Music, Culture and Society: Aline Scott-Maxwell
7 March 2008
Making a Home Away From Home: The Indonesian Student Music Scene in Melbourne
Aline Scott-Maxwell
For Indonesian international students living far from home, their preferred contemporary popular music is embedded in and fills the social space of their daily lives and serves as an important expression of cultural and group identity. But it can also reflect the way they engage with Australia and their transitory status here. This is illustrated in my paper, which examines the Indonesian student music scene in Melbourne with particular reference to a 2004-5 compilation CD, titled Pengamen Melbourne (Melbourne Buskers), that showcases fourteen Melbourne-based, Indonesian student bands. Collectivity, fluidity and a focus on group music-making—on process rather than outcomes—are all characteristics of band activity and of the scene. The fluidity of this scene extends to its boundaries, which arguably take in Jakarta, where musicians re-group and bands sometimes re-form following their return to Indonesia at the conclusion of their studies. The pop and rock styles on the CD draw on Western musical models, materials and structures, which are mediated and re-created in Indonesia. Various aspects of the CD, however, including its title, artwork and some of the tracks, testify to a relationship with the students’ temporary home, Melbourne. The CD and associated music activity therefore provide a tangible manifestation of both their self-contained social and cultural world in Melbourne and their transnational lives spanning geographically and culturally distant locations.
Aline Scott-Maxwell is an ethnomusicologist with research interests in Indonesian music, music in Australia and Australian musical engagement with Asia. Recent publications have examined aspects of popular music in the Italian, Jewish and Indonesian communities in Australia. She was co-General Editor of the Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia, and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Music, Monash University.