with Yumi, I said do you know butoh?
Have you seen it? [laughs]
Yumi: It's not that bad!
Satsuki: No, not that bad, but you know, I thought that they might have, you know, a separate image.
Yumi: yeah.
Satsuki: You know from Japanese tradition.
Yumi: You keep yourself quiet afterwards, and mmmmm. [laughs] Especially like last time, when we performed at a Japanese audience, because a few Japanese came from Japan and lots of — half of the audience was Japanese, wasn't it?
Satsuki: Yeah
Yumi: it was really rare for us, really rare because mostly really rare for a Japanese audience. [can't make out what is said] 187
Satsuki: maybe that's why I'm looking forward to seeing Yumi perform. It's very interesting and I'd like to break that image of Japanese.
Yumi: Yeah, the image of the Japanese.
Do you improvise? Or do you have a basic idea of what you are going to do?
Yumi: I have a basic idea of the movement. But some movement, but because of the concept of butoh, it's good excuse — we just feel the energy around us so to speak. So we suddenly make a movement, the impulse we get other things. So some days I can feel the audience's energy and I think ah, this is a bit dull, or this is a bit hopeless. And I can get into and I can get out of it, so play with the energy around.
So the stage isn't a problem? I'm upstairs — but it seems that there's quite a distance between the audience and the performers.
Satsuki: I don't like it!
Yumi: But I'm going to dance in the audience —
8.1.4 Tony Lewis: percussionist and composer
Held in dressing rooms, Tom Mann theatre, Surry Hills, 24 April 1999 around 3.30pm
First of all, I'm interested in what you're trying to convey when you're performing. What is it that —
[interruption from stage — wanting to do sound checks with the musicians] I'm interested in what it is that you want to express in the music, what it is that you're trying to convey when you perform.
That's a really hard questions to answer, that's a really hard question. I don't know if there is an answer to it. I think, I really don't think I aim to express anything in particular. In performing I don't think of it in that way. I guess I'm probably a very introverted musician. You know, I actually lose the audience.
[laughs softly] You know.
So you move into the music? 188
Yeah. I, when I'm really enjoying a performance, I'm not conscious that the audience is there, I'm not conscious of really making an effort to communicate with them. I'm consciously, I guess, myself, and inside, what's what satisfies me, musically. That's the honest answer I think. There are certain things that drive me to play and that's what I look for when I do play. [laughs]
Yeah. That's fine. I mean, I'm just assuming that when people perform they want to communicate something.
I suppose there are occasions when you do that, it depends on the context. But in the context like this, it's very, there are many inner challenges that I have to meet within myself, you know, in a performance like this. And I think in a competitive type thing, you know, I'm working with such fine musicians you know, who set these standards and standards of achievement. Not technically, I don't mean competitively or technically, it's — a very hard thing to explain. The standards of accomplishment of the self, you know. Which I aspire to and I sometimes I get there and sometimes I don't. [laughs]
So what does it mean to perform at this festival for you?
Um, if I'm totally honest, when I'm playing — nothing! [laughs] I mean outside my role as a performer,
I've been performing at every Festival of Asian Music and Dance since it began — that's '95 or something — and I think it's great, it's terrific, it's doing a wonderful job, culturally and politically in this current climate, which is a difficult climate to work in, you know, for musicians like us, and I think it's doing a fantastic job. So from that point of view, yes, it's great to be involved. But again, when I play you know, that's not part of it. [laughs] When you're actually performing, the festival means nothing when I'm actually performing.
You might not be able to answer this! What is your typical audience? But if you're moving into the audience, you're unaware of the audience —
Well, it's not that I'm unaware of the audience when I'm, before the concert, but during the performance I'm unaware. Anyway that's a difficult question because again there's no real typical 189 audience. There are some performance contexts that they're wrapped up in. Do you, what, are you asking what's a typical audience at the Festival of Asian Music and Dance?
Yes.
OK. Typical audience, in the past — who knows what we'll find today — but in the past, you think of it as being, incredibly I found people from particular Asian communities who are attracted to something from their culture as being representative of what they — the Indian community has always been strongly represented here and that's understandable, because, you know, it comes out of the Australian
Institute of Music is founded by Ashok, who's an Indian — you know Indian support for the festival has been very strong. Always turned out. Then again, you're mindful that the festival has usually been with things that are Indian music related, too, so that probably explains that. You know who will come to other events that don't contain Indian elements — well I don't know. [laughs] I'm sorry, I'm useless, aren't I?
No. You're not useless at all. It's actually good to get quite different responses — it stops me assuming that people are doing these things. So it's good for me.
Well, you can never assume what's going on!
8.1.5 Yuri Takahashi, Practitioner of Burmese music and dance
Interview held at Sydney University, 16 September 1999
I'm really interested in your involvement in Burmese music. How did you get involved in performing that?
OK. The context of, how should I say, how did I become involved in Burmese music? It started from my study of language and literature of Burmese. I majored in Burmese language and literature at a university in Japan. Later I became interested in Burmese classical poems. I found that these poems were combined with melodies. At that time I got a job in Rangoon, working for the Japanese embassy in Rangoon, now it's officially called Yangon. So while I was working at the office, on Saturdays and
Sundays I took lessons of Burmese classical songs. For me, it was very interesting, because I could learn language, literature and music. I'm not only interested in language but music, too. In 1994, after 190
- I had lived in Rangoon for three years, through my job I was transferred to Australia. Sydney! Sydney
is a very interesting place. When I came to Sydney I had a chance to see many ethnic communities,
including the Burmese community. I met a gentleman who was interested in Burmese classical music.
As far as I know he is almost the only guy who can play Burmese bamboo xylophone in Sydney. So
when we were free, sometimes we met together and practiced classical pieces. That's all! Later I got a
chance to know David [Walker] and David invited me and all Burmese musicians to the festival.
So was this the first time you performed?
Yes. It was a big, big event for Burmese musicians, too, because although the Burmese community
often organise cultural events, the main purpose of them is for their own community. It's a little bit
closed concerts. Performing in public outside the Burmese community was very unusual for us. So we
got very excited and we thanked David very much.
So, the performance at the festival, was that representational of the sorts of music performed by the
community itself? When you put the program together, did you pick things to show to those outside the
Burmese community what sort of music and dance is performed, or was it the sort of music that would
usually be played [within the community]?
By 'usually played' you mean popular or contemporary?
Well, I noticed in the program notes, the music is described as music for public events, so did you just
pick pieces to show a wider audience what Burmese music is about?
Yes. And particularly our selection for the program is focussed on introducing real classical music in
the strictest sense. Even in Burmese communities it's very, very unusual to perform these programs
because the modern audiences are more interested in the modern, popular music from Burma. Not so
interested in such old songs!
I was interested too - they seem to be either written by people in royalty or high public office. Why is
that? Is that because of their education, they've been able to - 191
Yes it relates to education. Until the nineteenth century, the main patrons of Burmese music were kings and queens and the court people. At that time the literate people were mainly gathered in the court. I don't say the common people did not have music - they had their own style of music - but definitely the
Burmese court was a big patron of classical music.
You talk about how Burmese music is influenced by a lot of places, like the instruments from India and the melodic style is from Thailand. I'm interested because you're Japanese and you're here in
Australia! So I'm wondering if you feel perhaps there's that connection in that there's still different styles coming into Burmese music. And I'm interested, too, because you're performing traditional music of the Burmese court, so is it sort of a closed repertoire you're looking at or do you think there's a chance for it to open up and be taken on by a more modern group of people? Sorry I'm asking too many questions there! The first one I'm interested in is that you're Japanese and you're performing
Burmese music, and Burmese music is influenced by different cultures. And I think it's interesting that you're here in Australia -
And why I'm interested in Burmese! Regarding this matter, how should I say, since I was in Japan, I was interested in music. Particularly I was interested in jazz. Since I was a child I was listening to jazz and jazz was an interesting music to me. It was open. It seems to have many doors to ethnic music.
And later I became interested in ethnic music, including the Japanese folk songs, the Chinese old songs and Thai music, Indian music and anyway, not simply because I'm learning Burmese language - when I listen to Burmese music I just thought ah! That's the sort of style I wanted to listen to and if it's possible
I wanted to perform. That's just my favourite, that's all. So maybe its' a result of a kind of a globalisation, because if I had been born a hundred years ago, maybe no Japanese would have had a chance to contact with Burmese music and no chance to travel overseas. In the past one hundred years much western classical music has come to Japan but no other Asian music. So, the meeting of me and
Burmese music can be a result of globalisation!
It's something you feel expresses or it's a sound that you like to hear? 192
Yes. Maybe I felt there's some similarity with jazz! A strange connection! Similarities between
Burmese and jazz. For example, improvisation. Improvisation is a very important part of Burmese music as far as I understand.
So with the improvisation, is that similar with the dance movements? Or is that more set, are the movements set, like there's a particular way you perform the dance to particular music or is there improvisation there as well?
There are two aspects. Some dances are very strict to the rules, the movements. But after you have mastered some sort of basic movement you can apply and you can improvise. You can dance freely.
But regarding, actually the third and the fifth music plus dance [from festival program] these dances are very strict dances, not improvised.
So when you're performing, do you aim to give an authentic Burmese performance or are there other things that you'd like to do?
I am specialised in singing more than dance, so as a singer I want to perfect myself as a Burmese classical singer. It means I want to be a medium from the past and at the same time I want to show my own interpretation of the classical numbers. Of course I want to include new ideas because I am born
and live in now, in the late twentieth century. Sometimes that's a drama for me I want to observe
classical form because I find these forms so beautiful, I want to follow this beauty. But at the moment
I also want to show myself! That's the drama for me!
With Burmese performers during the classical tradition, is there a similar tension? Or is what you're
doing that unusual, I mean where you want to express yourself and your connections to a classical
tradition?
It depends on musicians. There are different degrees among musicians how much they observe
classical style or how much they should express themselves. These degrees are depends on the
musicians. 193
So what would you like to do with this in the future, what do you hope to do with your singing and your dance?
I'd like to continue to challenge more and more to express the idea of being a medium from the past and also create something new. Being in Sydney and being given the opportunity to attend the festival like this program - it's very stimulating for any musician because it's a very good chance and a very good opportunity to see different forms of music, different forms of dance. We sing and we feel something. Perhaps this something will come up with other performers.
Is there a big Burmese community in Sydney?
Their community isn't so big. But as far as I know 4 000 Burmese are living in Sydney.
Do they live in certain suburbs or are they spread around Sydney generally
Some people are living together, for example in Strathfield and Parramatta, Blacktown, but not so specified an area.
I'm interested because I'm looking at the idea of place and community so I was wondering if there is an area with a lot of Burmese people. For example in Melbourne a lot of Vietnamese are living in
Springvale, so there's a large community there and you often see a lot more visible sings of that particular group, such as a lot of the shop signs are in Vietnamese. So it's really interesting to see that.
The Burmese community is not so specified in an area because originally their population are not so big but as I told you, some places for example, Lidcomb and Blacktown, if we go there you will see many Burmese because in general the Burmese migrants have a problem with language. As English and Burmese are so different that many newcomers, particularly the spouse and the children newly
come to Australia, have a language problem. So they tend to live close together.
So was this the first time you've performed outside the Burmese community? 194
Yes it was and without David I don't think we could have got such an opportunity. I've performed several times already in the Burmese community.
My last question, what does it mean to you to perform at the festival?
I mentioned a little before - its' a challenge and its a very good workshop, a stimulating place for performers to develop their own speciality and for audience to learn totally different art from ethnic communities.
In what way?
Because, for example, in the musical events in the Burmese community, the audience members are ordinary listeners. But the audience that came to this music festival was made up of music lovers, so it was more severe to performers. It's interesting, when we performed, it was a combined program of
Burmese and Japanese groups, but I hardly saw a Japanese or Burmese person in the audience. But
David told me that he didn't think that many Japanese or Burmese people would come. He was right, so this festival is mainly for music lovers, cultural scholars, researchers, those who are interested in different cultures. Not ordinary people.
But you can perform for the ordinary people within the Burmese culture, that's separate
Yes.
8.2 Organisers
8.2.1 John Napier, president of AIEM, performer
Held in theatre sound booth, Tom Mann theatre, Surry Hills, April 24 1999 at approximately 1 pm
■ Became interested in Asian music because he wanted to find an improvisatory music but not jazz -
one where you don't need to change chords (because he can't!)
■ Plays cello to perform a 'bastardised' Asian music 195
• He spoke to Ashok Roy after one his (Ro's) concerts & was invited to join a performance group
(Sangam: members
• Satsuki Odamura - koto
• Greg Gibson - saxophone
• Tony Lewis - percussion
• Jonathan Pease - guitar
• John Napier - cello
• John believes that Asian music is a major part of his core identity
• John is interested in the type of people who make up the audience - why & who in the Anglo
community come to such festivals
• John feels that audience usually wants to hear authentic Asian musicians rather than the more
contemporary or avant garde music of these communities
• He has overheard people discuss which concerts they'll attend with regards to the perceived
authenticity of the music & a particular group's performance of such authentic sounds
John talked about the irony of traditional Bali dance form which was created in the Cl9th by a
German musicologist
• He said this was discussed in the film Baku, although he notes that this dance was not talked about
in terms of tradition but added to film to give a feeling of authenticity
• John also talked about the icon for the AIEM - based on an Indian image but has been abstracted
enough to be taken as any one of Eastern or Asian countries - ie so not the Indian Institute
8.2.2 David Walker, festival producer, performer
Interview held in theatre sound booth, Tom Mann theatre, Surry Hills, April 24 1999 at 1 pm
Notes taken from discussion with David between concerts
• Image of dancing figure featured on both cover of the festival programs & the backdrop on stage:
• taken from an Indian temple
• John Napier got image from a temple in India
• Sexless although many read image as female 196
• At the 1995 FAMD a video of the original image was projected behind the performers -
problem: film ran out before performances complete
• David's wife, Liz, created the backdrop used since. Made of hessian, ribbons and weighted so
that hessian hangs correctly
• David said local ethnic musicians happy to perform for Western audiences because their own
communities wanted more popular music. Western audiences were expecting classical/traditional
Asian music. This in turn inspired these musicians to play this repertoire. Also different ethnic
groups got to meet others of different ethnic groups & encouraged to collaborate - so more
collaborative, cross-cultural work
• David's interest in Asian music
• Quit job in 1987 & spent 18 months in Asia with his wife
• Studied sitar while in India
• Moved to Perth & learnt Asian voice, dance & sitar
• Moved to Sydney, looking for sitar teacher & told to contact Ashok Roy
• David thinks that this year's festival will make it for the Institute - starting to get known, ads &
reviews in local & metropolitan papers
• One of aims of the festival was to provide opportunities for collaboration between Western & non-
Western performers
• Another aim: to get exposure for less known performers through placing in concerts with better
known performers
8.2.3 David Walker, festival producer, performer
Held at Walker's home, April 25 1999, between 4-6 pm
Notes taken from discussion with David, also comments from his wife Liz and a friend of theirs
• No workshops at this festival because
• Too expensive eg talked about a percussion workshop & the costs involved to move some
of these instruments
• Not many attended - eg around 20 197
People expected to be able to play as well & were disappointed when it ended up being a
sort of concert for the performers to display their instruments. Liz talked about ferais &
their djembe
■ Dhamayanthy Balaraju hadn't performed in public for 12 years
• part of Sri Lankan Indian community
• once a woman married in this community she didn't perform in public
• just before getting married, her husband-to-be had asked if she was going to continue
dancing in public - she took this to mean that she couldn't continue
■ this ended up not being the case - when she asked her husband 12 years later if she could
perform in public, he said that he didn't mind as long as she didn't make a fool of herself
(joking?)
• tradition in South Indian dancing for the dancer to be a conduit for spirituality - not
necessarily a religious performance but this is a part of the dance
• David pointed out that although the stage had been set by the FAMD organisers, Balaraju had
redefined the space by adding the altar with offerings to the god of dance
• It took Balaraju 6 hours to prepare her make-up & costume for performance. So at the 4pm
concert (Tal Vad) she was partly made up
• Just before I arrived at David's, Balaraju had called David - was excited about the
performance. He said that she had been so overcome by emotion during the performance that
she cried between dances. He tied this into the notion, too, that she was a conduit for
spirituality while dancing. David said that members of the Indian community were also crying
on the night
■ David thought about which different musicians could sound/perform well together then suggested
they get together
• Eg Saba Akdagcik & Dang Lan (NB these were interviewed on Saturday morning April
24 on Radio National)
• Didn't quite work together, although potential
• Some sections worked well eg improvised piece (see video) 198
• They'd only practices 3 times beforehand
• Also different performance practices
• Dang Lan is a classically trained performer while Saba Akdagcik more
improvisatory training & has performed with diverse instrumentalists before eg
with Sirroco
• The Dan Bau (monochord) in particular difficult to perform with because of the
way in which the notes are bent and distorted (see video)
• Kate Holmes & Sukhbir Singh
• Sukhi had given Kate a tape of his music that he thought would be good for the
festival
• Kate had a copy of a jazz song suggested by David which she passed on to Sukhi. He
learnt song by listening to tape
• David had wanted another singer initially but she wasn't available
• But worked out OK - this singer was Hindustani while Sukhi's tradition is more
in keeping with the Kathak way of performing
• David said that Kate's dance had been criticised in past festivals by both Indian &
Western audiences because it was seen as not authentic
• Kate is a Western dancer who has learnt Kathak
• David suggested that Kate present herself as a contemporary dancer who
incorporates elements of Kathak dance in her repertoire
• David feels that this strategy has worked better
• David talked about how the festival is starting to get performers to think about & actually perform
with musicians they hadn't thought of working with previously
• Government House concert series illustrates this sort of collaborative work
• Institute also has informal evenings where students and professional musicians can be 'tried
out'
• No payment for performing
• Audience pays a nominal fee of around $5, includes tea/coffee 199
• People get chance to hear and talk to performers
• Students get to play for an audience
• Susie Wang called Institute and offered her services as a teacher, also asked where she could
conduct her lessons (but no actual building or site - Institute an idea - see also David's email to my
questions about the Institute). Wang listed her name & contact details with the Institute - appears
on web page & newsletter
• Susan Xu - David had called the Chinese-Australian Institute (?correct name) to get names of
possible performers for the 1997 festival. Xu not available then, but David kept her name in mind.
Was told Xu was a very good Chinese classical dancer
• But not what we in western world perhaps see as traditional folk dance (see also Napier's
comments re this in notes for the 4pm concert April 24)
• Tom Mann Theatre - great acoustics but
• audience had some difficulty seeing performers especially where they were seated eg Tal Vad
& Ashok Roy
• foyer area sterile - not conducive to people hanging around & talking (this particularly evident
after Saturday's 4pm concert)
• also when festival held at the Belvoir St theatre, it gave the festival added clout - people
thought to perform there you had to be really good
• Carnivale - provided support via promotions
• In past a person was paid $1000 to do this and had funds of $1000
• This year promotion received was worth more than $1000 because of Carnivale support
• David said that person in charge had been very supportive and assisted in getting the festival
publicity. Had also helped in the past when funds required for concerts, performers etc
• FAMD will be kept at April time - less competition compared to the September time slot, so can
expect better audience numbers 200
■ David would have liked to have live musicians performing with the dancers throughout the
festival. But too expensive, they would have had to have overseas performers (none available here)
- particularly with regards to Balaraju's performance
8.3 Audience
8.3.1 April 22 notes
■ During intermission, I asked a couple why they came to this performance. (I decided not to tape
these interviews - less intrusive & more informal to put them at ease)
■ Woman said that she felt festival had not been very well publicised - she hadn't realised that this
was the 4`h year it had been running. She'd come because invited by friend (from ABC Music
Deli??)
■ Guy from ABC said he was at festival to 'plunder talent' - to interview performers & help them get
known via radio. He found out about festival through festival promotional fliers sent to the ABC
Some audience members seemed to have come with groups of friends or to catch up with friends eg
Talempong Tinggi members (age approx early 20s) had friends of similar age who spoke to performers during break
8.3.2 April 23 notes
• Interview with audience members
• Approached a couple (approx age late 50s), woman deferred to male partner
• They came to hear this performance because
■ It is like attending a Wester classical concert ie he saw little difference between them & didn't
differentiate them
• Interested in Asian music because they knew one of the performers - Yuri Takahashi. Knew her as
a cultural attache & she had performed in his home. Also that she was Japanese but performing
Burmese dance & music
27 Although David Walker later suggested that perhaps I should have gone all the way and had a video camera and helper to make this process more official 201
8.4 1996 symposium: Papers presented by John Napier and Jill Sykes
'the effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity 28
Excerpts from symposium held at the Belvoir St Theatre Surry Hills, Sydney, Saturday 10 August 1996
chair: Jaslyn Hall speakers: Alison Broinowski
Yasmine Gooneratna
John Napier
Jill Sykes
Rick Tanaka
Hall: [This is the] symposium on the effects and influences of Asian music and culture on Australian identity. We hope to talk about the fact that Asian culture on Australia is thought to be something fairly recent. We've had a push, certainly through the Keating years on multiculturalism, however, it's fair to say that the effects of Asian migration goes back much further than that. To the first days of white settlement and even before. This symposium discusses these influences, its historical context and present day directions from a number of different viewpoints: classical and popular music, literature, performance and history. Today we have a distinguished panel to discuss these points of view —
Alison Broinowski, Jill Sykes, Yasmine Goonaratna, John Napier and Rick Tanaca. Each guest will
present their views, giving their perceptions of the images and sounds that have shaped our ideas about
Asia. And then it's your turn to question and to add to the discussion. Generally speaking, I think that
Australian attitudes have been dominated by geography. That means to say we are members of the
Asian pacific region so therefore we should have a role in Asia and Asia should have some sort of role
and identity in Australia. And our colonial history, that is to say that British identity is the most
Now to a Euro-Australian who's been enlightened by personal encounter, John Napier. John is a
lecturer in music at the University of New South Wales, he's an ethnomusicologist and one of the
Australia's leading cello players. He's a composer and arranger. He currently studies north Indian
classical music from Ashok Roy, who's the artistic director of the Australian Institute of Eastern Music.
Z`refer to 1996 Festival of Asian Music & Dance program for details of speakers and symposium 202
Originally, on cello and now vocal — John I didn't know you could sing! — and he's also pursuing a
PhD in Indian Music. Please welcome John Napier.
Napier: When asked to speak, I actually usually experience something of an identity crisis. I'm not sure whether I'm here as a performer or, not here, but speaking as a performer of what can be called the western classical tradition or am I performer of contemporary music and sometime composer of contemporary music with some sort of intercultural tendency. Or, since I started swapping the letters I-
AN at the end of the word 'musician' with the suffix 'ologist', is that my new voice? What I hope to sort of draw out today are some of the complexities, the subtleties, and the varieties, the motivations involved in the artist — the musician's encounter with Asia. Not just with Asia in general but with specific parts of Asia and why. If we restrict ourselves to some notional mainstream in Australian, settler Australian musical life, the musical encounter with Asia is of course very late. On the other hand from my own perspective, accidental discoveries such as the following account from 1844 are interesting.
We went down to Port Macquarie to see the coolies who had been brought down from India.
They were to be established on a station on what was then known as the darling downs. They
showed us their musical instruments. There were two kinds of drum, called by them taluk
[spelling?]. One was held by a woman who sang and beat time on it. Her husband sang with
her and another man sat by with a kind of violin with three strings, on which he scraped with
all his might. It is called a sarangee. Their singing was not unpleasant.
Now my father and grandfather were brass band leaders on the darling downs and in fact, my father's
accounts of his father go back to the last decades of the last century. Sadly, of these Indians and of this
music, neither of them had either recollection or interest. It's often said rather wistfully that settler
Australia started late in establishing any musical independence from England. In fact, in starting any
musical activity at all. Equally, we might well be said to have had a lucky escape in this. Perhaps we
avoided sharing the early nineteenth century English practice and habit fashion for Indian operas and
scenes. Works with such Boys Own annual titles as Englishmen in India, A Trip to Bengal. Now central
to these works were English arrangements of Hindoo — with the wonderful double 'o' — Hindoo airs. I 203 love that! Translated into English, their subtleties ironed out to suit the dictates of the European bar line, and the musical phrase and to allow for the easier addition of improving harmonies. I'm going to render such a Hindoo air for you. Unfortunately I don't have the improving harmonies, and I'm also going to revert, in a manner unthinkable for the nineteenth century Indian male — I mean English male singer in public anyway, to the Indian singer's unconcern for the specifics of gender. [Refer to tape for song]. Now at this stage, this tune was taken to England. It was believed, of course, that the bulk of the traffic should really be the other way. To quote the sandskritist, William Jones, the aim of this endeavour was to facilitate amilerioation. Not to dress up such tunes in a guise that was acceptable to the early nineteenth century English taste, but to find an effective way to preserve such music. To incorporate it and its practitioners into a grand evolutionary scheme.
Now when we look specifically at Australian composers, preservation was one of the goals of
Percy Grainger's work. Now his sources were wide and his outspokenness leaves us with a sense of ambivalence about non-European cultures. At the same time, his tastes were enormously catholic. His settings of Kipling, however, including those of the Jungle Book, can hardly be said to necessarily imply a thoughtful engagement with India. To quote, 'composed as protest against civilisation.' Aside from these, his works that incorporate any Asian influence are outnumbered not only by his arrangements of folk material from Britain but his arrangements of Bach and Greig. I suspect that the case for him as our first musical Asianist may be somewhat overstated. To me a far more interesting figure is Peggy Glanville Hicks, her interests coalescing in the 1954 opera Transfigured Heads. More important to me than the circuitous path, by which this Indian story reached the composer, are her reasons, the extent, to which Asia, in her work and in her words, offers a way out. To quote, 'western composition and technique is to my mind at an impasse. Our own time saw this whole harmonic edifice topple into chaos of dissonance. In harmony or the vertical concept, western music had come to the end of the line. Accordingly some years ago I threw out harmony.'
In her interest in Indian music and in her abandonment of this vertical concept, she differs
from figures like Sculthorpe and Meale. In their work, particularly Sculthorpe's, an initial attraction to
the surface aspects of several Asian musics, their sonic worlds, their instruments and in the case of
some works, an almost literal use of Balinese music, gradually gives way to a deeper understanding.
Utilisation of structural principles, reproachment with philosophical bases, in Meale's case, formal
structures — it's strictness came to be of paramount importance. Sculthorpe's encounter with Balinese 204 music did not survive his first visit to the island. With characteristic and admirable honesty, Sculthorpe apparently admitted that Bali and Japan were something of a surrogate Europe. The extent to which any engagement with another music is either a flight from or a flight to or both is a difficult question. To me a troubling challenge. As artists, have we used aspects of Asian arts simply as a way of escaping from Europe? A neo-orientalist fantasy? The very expression 'influenced by Asia' is too general. At least initially, more Australian composers were influenced by the musics of Bali and Java and ensemble music of Japan, than were influenced, for example, by the music of India. There are a few pointers to this. A substantial amount of transcribed notated material exists for Balinese, Javanese and
Japanese music. The encounter with this music was often mediated. Notations and examples offered the composer a meeting point unavailable in other forms. Secondly, such musics use extensive ensembles with musical features easily compared to and assimilated to the broad structures of western polyphony and harmony. One can look beyond music — beyond Europe sorry — but this does not necessarily mean that one in turn never looks back to Europe. On the other hand, the primary focus of
Indian music is on the solo melodic line. A line which is not fixed but improvised. The very subtly and flexibility which is central to this tradition is usually completely lost in the transfer to western notation and massed European instruments. The magnificent raag, dabarekadanava [spelling], arguably the most
majestic of north Indian ragas, to quote, 'to be performed at midnight in a dignified slow manner an
impressive regal figure, who's praises the gods and a host of bards are always singing,' becomes
nothing more than a minor scale. Perhaps for these reasons, the influence of Indian music has tended to
have been more on performers than on composers.
Now, as a classically-trained cellist, I am actually an ardent lover of the western musical
canon. But I'm also interested in a practice that was marginalised in this tradition for the last two
hundred years, that of improvisation. In this I feel confronted also with not one, but two traditions. I
cannot easily discount the overwhelming presence of jazz, in many of its stylistic features, much closer
to European classical music than any music of Asia. I wish and need to expand on an idea that Alison
uses in The Yellow Lady, the conflict between geography and history, and introduce an idea, borrowed
from a sensitive exponent, human rather than physical geography, that of multiple human geographies.
I feel a three-way conflict between history, between cartographical place and my sense of a geography
of musical proximities. This I believe replicates the historical pattern I have already observed. Indian
music was to me an improvised tradition not based on harmony like jazz but on melody and rhythm. 205
Perhaps not a deliberate musical choice for me but a propensity based on the fact that the bulk of my musical training had been in two largely melodic instruments — the cello and the voice — perhaps a third geography. A practice. Indian music to me is also a practice that's improvised but at the same time carries an enormous repertoire of rules, script directives. Some are explicit, some are implicit. Perhaps this fulfils my need for an improvised music and also appeals to a double whammy in my background - a Catholic guilt and a protestant work ethic! At the same time, it confronts me with a challenge that extends beyond the musical. Now some of the words that first caught my attention, when I became really aware of improvisation, were hardly humble words. Words such as individuality, ego, creativity.
It is, I have to add to this, an arguably arrogant belief. To use my own example, growing up in working class suburbia, in Brisbane in the 1970s, one needed a fair degree of individualism and ego, not to mention sheer pig-headedness to become an artist at all! To want to be an improvising cellist required a little more. Now when artists who have engaged with Asia talk of being sickened by the individualism of the west I myself wonder how it is that I am here. To me the humility demanded by Indian music and the need to learn its script directives by the process of imitation provides something of a balance, even an answer. Now to just sort of open some questions, questions of who composed what, today, I think are more capable of confident and sensible resolution than ever previously.
Availability of sound has created a further geography. The dissemination of so-called world music has long since launched us into some sort of artistic cyberspace. The geographic proximity of
Asia has given way to the sonic proximity of everywhere. The dangers are evident. Not just a post - gat free market, free for all on intellectual property, but musical tourism. Knowing what all of it sounds like and what none of it actually means. Inevitably, this will be challenged. And I do not think that there are any simple or static answers. What are the outer limits of musical identity, beyond which one goes in a sort of neo-imperialist adventure? Are there such boundaries in time as well as in place? In other words, should I abandon playing Bach, before I give up my efforts to play music influenced by
India? Can we un-hear or ignore what we have heard? Are we to impose on ourselves what Therese
Radic has called a censorship of the imagination? If, to quote one writer, white middle class culture has run out of inspiration, the normal sources to plunder are exhausted and white middle class culture is incapable of inventing anything, then what can be an acceptable move in the name of cultural self
renewal? To personalise it, what music should my child, half Indian and half Scots-Australian play? 206
North Indian ragas on the bagpipe between chomps of the curried haggis? Without wanting to cast too much of a shadow, of what I think can only be worked out in practice, I thank you.
Hall: and now to someone who's had to judge your efforts at curried haggis, Jill Sykes. Jill Sykes is a freelance arts commentator and dance critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. She's a contributor to many newspapers, magazines, encyclopaedias and specialist books. And Jill is also the author of the book, Sydney opera house: from the outside in. please welcome Jill Sykes.
Sykes: Thank you. I seem to be a bit more optimistic than some of my colleagues here at the table. But
I think that might be because I'm mostly dealing in the area of movement, and perhaps that's the easiest and first area that we're transmitting any kind of cross-cultural exchange. But I found the really interesting thing, when I came to put this talk together, was how hard I had to think Asian influences on performance in order to identify them. These days I simply take them for granted. I think they have actually become part of our identity as Australians but then I am speaking as somebody who sees a great deal of performance. So perhaps this is a bit narrow. But from my narrow point of view, I'm not really talking about touring groups representing their cultures. We see quite a lot of them. But what I expect to see and hear is a percentage of dance theatre and music in Sydney that is specifically based on one or other culture to out immediate north, either in style or theme. It might be choreographed or written or composed by nationals of that country who've settled in Australia. Or by Australian born artists who quite often have experienced something of that culture and chosen to express through aspects of what they have learned.
Even more often, and more importantly I think, I see performances in which the Asian influences are subtly threaded through universal themes and styles of movement. There's also a particular approach to presentation that can sometimes be isolated as having a cultural source far distant from these shores. But none of this is obvious — it's happening in a quiet, organic kind of way.
These aspects of performance seem to me to say much more about growing relationships between
Australia and Asia than much of the politicking, trade and foreign relations that so often proclaim such
kinship. There is also some danger in them — which are the shared performance elements. I wouldn't
dare start on the politicking! But part of this danger lies in the appropriation of other people's cultures.
Simply ripping off what appeals to an outsider's sense of exoticism without consideration of its content, 207
context or history. And many other elements of philosophy, religious belief and I could go on a lot more there. Another dangerous element is the destruction or despoiling of the very thing that is admired and desired. Its a bit like the package tourist who does some vast country or ancient civilisation in a week and comes home thinking they know it all. An artistic equivalent is someone who does, say a
couple of butoh workshops — very fashionable in recent years, especially amongst actors who didn't
have much idea about moving their bodies in the first place! — and then puts a few superficial actions
into their style of presentation without the slightest idea of meaning or motivation.
And in a different category, much anticipation preceded a well-funded and relatively lengthy
exchange between Australian performers and a Japanese director a few years ago. The result was a
heavily publicised version of a Shakespearian play in which you had to feel sorry for the poor
performers. The culture gap for most of them was painfully obvious as they bumbled their way through
the action. The one actor whose portrayal shone with understanding turned out to be a co-opted
American who'd been studying this particular technique for years. In yet another variation, when
classical ballet borrowed the music of an Italian composer who had chosen to set his tragic love story
in Japan, it was intriguing to see a variety of dancers in the title role of an unintentionally cringe
making balletic version of Madame Butterfly. All that flat-footed gliding around with tiny shuffling
steps in pointe shoes by the Australian dancers! Until there was a visiting Japanese dancer in the role
who walked smoothly and unfussily without the exaggerated cliche to her step — by that time I'd seen
it quite a few times, I didn't have to worry about anyone else. I just watched the way she moved her
legs. Unlike the Australian dancers, I mean she too is classical and has this outward bend of the feet
and the knees, and everything else, but she could move her legs like a puppet — straight from the
pelvis. And she knew how to do it, and it isn't just that she could do it, it was that no one in the
company, which happened to be the Australian ballet, had noticed that there was a caricature going on,
that somebody needed to say to somebody, no you don't walk like that.
Anyway, that's a bit by the by, and I'm sure many people who are here probably have similar
stories to tell from other art forms. And I hope many good outcomes, too, because it's the good ones as
well as a bit of background that I ant to concentrate on. In amongst the good ones I'm thinking of Sally
Susmin's Orientalia last year. And a small and sensitive studio performance called Landing two
months ago. Just two weeks ago, Nicky Haywood's Burn Sonata and interesting butoh based ventures
by Tess de Quincy, and the wonderful body of work by Kate I Chan [spelling] for One Extra Company. 208
And there are dozens more. Yet, only three decades ago, such a creative direction would be unimagined
— well, Alison's taken us trough some of that! I don't think I need return. But I mean even in the
1960s, I remember household implements you would buy, everyone thought that things you buy from
Asia were cheap and nasty and not going to last. So the poor little anxious merchandisers would stick little labels on saying not made in Hong Kong, but Empire made! Things like that, terrible. And it shows how old I am. But I also noted that Australia had a special place with India — ironic probably because we were both colonies. And only heard this morning on the radio heard people talking about people coming from India as early as 1792, as servants of course. Then, of course, about one hundred years ago a lot more of them. But I think India also in extreme of dance — the classical Indian dance
— what we come to know most.
The first Indian dancer brought to Australia was apparently Shivram in 1947, brought by the redoubtable Louise Lightfoot with a theatrical repertoire adapted from Kathakali. Australian dancers were trained to perform with him. And a Melbourne critic was very impressed, there's a quote — well several sentences abstracted and there was a wonderful comparison with Pavlova — but it was too long. Shivaram was able to do extraordinary things with his eyes and fingers while his head and feet were working out an entirely different set of rhythms. The brilliance of the costumes and the haunting
Indian music add to the general strangeness. The Australian dancers trained in an alien technique by
Louise Lightfoot did reasonably well in the subsidiary dances. In 1947 it probably was very, very different. Louise Lightfoot was a pioneer evangelist really in this area of the arts, bringing Shivaram back for several more seasons, the most recent I think was in 1976, as well as introducing other Indian dancers. And this early grounding in Indian classical dance may help to explain why we seem to know it — at least some areas of classical Indian dance, I must be a little more specific. Bhahatranaram,
Adisum, Khochipoori [spelling] are probably the three most known in Australia. And the arts festivals
in Adelaide and Perth were the first major presenters of companies from Asia. At first, very
conservative choices, such as the Bienan dance company from the Philippines in 1964 and the
Kallasharem madras dances from 1966. Robert Helpman as artistic director of the 1970 Adelaide
festival brought the Royal Thai Ballet and the Balinese Dance Company to Australia at a time when jet
age travel had wetted local appetites and the diversity of Australian population was beginning to take
hold. And it was Helpman who, in 1965, choreographed a memorable short work for the Australian
ballet called Yurgon [spelling?]. It was based on the Japanese noh play about the moon goddess whose 209
wings are stolen by a fisherman who thinks they are rare shells. And in it, Helpman used the Japanese
puppetry concept of black clad figures who act as unseen manipulators, in this case, bearing dancers
aloft rather than puppets. The music is western-style score by the Japanese composer Yuso Toyama
and for its time, it was a cultural crossover that worked.
Much more interesting things have happened since then. It's been very much a personal view of Asian influences on the Australian identity. I believe that for Sydney people at least Kate I Chan in particular has had a profound impact on Anglo or Euro attitudes through his dance theatre pieces for
One Extra Company. He founded the group in 1976 and brought to it sensitivities that were not only personal but the result of his Malay-Chinese family background. The longer he lived in Australia, first as an architecture student but then working but studying dance with Margaret Barr, and not long after as artistic director of One Extra, the more significant his heritage seemed to become. His trio of cultural backgrounds merged into a rich outpouring of productions. In some, such as Arqu [spelling?] goes west or The Shrew, based on Shakespeare's original, the marriage of so called east and west was obvious.
But in many others it was a far more subtle blend, such as family portrait and body works and the last work he did — I forgot to look up the name — it was at the Seymour centre, if anyone saw it, it might
come to me in the afternoon. I'm sad to say that Kate I Chan is now driving a taxi, having given up his struggles with the funding authorities. It's my great regret. And One Extra's still alive celebrating its
twentieth year — no, it wasn't Dancing Demons. So we've lost Kate Chai but he gave us a great deal ...
Running around absorbing things. But the thing that is you is a long way behind. Productions
like this, you wonder, who's seeing them? I'm seeing them; a few people are seeing them. I wish a great
many more would see them and receive this kind of communication. The same goes for Orientalia, I
think a few more people saw that one. Sally Susman [spelling] set up a thought provoking scenario of a
real life encounter in Stalinist Moscow, between the great male performer of female roles in Peking
opera Mai Long Fan [spelling] and the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Around their conversation,
interpreted according to their minders ideological points of view. Susman sets out the pros and cons of
cultural exchanges in a bilingual production, cleverly performed. She traversed an area between the
awful appeal of Chinoiserie, borderline ground of Puccini's Madame Butterfly and some mesmeric
Peking opera. Performed by Zhou Feng Shang [spelling]. And I'm ashamed to say I do a lot of writing
and not as much radio as I used to, and I haven't practiced everyone's names. I apologise. 210
Once again I'm thinking where does that, all get us? The question in Orientalia remained tantalisingly unanswered. My strongest instinct is that it's up to all of us, audiences, as much as performers, to try to find our on way into making the most of this new factor in Australian identity and to shape it the way we want it. By finding out as much we can, getting to know as much as we can and telling everyone to come and enjoy it and learn from it too. Thank you very much.
Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne
Author/s: Duffy, Michelle Elizabeth
Title: Music of place: the performance of identity in contemporary Australian community music festivals
Date: 2001
Citation: Duffy, M. E. (2001). Music of place: the performance of identity in contemporary Australian community music festivals. PhD thesis, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne.
Publication Status: Unpublished
Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/35535
File Description: Music of place: the performance of identity in contemporary Australian community music festivals
Terms and Conditions: Terms and Conditions: Copyright in works deposited in Minerva Access is retained by the copyright owner. The work may not be altered without permission from the copyright owner. Readers may only download, print and save electronic copies of whole works for their own personal non-commercial use. Any use that exceeds these limits requires permission from the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from these works.